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Les outils Low-Code : l’avenir de la transformation digitale des entreprises

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Par Erik Marcadé, Head of SAP Labs Paris

Les entreprises et dirigeants du monde entier sont aujourd’hui confrontés à des défis de taille, que ce soit la volatilité des marchés, les incertitudes économiques ou encore les conflits géopolitiques… Ayant compris que l’intégration des technologies permettait de faire face à ces incertitudes, les entreprises redoublent d’efforts dans leurs transformations digitales pour survivre et prospérer. Cependant, la pénurie importante de talents et de compétences dans le secteur technologique renforce ce sentiment d’incertitudes.

Selon une récente étude d’IDC, 48 % des répondants sont confrontés à une pénurie de développeurs pour répondre à leurs demandes actuelles. C’est l’une des raisons pour lesquelles seulement 8 % des entreprises mondiales ont pu atteindre leurs objectifs de transformation digitale.

Dans l’enquête « Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey for 2022 » de PWC, on apprend que 29 % des personnes interrogées indiquent que leur pays ne dispose pas des ressources nécessaires à l’exercice de leur métier – les soins de santé, la technologie, les médias et les télécommunications arrivant en tête de liste. Pour combler le déficit de compétences, de nombreuses entreprises (40 %) investissent dans des programmes de perfectionnement et de formation, tandis que d’autres (33 %) augmentent les salaires pour retenir les meilleurs talents.

La demande de développeurs de logiciels n’a jamais été aussi forte, et cette pénurie de main-d’œuvre qualifiée crée non seulement des lacunes, ralentit le processus d’innovation et de croissance de nombreuses entreprises, mais provoque également des taux d’épuisement professionnel exceptionnellement élevés chez les développeurs. Pour les retenir sur le marché du travail, les entreprises devraient adopter des méthodes “low-code/no-code”, c’est-à-dire des méthodes de développement de logiciels qui ne nécessitent que peu ou pas de compétences en programmation. Plutôt que des langages de programmation textuels, ces méthodes utilisent des outils de conception d’applications visuelles et d’autres techniques de modélisation graphique.

En allant un cran plus loin, la clé d’une transformation digitale plus efficace pour l’entreprise ainsi que pallier la pénurie de compétences, passera par le développement de l’expertise technologique de ceux qui la connaissent le mieux – les utilisateurs eux-mêmes. Mais qu’entendons-nous par « utilisateurs professionnels » ? Il s’agit des analystes financiers, des opérateurs de la chaîne d’approvisionnement, des responsables de la chaîne de production, des spécialistes des achats et du marketing. Grâce à la formation et à l’investissement dans des solutions low-code/no-code, les entreprises peuvent exploiter la puissance du logiciel en dehors du back-office et la mettre entre les mains de personnes qui l’utilisent tous les jours pour innover, exécuter des tâches, se connecter, etc. En outre, cette approche permet également de répondre à la pression que ressentent de nombreux professionnels de l’informatique, chargés des grandes révisions d’infrastructure et des transformations digitales.

Les organisations peuvent former des employés qui n’ont aucune expérience préalable de la programmation, en leur fournissant des connaissances sur le low-code/no-code. L’objectif de ces formations est la certification en tant que «citizen developer», qui permettra à ces employés de développer et d’exploiter des programmes low-code/no-code à l’aide d’une expertise applicative personnelle. Ils peuvent alors décharger les développeurs professionnels de simples tâches routinières de programmation afin qu’ils puissent davantage s’impliquer dans le développement stratégique d’applications.

Bien sûr, les personnes ayant un certain niveau d’expertise technique peuvent également tirer profit des logiciels low-code/no-code : les tâches trop complexes pour un « citizen developer » comme les fonctions de sécurité, ou encore l’utilisation d’outils pour concevoir un programme à budget limité sans perdre la capacité d’évoluer. L’expertise des développeurs confirmés est – dans ce cas – toujours nécessaire mais avec l’aide du low-code/no-code, ils peuvent développer ces fonctions de manière plus efficace.

Les entreprises technologiques doivent être capables, à l’avenir, de s’adresser à tous : du développeur cloud-native et du data scientist, à l’architecte d’entreprise et au développeur d’applications et d’intégration, en passant par le concepteur UX et même les utilisateurs non techniques ! Le besoin est évident : le marché total adressable du développement d’applications et de l’automatisation des processus low-code/no-code n’a cessé de croître, et devrait atteindre 159 milliards de dollars d’ici 2030, contre 27 milliards de dollars cette année.

Dans le but de soutenir nos clients, SAP vient de lancer une nouvelle suite low-code appelée SAP Build – un ensemble d’outils qui mettent notre technologie de pointe entre les mains de tout utilisateur professionnel – utilisateur qui pourra désormais créer seul les applications dont il aura besoin, sans compétences approfondies en matière de codage et sans l’intervention du service informatique.

SAP Build est notre contribution à la mise en œuvre de cas d’utilisations commerciales, tout en atténuant les effets de la pénurie mondiale de compétences informatiques, grâce à la possibilité de transformer n’importe qui en développeur, ainsi que chaque entreprise, quelle que soit sa taille ou son secteur d’activité, en entreprise technologique.

Avec l’aide du low-code/no-code, les utilisateurs professionnels peuvent travailler plus efficacement et plus rapidement, les équipes informatiques peuvent se concentrer sur des tâches plus décisives et les entreprises peuvent mieux réussir, indépendamment de ce leur réserve l’avenir.

The post Les outils Low-Code : l’avenir de la transformation digitale des entreprises appeared first on SAP France News.

Source de l’article sur sap.com

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How to Sell on Pinterest Without a Website

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You don’t need an online shop to sell on Pinterest, but owning one can give you the upper hand.

The only problem is that managing an eCommerce store is expensive.

On the other hand, selling on Pinterest has a low entry barrier. So it’s an excellent place to start even if you can’t afford a website.

Plus, Pinterest has many engaged users who are happy to buy your product, craft or offer. This is the only social media network where the most significant users hold the most disposable income in America.

This guide shows you how to sell to these top spenders on Pinterest, whether you own a website or not.

What Pinterest Brings to the Table

Pinterest is not just a visual discovery engine. The social network brings more to the table.

With 433 million monthly active users and over one billion web visits in August 2022, the platform offers businesses new opportunities to reach highly engaged audiences.

Data Source: SimilarWeb

Also, data shows that about 38% of pinners have a college education, whereas Snapchat is 20%, Twitter is 32%, and Reddit stands at 15%, offering you access to a sophisticated market.

The social network enables about two billion monthly searches.

The company’s data revealed that 97% of the searches are unbranded, providing a level playing ground for all competing brands. However, for context, 42% of Google search queries are with branded keywords, meaning many searchers already have a brand in mind before searching.

Also, 80% of pinners said they discovered new products or brands on Pinterest, and 85% buy things they’ve seen from brands. Additionally, pinners are 55% more likely to buy a product after seeing a visual on Pinterest compared to other platforms.

The platform is not all talk and no action.

For instance, nearly nine in ten weekly pinners make buying decisions on Pinterest, and 50% of users have bought after seeing a Promoted Pin.

Pinterest might not be as popular and imposing as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok, but the user engagement shows the platform can hold its ground against some perennial favorites.

Its numbers are impressive, making Pinterest too good to pass up.

Selling On Pinterest Without a Website

You can sell on Pinterest without a website.

It’s an excellent option for affiliate marketers. A Pinterest business account will work best since it lets you monitor analytics and run ads. You might also need a Facebook page and a Medium account to further your marketing.

When you’re ready, here’s how to start selling on Pinterest without a website.

Organize Your Products into Boards

Pinterest Board is a collection of pins.

It lets you stay organized. You can create different boards to categorize your products. For example, having boards for televisions, sound systems, video players, and other products in your catalog will make sense if you deal in electronics. You can further classify the boards into sections, like LG, Samsung, and Sony.

Boards make it easy for shoppers to find your products.

To create one, log in to your profile and click the Saved tab.

Click the + icon to reveal a drop-down menu, then select Board from the options.

Enter the product category in the name field to create the Board.

Open the newly created Board, click the ellipsis icon (the three horizontal dots), then the Edit board option to type a befitting description for the Board.

Use the Organize option to create and organize the pins into sections.

 

Publish Your Products as Pins

Create visually engaging pins to display your products.

One exciting thing about Pinterest is that you can create unlimited pins for the same product using different visuals, titles, and descriptions. And the more pins you create, the greater your chances of increasing your visibility and CTR.

The mistake most brands make is creating a single pin for a product and leaving the rest to fate.

But it doesn’t work that way.

As a visual discovery engine, you’ll need to create a lot of pins to stand out and hold your ground on Pinterest. It also lets you cover most of the keywords pinners use to discover products on the platform, stretching your visibility further.

To create pins, head to your profile and select Create Pin from the Create drop-down to begin.

On the next page, select the Board you wish to have the Pin on from the drop-down, then enter the Pin’s title. Of course. Use the keywords people are likely to search for to target Pinterest searchers.

You can see in this Pin that Cicinia, an online retailer of bridal dresses and accessories, uses searchable keywords in the title. But the Pin doesn’t have a description. Don’t make the same mistake.

Write a compelling description to entice users to click your link.

You can search your keywords on Google to see what other brands have as their descriptions if you don’t know what to write. Then, add a discount code to the description if you have any. It supports up to 500 characters, so make the most of it.

Finally, upload your visuals, add your alt text describing the visual you uploaded, then include the destination link, in this case, your affiliate link, and publish the Pin.

Repeat this step for the rest of your products.

Promote Pins on Pinterest

Pinterest comes with a built-in ad manager.

With this tool, you can promote your pins to the perfect audience. It lets you target people based on demographics like age, gender, and location. You may also run campaigns based on their interests or search terms.

Additionally, Pinterest allows advertisers to upload their customer lists for custom targeting. However, it works best for sellers that own a website.

Running ads means you don’t have to compete with the over 240 billion pins for attention. Instead, promoted pins put you on the spot and in front of the right people.

Dimniko, an online advertising agency, helped a client sell over 22,500 products with Pinterest ad campaigns, generating up to 11-times ROAS.

The brand pivoted to Pinterest after experiencing slow sales from other channels. According to them, the client spent around $15,000 daily on Facebook ads, generating $3 million monthly in Shopify; that’s $6 for every $1 spent on ads.

But with Pinterest, they generated $1.29 million with $116,000—$11.12 per $1.

Dimniko advised Pinterest advertisers to kill assets that didn’t meet the KPI in the first seven days and scale the budget of the top performers by 20% every two to three days.

They admitted that half of their sales were due to their retargeting strategy and suggested that new advertisers should start with their existing buyers and ‘actalikes.’

Go Beyond Pinterest

Several opportunities exist for you outside Pinterest.

Depending solely on the channel to reach prospects is a considerable risk. The platform only controls about 450 million of the estimated 4.7 billion global social media users, so there are always more people to reach.

You can do this organically by publicly sharing your pins or boards using trending and relevant Twitter and TikTok hashtags. Also, brands like Bergdorf Goodman use Facebook to promote their pins.

Like them, you can post your pins’ links as updates on your Facebook page.

Promote the post to reach more people.

Blog on Medium

Nearly 43% of global internet-enabled persons use ad blockers, meaning there’s little future for intrusive marketing.

So, content marketing is a no-brainer.

It lets you reach prospects through organic search when they are most likely to purchase. Also, creating consistent, valuable, and engaging content helps you answer customers’ questions, build trust, and influence buying decisions.

Studies found that content marketing generates three times more leads than traditional marketing channels. Also, brands that create content have a six times higher conversion rate than non-adopters.

Thankfully, you don’t need a website for content marketing with Medium. It’s a free and intuitive online publishing platform that lets anyone create, share and discover content.

Sign up on the platform. Research keywords and create quality content with them. You can repurpose the article into a video with tools like Lumen5.com and share it on YouTube.

Selling On Pinterest With a Website

A website puts your Pinterest marketing on steroids.

At least you won’t have to upload your products manually. Instead, the platform can automatically pull your products from your online store to Pinterest and update your catalog regularly. It also lets you retarget non-converters and upsell existing buyers, improving conversion and customer lifetime value.

Follow these steps to connect your website to Pinterest and sell on the platform.

Set Up Your Online Store

Create an online store if you don’t have one yet.

Pinterest currently supports Shopify and WooCommerce stores and online shops that can integrate with the following:

  • Lengow
  • ChannelAdvisor
  • GoDataFeed
  • Feedonomics
  • Products

Next, add the website to your Pinterest business account to claim ownership. Verifying your site allows you to access analytics for the pins you publish from your website and pins other users created from your site and get a verified merchant tag.

You can claim your website by adding a DNS TXT record to your domain host, uploading an HTML file to your website’s web server, or adding an HTML tag to your website code.

Add Your Product Catalog

Upload your catalogs to start selling on the platform.

Catalogs are a feed ingestion tool that lets you connect your eCommerce shop to your Pinterest store. The file lists all your available products and their corresponding attributes, creating a data source for the Pinterest store.

Pinterest ingests the data source every 24 hours to create your product Pins and process up to 20 million products per account. You’ll need to contact Pinterest support if you have more than that number of products.

You can add up to 20 data sources to promote your products across different markets, languages, and currencies. However, uploading your data sources to Pinterest is only available in selected countries. If you’re eligible, the steps here can get you started. 

Alternatively, you may use third-party integrations like Shopify’s Pinterest app and Pinterest for WooCommerce plugin to get your products on Pinterest. Tools like Lengow, ChannelAdvisor, GoDataFeed, Feedonomics, and Productsup can also streamline your Pinterest data ingestion.

Create Rich Pins

Rich Pin is a step up for Pinterest pins.

They have extra information like price, product availability, description, and product link, providing pinners with rich shopping experiences. Rich pins encourage higher click-through rates, enabling you to sell more. They also make better ads.

With rich Pins, you don’t need to update your product Pins manually whenever the need arises. Instead, they update automatically each time you change your product titles, description, price, or availability.

Another fantastic thing is that rich Pins require only a one-time, easy setup. Pinterest will convert all your product Pins to rich Pins if you enable the feature for your account, and new Pins will appear as rich Pins.

Shopify natively supports Pinterest product-rich Pins, so it doesn’t require manual setup. Open any product page, copy the link and append .oembed to the URL, then validate with the Pinterest Rich Pins Validator.

If your store runs on WooCommerce, install the Yoast SEO plugin and enable Open Graph in the plugin setting. Next, copy any of your product URLs and validate. It’s that easy.

However, you’ll have to roll up your sleeves for custom sites.

It requires you to manually add rich metadata to the header of all your product pages. Pinterest supports Schema.org properties. Use any product schema generator like Merkel Schema Markup Generator to generate the JSON-LD code for each product page.

 Next, use Google Tag Manager to add the code to the page’s HTML.

To begin, log in to your account and select Add a new tag under the “New Tag” section.

Choose a name for your tag, then select Custom HTML as the tag type.

Scroll down to Triggering to choose a trigger, then click the + icon.

Name your trigger and select Page View as the trigger type. Next, choose Some Page Views under the “This trigger fires on” section.

Specify your trigger condition, save and then publish your tag.

Repeat the steps for all your product pages, then validate any URLs to apply for rich Pins.

Stay Organized With Product Groups

Product groups help you manage your inventory.

It also lets you promote a product category instead of individual Pins. You can create a product group manually or leave that for Pinterest to handle if you use Shopify. The app can automatically sync your Shopify collections to create relevant Pinterest product groups.

The auto-created product groups include All Products, Top Sellers, Back In Stock, Best Deals, New Arrivals, and Most Popular.

You can add others manually if you need different product groups like brand, custom label, product type, category, or gender. First, ensure the fields exist in your data source and name the products based on your chosen filters.

Follow these steps to create a product group:

  • First, log in to your Pinterest business account from your desktop.
  • Click Ads on the top menu and select Catalogs.
  • Select View product groups, then Create product group.
  • Apply filters to select the products for the group
  • Go to the next page and enter a name for the product group.

Prompt With Shopping Ads

A website lets you take your Pinterest ad campaigns to a new level.

For instance, you can retarget non-converting shoppers to recover lost sales or upsell active buyers to improve their lifetime value. You may also create an act alike (equivalent to Facebook’s lookalike) audience to reach your ideal prospects, eliminating guesses from your targeting.

However, the first is to install the Pinterest tracking tag.

It’s a code snippet that lets Pinterest track your store visitors and their actions while on your site. The code helps you measure your campaign performance, optimize your conversion, build a targeting audience and become a verified merchant.

To install the tag, log in to your Pinterest ads account, click the Ads tab on the top menu, select conversion from the drop-down, and follow the rest of the instructions to complete the process.

Create your audience and run shopping and personalized collections ads to promote your products. Also, launch dynamic retargeting campaigns to upsell buyers and retarget shoppers that abandoned their carts. Run these campaigns concurrently for the best results. This resource can guide you in setting up high-converting Pinterest ads.

Also, don’t forget to promote your store outside Pinterest for maximum reach.

Wrapping It Up

So you don’t need to own a website to sell on Pinterest.

With just an affiliate link, you can get started on the platform. That might even change soon. The social network is piloting a feature that lets shoppers checkout and pay for items on Pinterest so that they don’t have to leave the app to complete their purchases.

The in-app checkout will probably redefine social commerce in the coming years, and getting onboard Pinterest and setting up your stores now means you’ll always be ready for the mad rush.

Thankfully, the tips in this article can get you started.

 

Featured image by rawpixel.com on Freepik

Source

The post How to Sell on Pinterest Without a Website first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

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Une nouvelle étude prévoit l’état des chaînes d’approvisionnement aux États-Unis en 2023

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SAP NEWSBYTE – 24 octobre 2022 – SAP SE (NYSE : SAP) a annoncé la réalisation d’une nouvelle enquête qui révèle que les principaux décisionnaires s’attendent à ce que les problèmes et les perturbations sans précédent de la chaîne d’approvisionnement, auxquels les entreprises américaines sont confrontées depuis des années, ne soient pas encore terminés.

Plus de la moitié (52 %) des personnes interrogées pense que leur chaîne d’approvisionnement doit encore être améliorée et près de la moitié (49 %) s’attend à ce que les problèmes actuels de la chaîne d’approvisionnement durent jusqu’à la fin de 2022. Une personne sur trois affirme qu’ils dureront jusqu’à la fin de l’été 2023. Voici pourquoi :

L’agitation politique mondiale est le principal facteur à l’origine des problèmes actuels de la chaîne d’approvisionnement. Les chefs d’entreprise déclarent que les problèmes rencontrés actuellement sur leur chaîne d’approvisionnement sont principalement dus à l’instabilité politique mondiale (58 %), au manque de matières premières (44 %) et à la hausse des coûts du carburant et de l’énergie (40 %). Seuls 31 % ont cité l’inflation comme un facteur important.

Le coût reste un problème alors que les entreprises rattrapent les pertes de revenus dues à la pandémie. Les entreprises n’étaient pas préparées à ce changement radical du comportement d’achat des consommateurs pendant la pandémie et en ont subi les conséquences financières. Environ la moitié des chefs d’entreprise ont constaté un impact financier dû aux problèmes de chaîne d’approvisionnement depuis le début de la pandémie, notamment :

  • Une diminution des revenus (58%)
  • Obligation de prendre de nouvelles mesures de financement, comme des prêts commerciaux (54 %)
  • Impossibilité de payer les employés (50 %)
  • Des loyers impayés (42%)

Afin de couvrir les coûts supplémentaires liés aux problèmes de chaîne d’approvisionnement, les chefs d’entreprise sont plus nombreux à déclarer qu’ils ont dû recourir au gel des salaires et des recrutements (61%) et à la suppression de postes (50%). Seuls 41% ont choisi d’augmenter le prix de leurs produits/services.

L’impact des problèmes de chaîne d’approvisionnement sur la période des fêtes en 2022

La saison des achats pour les fêtes en 2021 a été tout sauf normale, les chaînes d’approvisionnement ayant été sur-sollicitées. Bien que de nombreuses entreprises aient commencé à se préparer, des questions subsistent quant à la manière dont cette année se déroulera.

Commençons par les consommateurs. Une étude réalisée par SAP auprès de 1 000 consommateurs américains a révélé que près de la moitié d’entre eux (45 %) déclare que le prix est le principal facteur qu’ils prennent en compte dans leur décision d’achat et que 73 % considère qu’il s’agit du troisième facteur le plus important. Avec l’inflation qui fait grimper les coûts et une récession potentielle qui inquiète les consommateurs, il n’est pas surprenant que 65 % prévoit de réduire le budget de dépenses pour les fêtes et que 54 % s’attend à ce que l’inflation ait un impact sur la façon dont ils achèteront leurs cadeaux de Noël, 39 % faisant davantage d’achats en ligne.

Les chefs d’entreprise anticipent la tendance des achats en ligne, 73 % d’entre eux prévoyant une augmentation du volume du commerce électronique cette saison par rapport à l’année dernière. Pour vendre leurs propres produits, les chefs d’entreprise prévoient de miser sur ces points de différenciation :

– La rapidité de la livraison (64%)

– Excellent service client (57%)

– Disponibilité des produits (52%)

– Références en matière de durabilité (47%)

– Réductions de prix (42%)

– Fabrication aux États-Unis (38%)

Les entreprises fortifient leurs chaînes d’approvisionnement pour l’avenir

Toutes les entreprises ont déclaré que leur chaîne d’approvisionnement devait être améliorée dans une certaine mesure, et elles procèdent à des changements importants pour se préparer aux perturbations futures et fortifier leurs chaînes d’approvisionnement. Les chefs d’entreprise prévoient :

– d’adopter de nouvelles technologies pour surmonter les difficultés (74 %)

– de mettre en œuvre de nouvelles mesures d’urgence (67 %)

– de donner la priorité aux solutions de chaîne d’approvisionnement basées aux États-Unis (60 %)

– de trouver de nouvelles solutions de chaîne d’approvisionnement qui soient respectueuses de l’environnement (58 %).

Près de deux entreprises sur trois (64 %) passent d’une chaîne d’approvisionnement “juste à temps” à une chaîne d’approvisionnement “juste au cas où”, en augmentant la quantité de stocks qu’elles entreposent. En fait, 63 % pensent que les États-Unis devraient adopter cette approche pour surmonter les crises potentielles de la chaîne d’approvisionnement.

« Le passage au “juste au cas où” signifie que les entreprises vont entreposer davantage de stocks pour répondre à la demande des clients, mais cela signifie également une augmentation des coûts », selon Scott Russell, Membre du Conseil Exécutif de SAP, Customer Success. « La gestion de la chaîne d’approvisionnement est un exercice d’équilibre constant. Au cours des deux dernières décennies, l’approche “juste à temps” a troqué la résilience contre l’efficacité et la réduction des coûts, ce qui a fragilisé la chaîne logistique. La pandémie et l’effet boule de neige des perturbations connexes ont révélé cette fragilité, ce qui a amené les organisations à se recentrer sur la résilience. Pourtant, le coût reste un facteur, surtout dans le contexte économique actuel. La technologie peut aider les entreprises à trouver le bon équilibre en permettant une collaboration en temps réel entre les partenaires commerciaux. »

SAP aide les entreprises à répondre à la demande grâce à une meilleure visibilité sur des opérations réparties dans le monde entier, à une meilleure collaboration avec les partenaires commerciaux et à une meilleure connaissance des risques, tout en opérant de manière plus durable.

C’est là que les réseaux d’entreprise entrent en jeu. Pour plus d’informations sur la façon dont SAP peut aider à renforcer la résilience de la chaîne d’approvisionnement avec SAP Business Network, visitez le site sap.com/businessnetwork.

Les résultats sont basés sur une enquête menée fin août et début septembre 2022 auprès de 400 hauts responsables de la logistique et de la stratégie de la chaîne d’approvisionnement de petites, moyennes et grandes entreprises basées aux États-Unis.

 

The post Une nouvelle étude prévoit l’état des chaînes d’approvisionnement aux États-Unis en 2023 appeared first on SAP France News.

Source de l’article sur sap.com

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The Open Source Way to Rightsize Kubernetes With One Click

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Rightsizing resource requests is an increasing challenge for teams using Kubernetes—and especially critical as they scale their environments. Overprovisioning CPU and memory lead to costly overspending, but underprovisioning risks CPU throttling and out-of-memory errors if requested resources aren’t sufficient. Dev and engineering teams that don’t thoroughly understand the live performance profile of their containers will usually play it safe and request vastly more CPU and memory resources than required, often with significant budget waste.

The open source Kubecost tool (https://github.com/kubecost) has had a Request Sizing dashboard to help Kubernetes users bring more cost efficiency to their resource requests. One of the tool’s most popular optimization features, the dashboard identifies over-requested resources, offers recommendations for appropriate per-container resource requests, and estimates the cost-savings impact of implementing those recommendations. The dashboard utilizes actual usage data from live containers to provide accurate recommendations. However, leveraging the dashboard has included some hurdles, requiring users to manually update YAML requests to align resource requests with Kubecost recommendations or introduce integrations using a CD tool. 

Source de l’article sur DZONE

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Why Zero Experience Designers Need A Chance

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Moving from studying design into the big wide world of web design is a daunting process. It’s a competitive and dynamic industry that’s growing all the time. It’s estimated that between 2020 and 2030, web designer jobs in the US will increase by 13%. One of the most challenging aspects of starting a career in web design is getting hired, especially as a freelancer. 

The first thing that most clients and agencies look for is usually your level of professional experience. They want to work with someone who, while perhaps not a veteran, has at least a few years of experience. This can lead to a lot of frustration for new designers. After all, how are you supposed to get experience if nobody hires you? 

Moreover, clients and agencies miss out on promising candidates when they pass up on skilled designers just because they don’t have experience. 

Here’s why we should all give zero-experience designers a chance.

1. Price

Professional web design doesn’t come cheap, and for a good reason. Most freelancers who have been in the business for many years have built a solid reputation for themselves and have no shortage of work. Web design agencies have a higher degree of accountability and a quality guarantee, which is why hiring their services can cost more. 

If you’re looking to get design work done on a tight budget, you’ll have better luck contacting someone with little or no experience. However, they’re most likely looking to build up their portfolio and will gladly offer you competitive rates.

2. No Experience Doesn’t Mean No Skill

Clients often assume that anything produced by an inexperienced designer will be sub-par or unusable. While it is true that an extensive portfolio is a good sign, it isn’t the only reason to hire someone. 

New web designers may not be as well versed in business, but many of them are still highly skilled and motivated individuals with a lot to offer. 

Whether self-taught or college graduates, they have devoted countless hours to becoming good at what they do. Instead of passing on a zero-experience candidate, give them a chance to show you what they can do with a mock-up. If you’re still dubious, then go with someone else. But you never know what someone has to offer until you put them to the test.

3. They Will Prioritize Your Job

As we’ve already established, finding work as a fresh-faced web designer can be challenging. This means that those with little to no experience are more likely to have time to devote entirely to your project, as they won’t be splitting their focus.

Agencies and well-established freelancers usually juggle several different projects at a time, meaning they will take longer to produce a result. If they happen to be working on a higher-paying job simultaneously with yours, you can guess which one they’ll prioritize. 

It’s always comforting to know that the person handling your design work is focused on you and you alone. You know your project won’t be on the back burner or forgotten about. 

4. You Will Foster Loyalty

This applies more to big web design agencies. New designers know their lack of experience counts against them, even for entry-level positions. If you choose to look past that and hire them anyway, they won’t forget it in a hurry. 

Once you’ve hired them, you have all the time in the world to help them learn the ropes. Include them in projects headed up by more experienced designers, give them lower priority jobs, and create an environment where their technical skills can flourish. 

Everyone has to start somewhere, and you can bet that they will remember who decided to give them an opportunity when nobody else would. A few years later, when they’ve found their feet in the industry, you’ll have a skilled, experienced designer with something you can’t buy: loyalty. 

5. They’re Eager to Learn

Industry veterans eventually become somewhat set in their ways. They develop their unique style and way of doing things, and while this isn’t bad, it’s different from someone freshly entering the industry for the first time. 

New designers are ‌much more eager to take instruction and expand their repertoire according to your needs. They have the time, energy, and motivation to learn new skills and may have a different approach to projects simply because they have not yet learned otherwise.

6. No Project Is Too Small

Not every job is going to be massive and high paying. People need web designers for small business sites, event pages, small ad campaigns, and other similar projects. Established designers looking for bigger fish will often pass up these kinds of jobs. But they are ideal for new designers who need to build their portfolio website.

On the other hand, new designers will usually take any opportunity to make money and gain experience. If your project isn’t massively complex or high stakes, use it as an opportunity to give someone a chance to showcase their skills. 

7. Everyone Starts Somewhere

No designer starts their career with experience, and many work in other design-related jobs for some time before they begin to do what they’re genuinely passionate about. Industries that make it hard for entry-level professionals to find work often discourage them from pursuing their goals. While philanthropy might not be high on the list of priorities for clients or agencies who want the best in the business, it’s always good to remember that growing industry means recognizing potential. 

Not every newbie will ‌be a prodigy. But without people out there willing to give them a chance, even the most gifted designer will eventually lose heart. 

Summary

In short, experience isn’t everything. While it is a vital asset to any designer, there is certainly room in the industry to allow those with potential to grow. 

So, next time you’re looking for new hires or someone to take on a freelance gig, remember what it’s like to be the new guy and consider hiring someone less experienced. You will sometimes find the brightest gems where you least expect them.

 

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9 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your WordPress Blog

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WordPress has made it easy for everyone to launch a blog, but even though launching a blog isn’t a difficult task any longer, driving traffic to your blog certainly is!

In this article, I’ll share some tried and tested strategies that have worked well for my clients’ blogs. You do not have to be an expert or a marketing guru to get traffic to your WordPress website. Follow the helpful tips I share in this article and watch the visitors start pouring in.

Tip 1: Use Powerful Headlines

The first thing related to your blog that a user reads in the search engine results is your article headlines. Of course, nobody wants to click on a boring article title. But a powerful headline stands out from the rest and gets you more clicks. 

In most themes, your article headlines are translated into meta titles for the pages. Meta titles indicate the topic of your articles to Google and other search engines. 

Tip 2: Build an Email List

Consider offering your visitors a newsletter signup form through which they can subscribe and get notified about new posts on your blog. You can offer them an incentive for free to persuade them to subscribe to your blog. It can be anything from an e-book, membership, useful templates, or an e-course. 

Building an email list gives access to the inboxes of your visitors. You can share your blog content with this prospective audience every time you post a new article. This will help you get consistent traffic to your WordPress blog.

Tip 3: Use Free Giveaways and Contests

Free giveaways work as an incentive for your WordPress blog visitors. To offer an entry to your blog’s free giveaway, you can ask your visitors for an email subscription, comment on your blog posts, share it on their social media channels, and ask for other such things. 

The trick is to think about the actions of your visitors that will increase traffic to your blog and provide them with one or multiple giveaway entries for such actions. 

Tip 4: Optimize For Keywords

All successful bloggers optimize their content for keywords. You need to perform proper keyword research to find sentences and words that your target audience is typing in Google and other top search engines. 

Instead of guessing the keywords for your articles, consider using some helpful tools like SEMrush’s Keyword Magic Tool and Google Ads Keyword Planner. This way, you can find the terms people are genuinely interested in and the keywords that do not have too much competition.

You must ensure to choose the keywords that have some excellent traffic volume but, at the same time, have less competition. Such keywords will help in the better ranking of each of your articles.

Tip 5: Optimize WordPress Site Speed

It has been proven that loading time is a ranking factor for SEO, as Google tends to assume that fast sites are high-quality sites.

Signing up for a hosting provider specializing in WordPress guarantees you get the best optimization features for your WordPress site. However, that alone is not enough because you need a hosting provider that can also handle a high volume of visitors.

Optimizing your WordPress website will help in the faster loading of your blog pages. Images are generally the biggest culprit in slowing down your website. So you must first optimize them through an image optimization plugin like Smush, Imagify, or Optimus. 

Enabling caching on your WordPress blog will considerably improve its speed. You can store your website data locally with caching, thereby reducing your server load to a large extent. Your website will, therefore, load faster on your visitors’ end, especially when they are repeat visitors.

Tip 6: Take Advantage of Social Media

Try building your presence on some of the top platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Post multiple times a day on these websites and share your blog articles.

You must also include social sharing buttons with your blog posts to make sharing easier for your audience. It will allow your blog visitors to share your post on different social platforms. This dramatically increases the chances of your blog post going viral.

Tip 7: Internal Linking Strategy

The only key here is to link articles that are closely related to each other. Your visitors might be interested in such related content and read more of your blog posts, thereby increasing your page views. It also increases the chances of visitors sharing your blog content since they find it valuable.

Tip 8: Be a Guest Blogger

Guest blogging involves creating content for other websites for mutual benefits. It helps you establish your authority in the blogging world while attracting more visitors to your WordPress website. 

Becoming a guest blogger allows you to spread the word about your blog to a new set of audiences and bring in organic traffic. It expands your work portfolio and helps build or enhance your online reputation.

Tip 9: Pay for Traffic

Consider using Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Microsoft advertising, and other top advertising platforms when paying to bring traffic to your blog. Be aware of your blog audience and use the most suitable criteria to target it. 

I’d recommend setting a weekly budget for paid ads and tracking the ad performance at the end of the week.

If you are satisfied with the traffic results, use the same criteria for the next week. On the other hand, if the ad performance is not as per your expectations, try different criteria to reach your target audience.

Conclusion

Getting traffic to your WordPress blog is an incentive for all the hard work that you do in creating content and managing your website. It builds a name for your blog and improves its search engine ranking. All this leads to better user engagement and revenue.

 

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What is the “Minimum” in Minimum Viable Product?

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“Minimum Viable Product,” or “MVP,” is a concept of agile development and business growth. With a minimum viable product, you focus on creating the simplest, most basic version of your product, web application, or code possible.

Minimum viable products include just enough features to attract early adopters and validate your idea in the early stages of the development lifecycle. Choosing an MVP workflow can be particularly valuable in the software environment because it helps teams receive, learn from, and respond to feedback as quickly as possible.

The question is, how exactly do you define the “minimum” in MVP? How do you know if your MVP creation is basic enough while still being “viable”?

Defining the Minimum Viable Product: An Introduction

The concept of “Minimum Viable Product” comes from the Lean Start-up Methodology, introduced by Eric Ries. The purpose of MVP is to help companies quickly create versions of a product while collecting validated insights from customers for each iteration. Companies may choose to develop and release minimum viable products because they want to:

  • Introduce new products into the market as quickly as possible;
  • Test an idea with real users before committing a large budget to product development;
  • Create a competitive product with the use of frequent upgrades;
  • Learn what resonates with the target market of the company;
  • Explore different versions of the same product.

Aside from allowing your company to validate an idea for a product without building the entire concept from scratch, an MVP can also reduce the demand on a company’s time and resources. This is why so many smaller start-ups with limited budgets use the MVP and lean production strategy to keep costs as low as possible.

Defining an MVP: What your Minimum Viable Product Isn’t

When you’re building a Minimum Viable Product, you’re concentrating on developing only the most “essential” features that need to be in that product. For instance, you might be building a shopping app for a website. For the app to be “viable,” it would need to allow customers to search through products and add them to a basket or shopping cart. The app would also need a checkout feature and security components.

However, additional functionality, like the ability to send questions about an item to a customer service team or features that allow clients to add products to a “wish list,” may not be necessary straight away. Part of defining a minimum viable product is understanding what it isn’t. For instance, an MVP is not:

  • A prototype: Prototypes are often mentioned alongside MVPs because they can help with early-stage product validation. However, prototypes are generally not intended for customers to use. The “minimum” version of a viable product still needs to be developed enough for clients and users to put it to the test and provide feedback.
  • A minimum marketable product: An MVP is a learning vehicle that allows companies to create various iterations of an item over time. However, a minimum marketable product is a complete item, ready to sell, with features or “selling points” the company can highlight to differentiate the item from the competition.
  • Proof of concept: This is another similar but distinct idea from MVP. Proof of concept items test an idea you have to determine whether it’s attainable. There usually aren’t any customers involved in this process. Instead, companies create small projects to assess business solutions’ technical capabilities and feasibility. You can sometimes use a proof of concept before moving on to an MVP.

Finding the Minimum in your MVP

When finding the “minimum” in a minimum viable product, the primary challenge is ensuring the right balance. Ideally, you need your MVP to be as essential, cost-effective, and straightforward as possible so that you can create several iterations in a short space of time. The simpler the product, the easier it is to adapt it, roll it out to your customers, and learn from their feedback.

However, developers and business leaders shouldn’t get so caught up focusing on the “Minimum” part of Minimum Viable Product that they forget the central segment: “Viable”; your product still needs to achieve a specific purpose.

So, how do you find the minimum in your MVP?

1. Decide on Your Goal or Purpose

First, you’ll need to determine what your product needs to do to be deemed viable. What goal or target do you hope to achieve with your new product? For instance, in the example we mentioned above, where you’re creating an ecommerce shopping app, the most basic thing the app needs to do is allow customers to shop for and purchase items on a smartphone.

Consider the overall selling point of your product or service and decide what the “nice to haves” are, compared to the essential features. For instance, your AR app needs to allow people to interact with augmented digital content on a smartphone, but it may not need to work with all versions of the latest AR smart glasses.

2. Make a List of Features

Once you know the goal or purpose of your product, the next step is to make a list of features or capabilities you can rank according to importance. You can base your knowledge of what’s “most important” for your customers by looking at things like:

  • Competitor analysis: What do your competitors already offer in this category, and where are the gaps in their service or product?
  • User research: Which features or functionalities are most important to your target audience? How can you make your solution stand out from the crowd?
  • Industry knowledge: As an expert in your industry, you should have some basic understanding of what it will take to make your product “usable.”

3. Create Your Iterations

Once you’ve defined your most important features, the next stage is simply building the simplest version of your product. Build the item according to what you consider to be its most essential features and ask yourself whether it’s serving its purpose.

If your solution seems to be “viable,” you can roll it out to your target audience or a small group of beta testers to get their feedback and validate the offering. Use focus groups and market interviews to collect as much information as possible about what people like or dislike.

Using your feedback, you can begin to implement changes to your “minimum” viable product to add more essential features or functionality.

Understanding the “Minimum Viable Product”

Minimum viable products are evident throughout multiple industries and markets today – particularly in the digitally transforming world. For instance, Amazon might be one of the world’s most popular online marketplaces today, but it didn’t start that way. Instead, Jeff Bezos began purchasing books from distributors and shipping them to customers every time his online store received an order to determine whether the book-selling landscape would work.

When Foursquare first began, it had only one feature. People could check-in at different locations and win badges. The gamification factor was what made people so excited about using the service. Other examples include:

  • Groupon: Groupon is a pretty huge discount and voucher platform today, operating in companies all around the world. However, it started life as a simple minimum viable product promoting the services of local businesses and offering exclusive deals for a short time. Now Groupon is constantly evolving and updating its offerings.
  • Airbnb: Beginning with the use of the founders’ own apartment, Airbnb became a unicorn company giving people the opportunity to list places for short-term rental worldwide. The founders rented out their own apartment to determine whether people would consider staying in someone else’s home before eventually expanding.
  • Facebook: Upon release, Facebook was a simple social media tool used for connecting with friends. Profiles were basic, and all members were students of Harvard University. The idea quickly grew and evolved into a global social network. Facebook continues to learn from the feedback of its users and implement new features today.

Creating Your Minimum Viable Product

Your definition of a “minimum viable product” may not be the same as the definition chosen by another developer or business leader. The key to success is finding the right balance between viability – and the purpose of your product, and simplicity – or minimizing your features.

Start by figuring out what your product simply can’t be without, and gradually add more features as you learn and gain feedback from your audience. While it can be challenging to produce something so “minimalistic” at first, you need to be willing to release those small and consistent iterations if you want to leverage all the benefits of an MVP.

Suppose you can successfully define the meaning of the words “Minimum” and “Viable” simultaneously with your new product creations. In that case, the result should be an agile business, lean workflows, and better development processes for your entire team.

 

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