Articles

8 Reasons Your Site Is Slow + How To Fix Them

,

1, 2, 3 – That’s exactly how long it takes you to start losing visitors if you have a slow-loading website.

Hold on! Surely, the only thing that matters to users is that your website works flawlessly and looks great… right? Wrong!

The fact of the matter is that we’ve all become accustomed to instant access to information and content. The average internet user today places a lot of value on speed, and the bar is continually being raised.

If you are like most people, you probably feel an immediate sense of dread at the thought of optimizing your website. Where do you start? How can you make the most impactful improvements? What makes your website slow in the first place?

Have no fear, as we’ll be answering all of your questions below as well as putting you on your way to a website that loads with blazing speed.

Why Should You Be Worried About A Slow-Loading Website?

Good question!

As many as 53% of visitors abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Even worse, 1 in 3 shoppers will leave a website if it takes longer than 5 seconds to load.

So, performance plays a huge role in the user experience of your website and whether your visitors will stay on your website or be converted into customers.

For some time, Google has been keenly aware of this fact. As a search engine, Google knows that it’s counterproductive to recommend content to users if they won’t stick around to consume it.

That’s why they’ve continually been increasing the role performance plays when ranking websites for their SERPs (search engine results pages).

In recent years, Google has introduced core web vitals. These are metrics they hope will help quantify how performance affects the user experience. In general, they measure how fast, stable, and interactive a page is while loading. This will be more important than ever after Google announced its Page Experience update, which started its global rollout in June 2021.

As you may know, ranking highly for Google is vital for your website’s visibility. For one, 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine, of which Google has a 92.7% market share. Even if you manage to land on the coveted first page of Google, the first five results get over 70% of all clicks (28% to the first result alone).

So, to recap why a fast loading website is so desirable:

  • It directly affects your ability to keep, satisfy, and even convert visitors to your website.
  • It impacts your search engine rankings which impacts your “findability” and organic traffic.

8 Reasons Your Site Is Slow + How to Fix Them

O.K., so now that we’re all on the same page regarding the importance of your website performance, let’s look at common issues slowing down your website + how to fix them.

1. You’re Using A Sub-Par Hosting Service

As the party responsible for making your website available to the outside world, your hosting service can be a make-or-break factor. Not only should you pick a host that has a good track record when it comes to uptime a performance, but also one that’s suitable according to your needs.

Even if you take all the steps below to optimize your website’s performance, it may still load slowly if traffic to your website is overwhelming your available bandwidth or your host’s server capacity. If that happens, some users may experience extremely slow loading times, broken features, or even complete unavailability.

For most personal, blog, or local/small business sites, a respectable hosting provider like Bluehost or GoDaddy should be good enough. However, if you plan on running any type of large-scale, high-traffic webstore, business portal, or other type of website, you’ll want premium hosting, such as WPEngine (for WordPress), VPS hosting, or even a dedicated server.

2. You’re Not Optimizing Your Media Assets

As you probably know, media like images and videos take up significantly more space than most other types of content, such as text, code, stylesheets, or other static files. Even a single image has the potential of consisting of more data than dozens of website pages containing nothing but the underlying HTML and text.

In a Speed Essentials presentation, the Google team identified images as the largest contributor to page weight. In fact, they have the potential to consume a website’s entire performance budget if left unoptimized. Images can also directly impact all three of Google’s core web vitals – key metrics Google uses to measure the performance of a website.

However, the use of images and video is likely to continue growing, heightening the importance of finding a sustainable solution. According to HTTPArchive, images have increased by 19.3% on desktop and 42.7% on mobile.

For now and the foreseeable future, optimizing your images carries the greatest potential for improving performance.

The problem is that optimizing image assets requires multiple steps. Most importantly:

  • Using the appropriate next-gen formats which can differ depending on the user’s device, OS, or browser.
  • Appropriately compressing the size and quality of images to reduce payload without affecting visual quality too badly.
  • Using the optimal display size and density based on the accessing device to reduce payloads further.
  • Using lazy loading to only load images as needed.

As you can see, manually going through these steps for every single image on your website can be extremely labor-intensive. This is especially true if you consider that you somehow need to create the optimal variants for different users based on what device, OS, or browser they are using.

In-code strategies, like a JS plugin, responsive images, or CSS media queries tend to bloat your code and lead to other performance issues we’ll discuss below.

Luckily, there are plenty of CDN services available designed specifically for providing some degree of automated image optimization. These platforms analyze the context (i.e., a specific mobile device model, OS version, and browser version) of the user trying to load one of your images and try to serve them a version of the image that’s ideally optimized for them.

However, any media optimization platforms still require installing a small JavaScript plugin to dramatically improve the image and video optimization capabilities. 

The one exception here is ImageEngine. ImageEngine uses WURFL device-detection to pick up every possible detail of the user’s device. The logic is built into their device-aware edge servers and doesn’t rely on you adding any additional code or markup to your website pages.

So, not only does it reduce your image payloads by up to 80% and serve them via a global CDN, but it doesn’t leave a footprint in your website’s code. As a bonus, it also happens to support the widest range of image/video formats, including animated GIFs, as well as client hints and save-data mode.

3. Render-Blocking JavaScript And CSS Is Delaying Page Loads

JavaScript is the de facto programming language for adding interactivity and advanced features to websites today. Likewise, CSS is the standard for adding styling. Both are critical components for almost any modern website.

However, nothing good comes free, and both may impact the performance of your website, particularly when used carelessly. 

The following are some steps you can take to minimize the impact of these assets on your website performance:

  • Minify your JavaScript and CSS files.
  • Combine a large number of JS/CSS files into fewer files.
  • Replace some of your external JS and CSS files with inline JS/CSS. (Don’t overdo this! Inline JS and CSS is only suitable for small code snippets).
  • Defer loading JavaScript until after all your content is loaded and use media queries for CSS files.

Because media can have a more significant impact on your page weight, this leads some to believe that adding more JavaScript is the lesser of two evils. 

However, depending on whether you already have render-blocking JS, Google might flag this as a completely new issue. Regardless, it will negatively impact your performance score in tools like PageSpeed Insights:

You can avoid it altogether by using an optimization engine like ImageEngine that doesn’t require any JavaScript.

4. You’re Not Using A Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN is a network of servers spread across various regions all over the globe. What it basically does is store a copy of your website on each of these servers. When an internet user visits your site, the CDN automatically serves your website from the nearest server to that user.

What this does is allow your website to load faster, no matter where in the world people are visiting it from. If your website was only hosted on a single server, say somewhere in the U.S., then it could take much longer to load for a visitor located in Asia than one in the U.S.

While they all basically do the same thing, different CDNs are better at handling different types of content. Cloudflare, Fastly, and Akamai are just some of the most popular general-purpose CDNs around. Image CDNs like ImageEngine are purpose-built to not only serve image and video assets but to also optimize them using compression, formatting, etc.

So, the two main factors to consider are the type of content you want to deliver via the CDN and its global coverage. However, it’s usually possible to use multiple CDNs in tandem to cover different types of content and reach a wider area.

5. There’s Excessive Overhead In Your Database

If you have a website with any type of complexity, you probably have a corresponding database. In fact, all WordPress websites require a database to function.

Over the years, a lot of information moves in and out of the database. Sometimes, the data can get lost along the way or become obsolete. If you don’t regularly spring-clean your database, then this can really start to add up. Not only will it bloat the storage size of your database, but it will start to impact the speed of database queries and requests.

CMS users are especially prone to racking up these kinds of artifacts from plugins and themes that have been installed and removed over the years.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many easy fixes for this issue available. With most hosting providers, you’ll probably need to use phpMyAdmin to manually check and scrub your data. If you have a managed hosting solution, the host’s support team might be able to help you out. In the event that you have a locally installed database, there are some tools you can use, although they’re not 100% effective.

The best way to avoid any issues is to make database maintenance part of your routine and to learn the basics of how databases work.

6. You Have Too Many Plugins Or Themes Installed

For CMS users, plugins or themes offer near-limitless potential to spruce up the design and functionality of their website. However, each plugin or theme comes with additional code and content that add to the overall complexity and size of your website.

If you have a hand-coded website, the same goes for any additional applets or libraries you want to add to your site. 

The best way to combat this is to be conscientious when adding any extras to your website. Only install what you really need or want, and make sure to uninstall and properly remove them if you don’t need them anymore.

As mentioned, they might leave various transients or artifacts behind, so you should keep an eye out for them throughout your website files (not just the database) whenever you do some spring cleaning.

7. You Aren’t Utilizing Caching

Caching is often one of the most effective yet ignored techniques for improving website performance. Caching stores your website content in fast-access memory in the user’s browser, allowing it to be loaded near-instantaneously by users. This can include everything from text to stylesheets to images to JavaScript files.

Without caching, a user will need to redownload everything when they navigate to or reload a page — whether or not anything has changed.

However, not properly configuring caching on your website can lead to issues, such as users only loading out-of-date content. Most high-quality caching tools have built-in features that automatically clear the cache when you make changes to a specific website page or content. So, users will only reload content once it has been modified.

Some hosts offer out-of-the-box caching tools with their hosting service. CMS can also usually find plugins for this, such as WPRocket for WordPress.

8. Ads Are Dragging You Down

In the end, ads are just another form of media that increases the overall weight of your website pages. While they are typically small and lightweight, multiple ad placements can really start to add up.

What aggravates the issue is that ads are loaded from external sources. This means they’ll take longer to render, generate more requests, and may mess with how stable your pages load — affecting your core web vitals.

Depending on how important ads are to your revenue stream, you’ll want to carefully consider how many ads you use on your site, where to position them, and when they load. If possible, avoid loading ads at the same time as the rest of your page, especially interstitials.

Conclusion

As you can see, website performance is a multi-faceted subject. Although some may be worse than others, you can’t just address one area and expect your website to suddenly be performant.

However, some general principles apply:

  • Keep HTTP requests low by limiting the number of files required for each of your website pages.
  • Maintain proper code hygiene and spring clean transients and leftover artifacts.
  • Invest in proper hosting infrastructure as well as a CDN for your website.
  • Optimize your media assets to significantly bring down payloads without sacrificing engagement.

The final point deserves another shoutout. As we’ve pointed out, finding an optimization solution for your media, particularly images, is probably the best thing you can do to improve your website performance. From purely a performance perspective, there is no service quite as effective as ImageEngine. It’s also the one that requires the least amount of technical expertise and ongoing maintenance.

Regardless, you’ll want to run some tests using tools like PageSpeed Insights so you can gather data on what issues your website is facing. From there, you can prioritize fixes to make your website more competitive.

 

[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of ImageEngine –]

Source

The post 8 Reasons Your Site Is Slow + How To Fix Them first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.


Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

/par

The State of Remote Working and Productivity During the Pandemic

,

As we cross 2020, most of us are still functioning remotely and preparing for a hybrid work environment where we will be expected to work from home. How can an organization determine productivity? What can we expect from remote working in 2021? How can leaders motivate their employees who are low on motivation? Read this article as I dissect the remote working environment of 2021.

In 2020, this digital revolution was accelerated due to the pandemic outbreak, when most of the global workforce was forced to work remotely from the safe boundaries of their homes. We can witness the change in the work environment when we look at the introduction of various collaboration software, which helps employees connect virtually over a meeting and streamline their processes, to cloud-based connectivity, and a data-centric approach to strategic decision-making powered by the synergy between artificial and human intelligence. These have helped organizations reimagine the way to work.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

/par

SAP Tax Compliance, un outil de transformation digitale des fonctions fiscales

, ,

Dans notre précédent article intitulé « Et si l’avenir de la fiscalité passait par le système d’information ? », nous mettions en avant les besoins grandissants en termes de contrôles autour des fonctions fiscales. En effet, les entreprises sont soumises à de nombreuses réglementations ainsi qu’à une complexification de leur système d’information. Il devient donc nécessaire pour beaucoup d’entre elles de mettre en place des outils de « Tax Compliance ». Ils permettent de supporter les équipes fiscales et d’assurer le respect des obligations. Dans ce second article, nous illustrerons au travers des fonctionnalités offertes par un des outils du marché, SAP Tax Compliance, la valeur apportée par cette démarche d’outillée.

Que peut-on attendre d’un outil de Tax Compliance ?

De nombreux outils de Tax Compliance sont aujourd’hui présents sur le marché français et mondial. Ceux-ci diffèrent en fonction de la cible visée, de la PME nationale à la multinationale implantée dans de nombreux pays. Ils offrent des fonctionnalités plus ou moins avancées ainsi qu’une complexité de mise en œuvre plus ou moins lourde.

Néanmoins, nous pouvons regrouper les fonctionnalités offertes en deux grandes catégories :

  • L’aide à la conformité des déclarations (a priori) :
    • l’optimisation de l’élaboration de la liasse fiscale (élaboration, vérification et dématérialisation),
    • la détermination de taux,
    • la conformité de la facturation électronique,
    • La déclaration de TVA (soumission, reporting et contrôles).
  • La mise en place de contrôles afin de s’assurer de la conformité (a posteriori) :
    • l’analyse du FEC,
    • les contrôles sur les référentiels (fournisseurs, articles, etc.),
    • les contrôles sur les transactions effectuées.

En complément, nous devons également prendre en compte le fait que les gouvernements exigent de plus en plus de données en temps réel, la qualité des données devient un prérequis clé pour la gestion des processus fiscaux et cela peut être amélioré en mettant en œuvre des contrôles fiscaux et en abordant les problèmes à la source, comme nous allons le voir avec l’outil SAP Tax Compliance.

Quels critères prendre en compte dans le choix de son outil de Tax Compliance

 

Le choix d’une solution doit être fondé sur les critères tant fonctionnels que techniques, pour répondre aux besoins suivants :

  • Facilité d’installation et d’exploitation de la solution: évaluer le degré d’autonomie sur l’installation et le paramétrage du logiciel, ainsi que le degré d’intégration dans le paysage SI existant. Il est en effet important que les utilisateurs métiers aient un degré d’autonomie suffisant sur l’exploitation de l’outil pour ne pas avoir de besoin de solliciter les équipes IT pour la moindre opération dans l’outil
  • Réponse aux besoins métier au travers de la couverture et richesse fonctionnelle: il est nécessaire d’évaluer la couverture d’un maximum de fonctionnalités et de contrôles standards, ainsi que la couverture géographique au travers d’une gestion multi-pays. Assurance de la facilité de prise en main par l’utilisateur final ou l’auditeur externe au travers d’une ergonomie conviviale et intuitive
  • Exploitation des résultats simple et accessible : évaluer la facilité de compréhension et d’interprétation des résultats de contrôles, la facilité d’export sur des outils bureautiques, ainsi que la capacité de génération des rapports d’anomalie sous format.doc ou .pdf avec explication des résultats, annotations utilisateurs, etc.,
  • L’intégration dans le paysage applicatif de l’entreprise est également primordiale dans le cas très fréquent où plusieurs ERP ou systèmes comptables cohabitent. Devoir multiplier les outils de Tax Compliance pour adresser les différents systèmes serait en effet contre-productif.

Présentation d’un outil : SAP TAX Compliance

SAP Tax Compliance propose une approche centralisée des contrôles de conformité, couvrant tout l’ensemble du processus, de la détection à la correction, en passant par le reporting et l’audit. À l’aide de l’apprentissage automatique à l’échelle de l’entreprise et de contrôles automatisés, l’application permet aux utilisateurs de détecter systématiquement les problèmes de conformité. Mais aussi d’améliorer la qualité des données fiscales, de rationaliser les corrections et d’atténuer rapidement le risque de non-conformité.

L’automatisation des processus de contrôle fiscal en temps quasi réel permet aux organisations de passer à des modèles de travail en continu. Elle permet aussi de résoudre les problèmes dès le début des processus ce qui est essentiel pour éviter de lourdes charges de travail à la fin de la période. Mais également de se conformer aux mandats les plus exigeants que les gouvernements introduisent dans le monde entier. En fait, avec l’introduction de la conformité numérique, la qualité des données fiscales est plus importante que jamais.

SAP Tax Compliance est une solution agnostique qui peut être intégré à SAP S/4HANA ou facilement déployé côte à côte. Elle peut aussi intégrer des données issues d’autres systèmes ERP (SAP ECC ou non SAP) ou spécialisés métiers (MDM, facturation, site de vente en ligne…). Cela offre ainsi la possibilité de capturer simultanément de gros volumes de données à partir de plusieurs systèmes. La solution offre également un apprentissage automatique natif et une intégration avec le workflow SAP. L’intérêt est de permettre l’automatisation et l’orchestration transparente des tâches de correction.

 

SAP Tax Compliance en un coup d'œil
SAP Tax Compliance en un coup d’œil

SAP Tax Compliance est fourni avec des règles de contrôles préconfigurées pour vous aider à démarrer et à améliorer immédiatement la qualité des données fiscales.

Par exemple, cela vous permet d’identifier et de corriger facilement les immatriculations de TVA manquantes sur les transactions intracommunautaires de l’UE ou les factures enregistrées sans code TVA. Vous pouvez également utiliser le moteur de détection pour faciliter l’examen des factures avec un montant de TVA très élevé. Ceci, permet de générer une réserve de travail pour examiner efficacement les exceptions sans avoir à identifier manuellement les éléments sur l’ensemble des transactions commerciales.

Il est également très flexible et permet d’enrichir facilement l’ensemble des règles de contrôles de la TVA aux droits de douane et autres taxes. Il permet également de relever constamment la barre en matière de conformité en développant vous-même des règles de contrôles fiscaux supplémentaires. Ou bien encore en intégrant le contenu prêt à l’emploi de notre partenaire Mazars.

Ces règles peuvent être facilement créées en définissant de nouvelles vues sur les données. Une fois celles-ci en place, le reste de la configuration peut être facilement complété via une assistance numérique fourni en tant qu’application Fiori qui guide l’utilisateur dans ses choix. Il s’agit de limiter l’implication du service informatique au développement réel des vues. Mais aussi de permettre aux utilisateurs métier d’adapter les contrôles, de réorganiser les listes de travail, de configurer le Machine Learning lorsque les données historiques sont suffisamment significatives. Ainsi que d’adapter les plannings en fonction des besoins de l’entreprise. Les utilisateurs métiers peuvent également gérer les tâches et les groupes d’utilisateurs correspondants responsables de l’achèvement. L’objectif est de garantir que la configuration en cours peut être facilement adaptée à mesure que l’entreprise évolue sans avoir recours à des experts informatiques qui sont toujours très demandés.

La solution permet également des simulations de paramétrages des règles de contrôle fiscal pour optimiser les contrôles et réduire les faux positifs.

SAP Tax Compliance fournit un tableau de bord centralisé pour obtenir des informations en temps réel sur l’état de conformité dans le monde entier. Il devient également un référentiel central de problèmes et de solutions qui peuvent être exploités pour conduire des améliorations en continu des processus. De plus, il permet d’empêcher les problèmes de se produire en premier lieu.

SAP Tax Compliance intègre des mécanismes d’apprentissage automatique

SAP Tax Compliance automatise au-delà de la détection, rationalisant l’ensemble du processus de correction. Il intègre des mécanismes d’apprentissage automatique prêt à l’emploi pour augmenter l’efficacité. De plus, il propose des modèles de workflow natifs pour orchestrer efficacement les tâches entre la myriade d’équipes qui doivent être impliquées dans le processus de correction.

Ces fonctionnalités d’apprentissage automatique peuvent être activées et maintenues par les utilisateurs métiers. Le but étant de libérer la puissance des données sans avoir besoin du support du département IT.

Comment réussir son projet de mise en place ?

Bien qu’il s’agisse d’un projet de mise en place d’outil, celui-ci ne doit pas être considéré comme un projet purement technique mais bien un projet global impliquant les acteurs métiers dès les premières phases. Il s’agit d’être sûr de ne pas se tromper d’objectif. Mais également de réellement apporter la valeur attendue pour toutes les parties prenantes.

C’est pour cela que nous préconisons la mise en place d’une équipe projet pluridisciplinaire. Une équipe qui regroupe les compétences financières, fiscales, juridiques, comptables et IT. Celle-ci est capable de cerner les besoins de la façon la plus exhaustive possible. Mais aussi de mettre en place une cartographie des risques et d’identifier les contrôles afférents.

Au-delà du module Tax compliance il peut être intéressant de disposer d’une solution complète pour la gestion fiscale de bout en bout qui couvre :

  • Contrôles fiscaux pour améliorer la qualité des données fiscales et éviter les interruptions d’activité.
  • Rapports électroniques en temps réel avec rapprochement complet pour une mise en conformité efficace.

SAP Tax Compliance offre une intégration transparente avec la nouvelle solution SAP Document and Reporting Compliance. Cette solution regroupe les anciennes solutions SAP pour la facturation numérique en temps réel (SAP Document Compliance) et la gestion des déclarations périodiques (SAP Advance Compliance Reporting ACR). Elle garantit que les problèmes identifiés soient rapidement suivis, que l’origine de ces déficiences soient analysées et résolues afin d’empêcher les interruptions d’activité.

Ces solutions SAP pour la facturation numérique en temps réel et la gestion des déclarations périodiques proposent déjà plus de 300 modèles pré-configurés de déclaration pour plus de 50 pays.

En synthèse, l’automatisation des contrôles et de la fonction fiscale devient de plus en plus nécessaire. L’obligation de bien s’outiller devient incontournable.

Cliquez ici pour plus d’infos

Vincent DOUX – SAP +33 6 03 43 72 95 v.doux@sap.com
Jérôme HUBER – Mazars +33 6 67 51 13 38 jerome.huber@mazars.fr
Vincent THEOT – Mazars +33 6 60 47 46 64 vincent.theot@mazars.fr
Heyfa LIMAM – Mazars +33 6 66 90 10 81 heyfa.limam@mazars.fr
Nicolas RICHARD – Mazars +33 6 66 61 91 35 nicolas.richard@mazars.fr

The post SAP Tax Compliance, un outil de transformation digitale des fonctions fiscales appeared first on SAP France News.

Source de l’article sur sap.com

/par

10 Robust Enterprise-Grade ELT Tools To Collect Loads of Data

,

Enterprises in 2021 deal with a massive amount of data on a regular basis. The Global Data Fabric market analysis says, « businesses that use insights from data extraction will earn $1.8 Trillion by the end of 2021 ». With such great amounts of data, it is becoming increasingly hard to maintain and categorize the collected data. Moreover, manually processing the data only became more time-consuming and monotonous. With rapid technological advancements, companies are finding ways to find even the slightest advantages to be the best in the market.  Hence, adopting the right ELT tools/platform can greatly contribute to enterprise productivity. ELT tools can collect data, segregate the data based on common characteristics and provide clear-cut insights about the collected data. 

Below is a list of the 10 enterprise-grade ELT tools that I rate above 4 (out of 5).  These can provide great advantages to enterprises that adopt them.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

/par

7 Ways to Use Gamification in Marketing Campaigns 

,

We all want a little more fun and games in our lives. So, why not add some gamification to your next interactive content campaign?

By 2025, the gamification market is expected to witness a massive 30.1% growth rate, with global sales revenue reaching around $32 billion. 

That’s because gamification adds more entertainment to the website experience and gets audiences engaged. The idea behind gamification is to bring game mechanics into the design of a website or piece of content. There are many different ways to do this. 

Some companies add hidden achievements and bonuses to their blogs that customers can collect by visiting every page and reading their content. Others allow readers to collect points for leaving comments or play games to win potential prizes. 

Used correctly, gamification is a fantastic way to connect with your audience and increase engagement levels. So, how can you use gamification in interactive content?

The Evolution of Gamification 

Elements of gamification have appeared in everything from marketing campaigns to web design and even eCommerce strategies. 

In 2014, an Apple App Store review of more than 100 health apps even found that gamification elements in applications led to greater participation and higher user ratings. In other words, customers are more likely to get involved with an activity that includes gamification components. 

While gamification can take on many different forms, the aim for most companies is to create an environment where customers can feel more invested in their interactions with the website. For example, if you win a point every time you comment on a blog post, and you can trade those points in for prizes, you have more of a desire to keep commenting. 

The promise of being able to “accomplish” things with pieces of interactive content and websites also appeals to the competitive part of our psychology that pushes us to keep doing things in exchange for the promise of a kind of reward. 

Many companies have generated a lot of enthusiasm for their brands through leaderboards, time events, and similar experiences. For example, just look at how popular McDonalds becomes each year when the monopoly game rolls out as part of the purchasing experience. 

People buy more items than they usually would during McDonald’s Monopoly just for the opportunity to win. This same boost in engagement benefits your content strategy too. 

6 Ways to Add Gamification to Your Content

There’s no one right way to gamify your website or your marketing content. The method you choose will depend heavily on your audience and the kind of experience they respond best to. 

The key to success is finding a way to grab your customer’s attention and hold onto it. Here are some of the tried and tested strategies to explore:

1. Create an Actual Game Experience 

When it comes to incorporating gamification into your website design and content, you don’t necessarily need to be clever. You can be extremely straightforward and just design an actual game. For instance, to help attract more people to the American Army, the US created a war simulator that potential applicants could play on Steam. 

The game aimed to introduce young people who might consider a career in the military to what that job might be like. If the kids liked what they saw on Steam, they could visit the military website and learn more. 

For companies who can’t afford to build an entire fully-featured game, something a little smaller can be just as engaging. For instance, rather than using a standard pop-up with a discount code to entice customers to buy the rental service, Gwynnie Bee created a scratch card. People could scratch the spaces using their smartphone or computer cursor and win money off. 

The great thing about the interactive content from Gwynnie Bee is that it encouraged potential visitors to connect with the business in a lucrative way. To use the scratch card, you first had to give your email address. This meant the company could build its email list while delighting consumers. 

When designing a game experience for your marketing campaign, remember:

  • Get the right support: Designing a great game is tough, particularly if you want something more complicated than a scratch card. Don’t take the risk of creating something that doesn’t work properly; hire a developer. 
  • Promote the experience: Make sure everyone knows about your new game. Share screenshots on social media and talk about it in your email campaigns. 
  • Focus on fun: Remember, games are supposed to be fun. Measure the reactions of your audience to ensure they’re having a good time. 

2. Design a Loyalty or Reward Program

Loyalty is one of the most valuable things your audience can give you. So why not reward them for it? Loyalty programs are fantastic tools for business growth and engagement. They give you a way to turn one-off clients into repeat customers and advocates for your brand. 

How you choose to reward your customers (and when) is up to you. Some companies might give customers points every time they share a post on social media or comment on a blog. This encourages more engagement with your brand. 

On the other hand, you might just let your customers earn rewards for every purchase they make. This is a strategy that Starbucks uses with its reward program.

As customers increase their spending with Starbucks, they get the reward of extra points that they can put towards future purchases. This keeps customers coming back for more and may even entice some clients to buy Starbucks when they otherwise wouldn’t. 

The oVertone company is another excellent example of a brand using gamified rewards with its marketing strategy. The loyalty program breaks down into tiers, where users can see how much they need to spend to ascend to the next level. New rewards and perks appear with each level. 

Remember, when building a loyalty program:

  • Make your customers feel special: Ensure that your audience feels good about being one of the lucky few in your loyalty program. Give discounts and offers they can’t get elsewhere.
  • Keep them informed: Make it easy for your customers to see what they need to do to get their next reward, so they keep coming back for more. 
  • Mix things up sometimes: To stop the experience from getting boring, roll out things like “double points” days and bonuses for your most active customers. 

3. Encourage Customer Interaction

The biggest benefit of gamification is that it encourages and increases customer interaction. You can give rewards to participants that comment on your blog posts, for instance, or share your posts on social. The customer benefits from the reward, while you get the advantage of a better business presence. 

Samsung drives interaction with gamification with a function on its website that allows customers to discuss issues and watch videos. The most active participants get a badge for their efforts. 

If your business structure requires a lot of engagement from your audience, then using gamification elements can encourage them to stick with you for longer rather than losing interest. For instance, language learning software Duolingo has a four-point gamification strategy for its users.

Duolingo knows that learning a new language takes a lot of time, so it asks users to set small specific goals instead. The smaller tasks bring users back regularly, and consistent users gain rewards. There’s even a progress bar to help you track your progress compared to other customers. 

Gamification gives your customers another reason to keep coming back and connecting with your brand. That makes a lot of sense for companies that rely on long-term relationships with customers, like Duolingo and other teaching brands, for instance. Remember:

  • Make it simple: People will only want to interact with your brand if it’s easy to do so. Make it clear what you want your customer to do and what they need to do next. 
  • Reward every action: Keep people coming back for more by rewarding them for their actions, even if it’s just with a gold star or digital sticker. 
  • Nudge inactive customers: If a client gets involved in your interactive content, then stops participating, send an email reminding them why they should come back. 

4. Run Contests and Offer Prizes

Probably one of the easiest ways to use gamification in your advertising campaigns is with a competition. Contests and competitions have been around since the dawn of business. They’re a useful way for companies to collect information from customers, particularly if you ask your clients to sign up to your site with an email address to get involved. 

Competitions are also a way to push your audience into doing positive things for your company. For instance, you could run a competition where consumers share a social media post and tag a friend to enter. Or you could have a competition that asks your clients to refer a friend to get involved. 

When KIND, a healthy snack company, wanted to connect with its customers and create a new product, it didn’t just do market research. Instead, the company created the “Raise the Bar” contest to let customers cast a vote for which flavor they wanted to see next.

When 123ContactForm wanted to engage its audience, it gave people the chance to win one of three platinum subscriptions for 6 months. 

Contests are naturally exciting and fun to take part in. They’re an opportunity to get your audience excited, and you don’t need to give anything huge away either. Just make sure that the prize you offer is something that your audience will be interested in. 

A few more pro tips include:

  • Generate hype first: Don’t just launch a contest out of nowhere; get people excited about the idea with announcement blogs, social media posts, and emails. 
  • Give people a lot of ways to get involved: If people can’t take part in the competition on social media, let them do something on your website instead. 
  • Follow up after the win: When someone does win something from your website, follow up with that winner and post pictures in the form of a blog/case study. This will generate more hype for your brand and get people excited about the next event. 

5. Get Your Audience Feeling Competitive

No matter how much they might deny it, most people are at least a little competitive. So when you’re implementing a gamification campaign into your content and marketing efforts, it pays to tap into that sense of competition. All you need to do is find a way to encourage your followers to compete. 

The best example of a company that did this particularly well is Nike. Nike and the Run Club app teamed up to motivate people to get involved with healthy activities. The app allowed users to customize and build their ideal training program based on their athletic level. 

At the same time, you could also win badges and trophies to share with your running community. The more you took part in challenges on the app, the more you could potentially win. 

The Fitbit application has a similar way of keeping customers engaged. When you download Fitbit, you can access information about your exercise strategies and potentially track your progress towards your goals. However, there are also measurable achievements to earn – like a badge when you first walk 500 miles. 

Users on Fitbit can also find their friends using the same app and compete with them in various challenges. 

To successfully add a competition to your gamification strategy, remember:

  • It needs to be social: People will be more inclined to get involved if they show off their achievements. So make sure that people can showcase their accomplishments. 
  • Make people want to win: There needs to be a reason to get to the top of the leaderboard. You might offer people discounts or exclusive prizes if they accomplish certain goals. 
  • Show progress: Prompt people to keep working on reaching their targets by showing them how close they are to success. 

6. Make Boring Content Seem More Interesting

Some content is naturally more engaging than others. If you want to showcase some important information or data, you might create a whitepaper or a report. Unfortunately, the result can be a relatively bland piece of content.

With elements of gamification, you can make the experience a lot more engaging and interesting. Sites like Daytum.com allow users to turn personal stats and information into charts that showcase information in engaging ways. You can allow your users to track their progress through the report and rack up points as they go. 

Adding subtle elements to otherwise clinical and less interesting information is a wonderful way to make the experience more exciting. The more enticed your customers are by your content, the more likely it is that you’ll sell them on your business. 

Gamify Your Marketing Strategy

Gamification isn’t a new concept, but it’s one that many companies and designers can begin to take advantage of these days. Thanks to more advanced browsers and smartphones, customers can more fully enjoy the interactive elements of websites and content campaigns. 

As your audience dives deeper into the digital world, they expect more unique experiences from you. Gamification can make any website or marketing experience more memorable. It’s time to take advantage. 

Source

The post 7 Ways to Use Gamification in Marketing Campaigns  first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.


Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

/par

SAP Labs France renforce ses équipes R&D pour répondre au succès de son logiciel SAP E-Mobility

, ,

Sept ans après l’annonce du lancement de son programme de mobilité électrique, SAP Labs France renforce ses équipes R&D pour répondre au succès grandissant de sa solution de supervision SAP E-Mobility. Le vecteur reste le même : stimuler, soutenir et accompagner l’innovation du Groupe.

Une équipe renforcée au sein du SAP Labs France qui confirme la capacité de SAP à aller au-delà de son cœur de métier

Aux prémices du projet, uniquement deux développeurs de SAP Labs France dans le développement du logiciel open source SAP e-mobility. Aujourd’hui, l’équipe R&D dédiée à cette solution, compte 18 talents en IoT, croisant hardware et software, répartis à Mougins (15) et Caen (3). Une première pour SAP !

Le logiciel SAP E-Mobility permet de combiner et de connecter les bornes de recharges des véhicules électriques à d’autres modules SAP tels que des modules de pricing, d’itinérance, de smart charging, d’ERP, tout en prenant en considération les sources de production et de consommation d’électricité de l’infrastructure. Son développement rapide s’explique entre autres par le soutien du Groupe à travers l’investissement global de deux milliards d’euros. Mais, aussi par l’attrait de son offre qui a séduit rapidement les partenaires et clients de SAP.

Aujourd’hui SAP Labs France propose sa solution aux entreprises de toutes tailles. Par exemples, Proviridis, ChargeX GmbH en Allemagne et Zeplug à Paris. L’objectif est de répondre à la demande de recharge (charge at work /charge at home).

Cette solution offre à ses clients la possibilité de :

  • gérer 20 000 à 30 000 bornes de recharges ;
  • réduire leur impact carbone ;
  • réaliser des économies en termes de total cost of ownership (tco), tout en répondant à leur objectif de développement durable.

“Si demain tous les véhicules en France, soit environ 40 millions de voitures, devenaient des véhicules 100% électriques, nous ne rencontrerions aucun problème d’un point de vue électrique. Mais plutôt des difficultés au niveau gestion. Pour cela nous avons besoin d’outils qui savent gérer toute cette énergie, pour appliquer une charge intelligente “smart charging”, prenant en compte l’électricité qui circule dans le réseau. De plus, toutes les entreprises ont besoin d’intégrer ces informations à leurs systèmes existants pour connaître les avantages en nature.” Hanno Klausmeier, Président SAP Labs France

Des perspectives d’avenir toujours plus durables et innovantes

SAP se positionne progressivement sur d’autres domaines plus éloignés de la borne de recharge électrique. Par exemples, les panneaux solaires et l’IA en collaboration avec l’institut Vedecom pour à terme proposer une solution allant au-delà de la supervision des bornes. Ainsi, l’objectif est de les rendre plus autonomes pour trouver les erreurs ou encore gérer les pannes automatiquement.

“Grâce à l’intelligence artificielle nous souhaitons rendre les bornes plus autonomes et accessibles. Dans un futur proche nous espérons pouvoir activer la borne de recharge dès son branchement sans avoir recours à la SAP charge card.” Hanno Klausmeier Président SAP Labs France.

Cette solution est pour l’instant uniquement proposée par SAP Labs France. Cependant, SAP a pour ambition de la commercialiser à l’échelle globale du Groupe d’ici le troisième trimestre 2021.

 

The post SAP Labs France renforce ses équipes R&D pour répondre au succès de son logiciel SAP E-Mobility appeared first on SAP France News.

Source de l’article sur sap.com

/par

Trend Check: SAAS Is the Next-Edge Business Requirement

,

According to a research and market report « Cloud Services Market by Service Type, Cloud Type, Enterprise Size and Industry Vertical: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2020-2027 », the cloud service is valued at $264.8 billion in 2019 and is expected to increase to $927.51 billion by 2027. Certainly, businesses big and small are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of SaaS software development or cloud solutions in bestowing speed and accuracy to their operations. But more than everything, the key driver of the sector is the cost it saves, amounting to approximately 35% of the total expenses of businesses. 

The Reason Behind the Growing Cloud Computing Trend

Source de l’article sur DZONE

/par

How to Fight the Coming Latency Wars

,

We certainly live in an age of wonders. We have supercomputers in our pockets, a global Internet, and applications in the cloud. In less than a lifetime, our four-channel television, rotary dial telephone world has transformed, bringing futuristic science fiction to everyday technology reality.

AI continues to advance its penetration into our lives as it seeks ubiquity. The 5G rollout is well underway as consumers snap up the latest generation of 5G devices. Software infrastructure and applications are keeping pace with the rapid maturation of cloud-native computing.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

/par