Articles

Personalized marketing is when you attune your marketing efforts based on customer data. This data can be anything from the first and last name to purchase intent, concerns, and history.

Personalized marketing has revolutionized the way businesses market their product and service to their audience. It brings value to people’s lives, spiking the sales graph for brands and businesses. So it’s a win-win situation for both the company and the consumer.

Even big companies do this for their campaigns. They do so because it gives them great results and ROI for their marketing initiatives. If these multinational businesses do this, it’s a good idea to incorporate this strategy and learn from a top resource on digital marketing.

This article aims to explain every nook and cranny of personalized marketing. By the end of this 5-minute read, you will know the impact of personalized marketing on our lives. And how you can integrate this into your marketing strategy to benefit your business.

What Is Personalized Marketing?

Have you ever encountered a business that knows what you’re going through? Or did you see an ad online that you closely relate to? Chances are, you were one of the target markets of those marketing materials. And if you could associate yourself with the ad, their marketing strategy worked.

That is what personalized marketing does to your audience, market, or particular demographic. This style of advertising leverages personalization in your marketing materials. The details of your marketing content are tailored to a specific audience and address the issues or real-time problems of a particular segment in your market.

Personalized marketing has become popular because more people demand it from businesses. Once the people have experienced what it felt like, they want to feel more of it.

To objectively see the demand for personalization, here are some statistics to back it up.

Accenture reported that 91% of consumers are likelier to shop with businesses that offer them relevant content. This shows that the right product recommendations can increase the chances of shopping with you.

Salesforce mentioned that 66% of consumers expect companies to understand their individual needs. This statement proves that a generalized way of marketing isn’t as effective as before. The consumer mindset has already developed, and they demand more personalization from businesses.

A striking piece of data from Statista showed that 90% of consumers in the US find the idea of personalization appealing. If that figure is accurate, almost all businesses should start incorporating this into their strategies. There’s no reason for them not to try this out.

Given the high positive demand for personalized marketing, it’s no secret why more and more businesses are doing this. However, not every company out there is doing this right. A wrong way of doing this can bring a loss of clients and a negative ROI.

To help you go on the right track of using personalization in your marketing, read up on the next section of this article.

Know These 6 Tips To Correctly Do Personalized Marketing

You’d agree that knowing your customer’s first and last name is essential. But with the dynamically changing strategies, personalized marketing is going beyond that. It’s actually about understanding what your targeted consumers need, merging with a way to convey the message that your business is the solution.

To help you achieve this, take note of the things below:

1. Leverage Your Customer Data

The foundation of personalized marketing is laid on customer data. The best marketing professionals and strategists emphasize gathering relevant data if you want to scale. Excellent digital marketing courses will teach you that customer data will help you build a solid foundation for your content and campaigns.

Consumer behavior has always been the most important detail for target marketing. With every click, it has become easier to gather data about individual customers, their interests, hobbies, purchase history, buying behavior, and more.

You’ll be able to get this information if you’ve practiced data management and collecting customer data throughout the years of your operation. However, it’s not too late to begin if you haven’t started with this yet. There is a lot of marketing automation software that aids marketing teams in doing this. For example, many businesses use lead scoring software to gain insight into their clients’ needs and categorize them appropriately.

For your personalization efforts, you can use questionnaires, surveys, and feedback forms to capture personal data on the internet. A customer will happily fill out a survey form if a reward in return entices him. This reward can be in any form– a voucher, a first buy discount, free shipping, or more.

This initiative will help you get more data in a shorter time frame.

2. Understand Your Customer’s Needs

Hoarding data will be a complete waste of marketing efforts, capital, and efficiency if you do not extract consumer behavior from it. When you have access to a rich set of data, you have the privilege to understand your customers’ trending needs deeply. After gaining insights from the data, create a marketing strategy based on those findings to target your audience.

Doing this doesn’t just apply to B2C; it also works for B2B companies, which is why the demand for custom software development, tailored services, personalized packages, and B2B data providers have been on the rise in these recent years.

It is a two-way road. While you are on the lookout for your target market, at the same time, the customers expect businesses to know what they need. The market you’re currently serving expects you to know what products or services are fit for them.

So this is where it gets crucial: you have to dig deeper into your niche and find the specs of your audience’s needs. Having a general idea about the needs of your target audience and personalized marketing usually don’t go harmoniously.

Planning a better-personalized marketing strategy will not be a piece of cake but will be much more rewarding for every aspect of your business. May it be sales, return on investments, customer relationships, or personalized marketing campaigns.

3. Personalize Every Stage Of The Customer Journey

The first rule of business is convincing the customer that you are their best friend. Now that you know what they want, you pledge to provide them with whatever best you can. Limiting personalization to marketing is not the solution. You have to be vigilant in meeting these individual requirements at every stage. And remember that consistency is the name of the game. That is how you bring your business into the running.

You can integrate CRM automation, email marketing tools and deploy other content marketing strategies to help make this process a lot simpler. Personalized live chat and chatbots, such as those offered by ThriveDesk, allow businesses to personalize their offerings and build their brand reputation.

As a customer, my requirement would be reading content, browsing, and experiencing products that would hit home. A personalized experience is what every consumer demands. And this is what makes them want to go back and do business with you again.

By creating helpful and relevant content, recommending the right products to them, and giving out convenient payment options, you are setting your business apart from the rest. Doing this allows you to have personalized every touchpoint that your customers do with your business.

4. Present In An Engaging Way

Consider customer engagement as absolutely necessary. Having the best data set and knowing what your customers want is not enough. In the competitive space of business and marketing, everyone is trying to get the attention of one another. And this is what you are supposed to do. This helps in building consumer-brand relations.

When a consumer engages, meaningful things happen. Engaging content pushes the consumer through the funnel and hence promotes conversions. Your content should be creative and eye-catching.

Engaging content blended with personalization boosts the brand experience. Increased loyalty, trust-building, and improved customer experience enhance the conversion and sales speed.

A great way to use personalization in an engaging manner that most businesses overlook would be through exit-intent popups.

5. Be Where Your Customers Are

This is an element that some businesses miss out on. They have created excellent social media marketing content but only distributed it on the wrong channel. For personalized marketing to be effective, it needs to be seen by people.

Are you questioning your marketing techniques because all you see is stagnancy? You have set up an engaging online store on Shopify or Wix, collected all the relevant data, your content is engaging enough, and your marketing strategy is top-notch. But you are still unable to reach your clientele.

You start wondering what you are missing out on. Your content and your strategies will not be prolific if you are on the wrong channel. Remember: the message of your content has to reach the right people for it to be effective.

Should you be on social media? If so, which one? Do you get more traction with email campaigns? Or do you have more engagements on forums?

Find out where your market is, then spend your focus there. Now the next step is how to know where they spend most of their time?

This is where we go back in the loop. And hence we again emphasize that data collection is the foundation of any great marketing strategy.

6. Improve Marketing Content

Don’t rest on your laurels when you’ve gotten everything down to a tee and have attained your desired marketing analytics behind your personalized marketing content. Always think of ways how you can improve.

Evolving at every step will keep you in the running. Don’t be misguided into thinking that your work is done if you feel like you have reached the pinnacle. Keep looking for ways to get better. Set bigger goals and status for your business.

Always go back to the drawing board and brainstorm with your team on how you can change and strive with the dynamically changing world and mindsets. In the end, all you want is to build better relationships with your customers, new and existing.

For enhanced productivity, your marketing team should always look for new strategies. This is how fresh and great marketing ideas are made.

See How You Can Benefit From Personalized Marketing

Irrelevant information can waste energy and time for both customers and the business. Personalized marketing hits the bull’s eye 99% of the time. It brings immeasurable value to the company as well as the customer.

Here are some of the top benefits of personalized marketing:

1. Better Engagement

The first target personalized marketing aims at is grabbing an individual’s attention. And this results in better engagement eventually. If you are presenting your customer with something that wows them, needless to say, it will grab their attention.

This will help bridge the gap between your customer and your brand. Identifying customers’ needs and then giving them what they want will help improve customer interaction with your brand.

It can even be enough for them to follow your call to action. The next thing you know, they will be checking your website, signing up for a list, or even purchasing a product right then and there.

2. Higher Conversions

Are you there for your customer at the right time and place? One-on-one marketing provides easy solutions to customers because you hit them with just what they are looking for at the right time.

When potential customers realize that you understand what they’re going through and provide the solution, most won’t hesitate to try your business out.

Personalization isn’t just focused on content. It can also be integrated into your processes. This results in aiding the increase of higher conversion rates.

3. Improved Customer Experience

Offering personalization will significantly improve the user experience. Once you provide the products, services, and content that meet their needs, their opinion of your business automatically improves.

Considering the statistics about personalized experiences, it is evident that consumers demand personalization strategies from companies. And if you offer such an experience, you increase the chance of making them do more business with you. Personalization helps businesses in reducing cart abandonment rates, better customer journey, increased customer satisfaction, and many more.

4. Customer Retention

Retaining persisting customers is equally important to your business as bringing new ones. Most businesses face low customer retention. It’s also a factor that some companies overlook. You must understand that it’s not all about converting prospects into paying customers. Your focus should also be on retaining those customers to make them loyal advocates of your brand.

One of the major benefits of consistent personalization is an improved customer retention rate. Consumers tend to stay with a business that understands their needs and provides solutions to their problems.

Once you can transfer a customer to a loyal advocate, you can also receive a ton of benefits. These are people that are going to defend your brand from critics. These are the same people who will give you free marketing via word of mouth and positive reviews.

5. Better Customer Relationships

Personalized experience leads to customer retention, eventually building better relationships with your nurtured customers. These entities are connected in a loop.

Customer relationships are an aspect of business that significantly helps with scalability and higher revenue. So connecting with your customers and building a relationship with them is as important as the product you are selling. This is why strengthening customer relationships should be a top priority for businesses.

Personalization makes you an expert on your target market trends. You get to know your audience deeper, which helps you build a foundation for creating a great customer relationship. And this requires marketing and customer experience teams to work together in a symphony.

For this, you can use team collaboration software which aids in the optimization of content and your approach toward the market. You’ll have a better strategy in getting their attention, providing what they want, and recommending things they’ll be interested in.

All of these things help in building customer rapport. When a customer feels that you treat them as more than just a paying customer, their customer loyalty goes to your business.

Best Examples Personalization Marketing

To inspire you to integrate this marketing strategy into your operations, below are different personalization marketing campaigns done exceptionally by various businesses. Grab inspiration, ideas, and motivation from these examples.

1. Coca-Cola

We all know the most basic form of personalization is addressing your customers’ names, but Coca-Cola took this simple idea into a massive global campaign. Their “Share a Coke” campaign started in 2011, wherein they printed different popular names on their Coke bottles and cans.

It seemed like a regular campaign at first, but it started getting traction as more customers wanted to get the name of their family, friends, and themselves. Coca-Cola said the campaign’s purpose was “to create a more personal relationship with consumers and inspire shared moments of happiness.”

The soft drinks giant used personalization and tied such a strategy with its mission: to bring memories and happiness to its consumers. You, too, can do the same – combine your mission and personalization strategy to create a unique campaign.

2. Spotify

Spotify leverages user data in its marketing strategy. They have several campaigns that make users want to use their application more often because it gives out a more tailored experience.

Other than their year-end campaign( #spotifywrapped), where they show the most played songs and podcasts their users listen to (which was a viral hit), they now also have an #OnlyYou campaign that shows your unique listening taste partnered with a musical astrology reading.

3. Nike

Nike has consistently been recognized for authentic, personalized, and heartfelt ad campaigns. This personalization always makes them capture an audience who can relate and those who start connecting to the brand. So Nike isn’t new to personalization. Their aim is robust community engagement.

Their highly inspirational campaigns with real-life heroes induce inspiration in their audience. Nike is great at converting people because of its excellent storytelling ability while adding personalization to the mix.

Nike’s just launched a new app that offers personalized content and rewards for committed fans. They tackle challenges and issues head-on, but they always make their marketing messages relatable to their audience. That is why they “just do it.”

Conclusion

Personalized marketing is the secret sauce to thriving businesses in the world today. However, incorporating this marketing strategy and finding success is not as simple as you might think. You will face challenges, but with enough perseverance and brainstorming, you can surpass them and successfully create a great campaign.

Remember, this marketing approach can be a hit or a miss. The first step to making it a success is relevant data collection followed by judicious implementation. This isn’t an overnight activity that you can do. It requires months of diligence in the right direction with the proper guidance. And you can gain valuable insights into this guidance via the content marketing strategies outlined in this article. But remember, once you start rolling, there is no looking back.

Source

The post The Complete Guide To Personalized Marketing first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

There are a lot of dark, retro vibes trending in website design right now. Although there are still some light projects popping up – including a pastel trend below – a lot of what we are seeing has a quite moody feel.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month.

Pastel Color Palettes

Let’s start with the trend with a lighter feel – pastel color palettes. While much of the web is trending toward dark aesthetics, there’s a segment that’s going in the exact opposite direction. Those sites feature soft, pastel color palettes that serve as a balance to all the super dark websites out there.

One thing about this website design trend is that it jumps out because of the stark contrast with all of the dark color palettes out there.

Each of these designs seems to use a pastel color palette as the basis for a background. A blur effect is paired with the colors to use pastels in a way that has a natural feel without appearing too feminine or light.

Robust uses blue and earth tones for a pastel background that feels modern and strong when paired with the hard-edged headline font.

Atmos uses a light pastel theme that takes you through the clouds with blues, and pinks, and purples. The pastel color scheme works well with the content which is airline-themed and makes you feel like you are flying through the sky. The colors are also soft enough to provide an easy reading experience.

Klezma is another design with the same pastel background with graduated color. The peach tones are fairly neutral and give plenty of room to the content.

Fonts with a Distinct Retro Look

Every one of these websites uses a typeface with a similar look and feel. This retro headline style is trending in a major way.

The best way to use this design element is for short words. This typeface design isn’t meant for a lot of words or when readability is a high priority.

This style is all about creating a specific kind of vibe for your website. The typefaces in this trend have a quite retro look and feel with an almost 1960s or ’70s feel to them. The rest of the design mimics this feel as well with colors and surrounding elements that contribute to the overall look.

A couple of common elements here include the use of all capitals font sets and letterforms that include odd shapes and lines.

Sretks not only uses a retro typeface but bends and twists it a bit too to add to the old-school feel. The background color helps add to the groovy vibe.

Barge 166 uses a retro typeface with the same design feel as the other examples but with a sharper, more serif-style edge. It’s easier to read but still carries a retro look and feel. Use a typeface similar to this if you want to capture that retro font style for a trending look while maintaining as much readability as possible. This option works best for multiple lines of words in a large size.

Picky Joe uses a retro typeface with rounded letters and a bit of a tilt to the characters to create a distinct feel. This is definitely a style that has to be used sparingly but can be a fun option, depending on the content of your website design.

Dark “Product” Sites

Dark mode design is probably the biggest design trend of 2022. Everywhere you look, websites are using dark color palettes and styles. Designers are creating more projects with a dark/light toggle so users can control their experience.

This visual concept is carried over to website designs that feature products as well. This is one of the last places the dark aesthetic had not touched. It’s been a bit of an unwritten rule that product images should be on white or light backgrounds to help make them easy to see and inspect digitally.

This design trend bucks that idea and features products on dark backgrounds – some with so little contrast that you almost have a hard time seeing the products. (Maybe these brands are banking on the idea that you already know them or are selling a lifestyle product.)

HQBC sells bike accessories such as glasses and helmets and the site has a sleek look and feel. You know it is cool from the second you land on it. The question though – is there enough visual information with the dark background to help you make a purchase? This design probably works because it only encourages you to find a physical location to make a purchase rather than buy online.

Doggystyle Shop also banks on the idea of you knowing the shopping experience or brand when you arrive. What the design does do though is put products on white backgrounds after you have clicked through far enough to make a commitment to buy. This helps you see the product well one final time before making a purchase. (The challenge is that it is three to four clicks in for the most part.)

FirstFit uses the design trend in a way that’s similar to the first example. They are showing a product, but not actually trying to convert sales on the website. Other links take you to more product information and content – using a lighter background and color scheme – and the dark background with the product serves mostly as a highly visual landing page that will help entice users to learn more. When it comes to dark mode and products, this seems to be the best option for most website designs.

Conclusion

The state of the world around us and our emotions can play hard into websites and other design projects. Some of the darker elements that are popular now may be a reflection of that or it could be more of a lean into dark mode schemes.

Either way, the web has a pretty dark feel right now.

Source

The post 3 Essential Design Trends, July 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site.

The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s a handy compilation of the top curated stories from the last seven days. Enjoy!

How to Create Simple CSS Grid System

Why are You Running?

15+ VS Code Extensions for Web Developers

10 of the Biggest SEO Mistakes [Infographic]

SVG Loading Animations

AI Pixel Art Human Face

VSLook – Customize the Look of your VSCode

One Line of CSS to Add Basic Dark/light Mode

Basicons – Basic Icons for Product Design & Development

Touch-first Cursor: Round Pointers Vs Mouse Arrows

7 UX Laws You’re Probably Getting Wrong

“Google” Programmers – How One Idiot Hired a Couple More Idiots

Bunny Fonts – Privacy Respecting Drop-in Replacement for Google Fonts

Source

The post Popular Design News of the Week: June 20, 2022 – June 26, 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

Data is becoming increasingly crucial for success in the digital economy. You might ask, why do organizations rely so much on data? Well, a majority of organizations rely on data for multiple processes, from product management and fraud detection to HR, finance, and manufacturing. Data analytics allow users to use pre-made reports to track performance metrics on demand. Research shows that 94% of organizations believe that data and analytics solutions are critical for growth. Not a surprising statistic since it offers several benefits, including an increase in productivity and efficiency, faster and more effective decision making, and financial gains!  

Before we dive into the ins and outs of data analytics, it is important to understand the two terms, namely ‘data science’ and ‘data analytics. Data science lays emphasis on finding meaningful correlations between large datasets, while data analytics is a branch of data science designed to uncover specifics of extracted insights 

Source de l’article sur DZONE

De spécialiste de l’ingénierie industrielle, ATS accélère sa transformation numérique et lance sur le marché un portfolio de nouveaux services digitaux notamment sur base de solutions SAP Cloud PLM et Assets (de l’Ingénierie à la machine as a service). Un acteur OT et IT, capable d’accompagner les organisations dans leur voyage vers l’industrie 4.0.

ATS, c’est avant tout une aventure familiale, démarrée en 1989 au Creusot. L’histoire d’un spécialiste en ingénierie industrielle (ATS Engineering), mais aussi en conception et réalisation de moyens de production automatisés (ATS Solutions). L’entreprise compte aujourd’hui 200 collaborateurs, pour un chiffre d’affaires annuel d’environ 20 millions d’euros.

“La quatrième révolution industrielle nous donne l’opportunité de transformer l’industrie, en la rendant à la fois plus performante et plus attractive. Notre ambition est d’accompagner dans leur transformation les femmes et les hommes (end-users) opérant sur des sites industriels, en apportant de nouveaux outils et services pour remettre l’Homme au centre et réinventer l’expérience Homme-machine.” Explique Rodolphe Roy, Président d’ATS. “Faire grandir l’Humain pour amener plaisir et reconnaissance dans l’industrie : Un élément crucial pour booster l’attractivité et attirer de nouveaux talents.”

Le numérique, nouveau pilier d’ATS

Le premier jalon de la transformation d’ATS est posé en 2011, lorsque Rodolphe Roy en devient l’actionnaire unique. En 2017, une fois le rachat sécurisé, la transformation du groupe peut commencer, avec comme nouvel axe le numérique.

La société est dans le même temps repérée par BPI France, qui l’invite à rejoindre le programme accélérateur PME/PMI, puis la French Fab, le porte-drapeau de l’industrie française en tant qu’ambassadeur pour la Bourgogne. Ce programme accélérateur pousse également ATS à aller au-delà de l’OT pour proposer des services IT à ses clients et remettre l’innovation au centre de sa transformation.

Des LAB’Innovation sont ainsi déployés sur chacun des sites d’ATS, afin de permettre à tous les collaborateurs de l’entreprise d’explorer et d’innover avec de nouvelles technologies digitales, comme le cloud, l’ingénierie collaborative en Réalité Virtuelle, l’impression 3D ou encore la capture de la réalité. Le tout en lien avec les clients et partenaires de l’entreprise.

« Notre langue maternelle est l’OT, mais nous avons fait IT seconde langue, ce qui nous permet d’accompagner les industriels dans leur transformation numérique. Nous avons pour vocation à être la courroie de distribution entre ces deux mondes. »

Il est vrai qu’en tant que concepteur de moyens de production automatisés, et connectés, ATS Solutions apporte déjà un savoir-faire à mi-chemin entre OT et IT, pour le compte de clients prestigieux comme Air Liquide, Arkema, Schneider Electric ou encore le CEA.

ATS Connect, l’intégrateur OT/IT des industriels

“Avec ATS Solutions, nous proposons aux industriels des nouveaux moyens de production (CAPEX) automatisés, connectés et flexibles, rappelle Rodolphe Roy. Toutefois, nous étions un peu frustrés de ne pas pouvoir les accompagner dans leurs phases d’exploitation (OPEX), ni dans leurs projets de numérisation de leurs parcs machines existants.”

“Notre nouvelle activité portée par ATS Connect répond à cela, mais pas seulement : nous accélérons sur l’accompagnement à la transition énergétique et environnementale des industriels, jusqu’aux projets de villes intelligentes (smart city).” Complète Jordan Lecat, COO d’ATS Connect.

ATS Connect est chargée de porter les projets de connexion digitale des équipements. Cela commence par un audit 4.0 du moyen de production, des échanges systématiques avec les utilisateurs finaux pour identifier leurs points de douleurs. Nous traitons ensuite la collecte des données et le traitement de l’information pour créer les bons outils de suivi de performance et de maintenance. Le tout en faisant appel au besoin à des technologies innovantes capables de projeter les entreprises dans le monde de l’industrie 4.0. À ce titre, ATS Connect devient un intégrateur de bout en bout de solutions OT/IT.

SAP, éditeur clé pour ATS

Autre jalon de la transformation d’ATS, la rencontre avec SAP en 2018. ATS voit dans les solutions Cloud Public PLM et Assets, respectivement SAP Enterprise Product Development (SAP EPD) et SAP Intelligent Asset Management (SAP AIM) associé à SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), une plate-forme ouverte et collaborative de choix pour gérer les équipements des industriels et porter des projets avancés, comme la mise en place de jumeaux numériques connectés. Cette plateforme Cloud devient ainsi un catalyseur pour le développement commercial des nouveaux services numériques d’ATS Connect.

« ATS Connect se positionne clairement comme offreur de solutions Industrie 4.0, explique Jordan Lecat. Nous collectons la data, que nous faisons remonter sur la plate-forme Cloud SAP, afin de proposer des services innovants à nos clients. Par exemple de la maintenance prédictive. Avec ATS Connect, nous pouvons enfin proposer une gestion de bout en bout des moyens de production des industriels. »

Dans le cadre du partenariat entre SAP et le Collectif Continuité Numérique, ATS Connect participe par ailleurs au développement de démonstrateurs Industrie 4.0 autour des jumeaux numériques, lesquels sont déployés sur les Experience Centers SAP de Paris et Barcelone. ATS rejoint ainsi l’écosystème SAP relatif à l’industrie du futur. « Ceci nous rend d’autant plus fiers que nous partageons les valeurs et ambitions portées par SAP et ses Experience Centers : Meet, Inspire, Engage. »

 

The post ATS accompagne les industriels dans leur transformation numérique appeared first on SAP France News.

Source de l’article sur sap.com

As a website designer, your professional life revolves around crucial questions that might help you to deliver better results for your clients.

Which widgets are essential to driving conversions? What kind of checkout page elements do you need to include? Should there be a video or slideshow on that product page?

One of the biggest queries that we face when building landing pages to encourage sales is whether a CTA (call to action) button needs to be above or below the fold. 

Answering the question: “Where should the CTA go?” correctly could make or break your client’s chances of a sale. Unfortunately, this particular concern has been the source of a raging debate for many years now. Everyone has their own opinion about CTAs and where they belong.

Today, we’re going to cover the benefits and issues with placing a CTA above the fold.

Should You Place a CTA Above the Fold? 

Starting with a quick refresher, the term “above the fold” refers to any area of a website seen on a screen when a user arrives on a webpage. The content that appears above and below the fold may differ depending on the device you’re visiting a website with. 

Experts in the design and digital marketing world have frequently claimed that if you want to get the best results with a CTA, you need to place it above the fold. 

This strategy makes a lot of sense. If your CTA is above the fold, then your chances of it being seen are significantly higher. Some customers might not want to scroll to the bottom of a page to find out what they need to do next in their buyer journey. 

Additionally, according to the NN group, the 100 pixels that appeared above the fold were seen 102% more often than the pixels underneath the fold. Eye-tracking technology learned that more often than not, you’ll get more engagement above the fold. 

Just look at this landing page from Lyft, for instance, you immediately see what you need to do next:

It’s not just a single study that has touted the benefits of an above-the-fold CTA, either. 

Another report into the “importance of being seen” found that above-the-fold ads and CTAs had a 73% rate of visibility compared to only 44% for those below the fold

So, with stats like that to think about, why would you ever consider using a below-the-fold CTA? 

When to Place a CTA Below the Fold

As with most things in web design, there is an exception to the rule. 

Yes, above the fold, CTAs will be better for you most of the time. However, there are times when you might need to think outside of the box. 

Most people think that placing a CTA below the fold practically guarantees that it won’t be seen. However, if you’re creating a website page or landing page that includes a lot of vital information, your audience will need to scroll. 

For instance, if you’re creating a page where someone can download an app to engage with a business they already know about, it makes sense to speed the journey along with an above-the-fold CTA. However, if you’re trying to convince someone to sign up for your webinar, you might need to tell them what that webinar is all about first. That’s where a below-the-fold CTA comes in handy. 

Customers might not have a lot of time in their busy schedules for scrolling these days. However, they still need the right information before they can make a decision about what to do next with your brand. According to Marketing Experiments, below the fold, CTA buttons can result in a 20% increase in conversions. However, this conversion boost only happens when you’re providing valuable, engaging, and persuasive content.

Check out this example from the Boston Globe, for instance:

The Fold Isn’t Everything in Web Design

The fold is often an essential consideration in web design. 

However, it’s not all you need to think about when you’re deciding where to place sign-up forms and valuable CTA buttons. 

According to the Nielsen Norman group, the content that appears at the top of the page will always influence user experience. However, that doesn’t mean that you need to place your CTA there. What you do need to do is ensure that whatever you have above the fold is promising enough to engage your visitor and make them scroll. 

Put simply, what’s above and below the fold does matter, but your focus should be on taking advantage of customer motivation, rather than worrying exclusively about an imaginary line. 

When deciding where a CTA belongs, you need to think about motivation. 

How motivated is your prospect to click on a button? How desirable is your offering at that time, and how much does your visitor already know about the thing they’re being offered?

If you’re going to need to provide more information before your customer wants to convert, then a below-the-fold CTA makes more sense. 

If you’ve already provided all the information that your customer needs and a prospect is visiting from an advertisement or another page on the website, then above the fold should be exceptional. 

The Truth About Designing for The Fold

The reality for web designers today is that achieving higher conversion rates doesn’t really have that much to do with whether a CTA is above or below the fold.

What’s important is whether your buttons come under the right amount of copy that answers the correct questions for an audience. 

Remember, when visitors come to a website, they’re looking for different things. There are visitors that:

  • Already know your brand and value your offering: These people are often clicking into your landing pages from other marketing campaigns where they’ve learned about the brand or offer. You can give these prospects a CTA immediately so they can continue down the buyer’s funnel as fast as possible. 
  • Are uncertain about your offering and need to know a bit more: These people need some extra information. They might have a concern that needs to be addressed before they’re willing to spend their money. You might not need much copy here, which means that a CTA may still appear above the fold. 
  • Are brand new to your website: These prospects need a reasonable amount of copy. They don’t know what you’re offering or why it’s valuable to them. Because of this, you may need to wait to push them into action until you’ve delivered the right copy. 

In some cases, you may even place multiple CTAs on the same page. Some people will have a general understanding of the technology and what it does. This means that they’ll be happy to click on the button at the top of the fold. 

On the other hand, there could also be visitors arriving on the same page that don’t understand what the benefits of real-time personalization are. This means that you need to elaborate a little on what you have to offer. A simple one-line explanation isn’t enough here.  

Figuring Out Where to Place a CTA

Deciding where to place different elements of a website is a common challenge for web designers. Despite tons of blogs out there, that claim “above the fold” is always the best option for any conversion rate optimization, the truth is a little more complicated. 

The critical thing to remember as a web designer is that a CTA button asks a customer for commitment. Even if the CTA allows someone to download a free demo or sign-up for a newsletter without spending any money, it requires a customer to start a relationship with a brand. 

In a world where customers are less trusting of companies than ever, it doesn’t make sense to push them into a relationship too quickly. Asking for a commitment from a target audience before they’ve had the chance to see what’s “in it for them” is not a good idea. 

Jump in too quickly, and you’re likely to rub people the wrong way. 

Go Out and Master the Fold

The issue for today’s designers isn’t figuring out whether a button needs to be visible from the moment someone arrives on a page. Instead, you need to think about whether visitors are finding the CTA at a time when they’re ready to take action. 

You can only answer the question “where should the CTA go?” after you’ve carefully analyzed the project that you’re working on. 

Remember, above the fold isn’t always the answer. 

 

Featured image via Pexels.

Source

The post Perfect CTA Placement: Above-The-Fold Vs. Below-The-Fold first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

In scanning the IT landscape, the call for DevOps engineers remains toward the top of many companies’ priorities. A nationwide search through various job posting sites returns literally thousands of DevOps opportunities. However, reviewing these job postings shows that the skillsets required are widely varied. In comparison, software development job descriptions and requirements tend to have a narrower focus – broadly speaking, a language and a particular framework. DevOps job descriptions and requirements range from implementing continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) processes, to building infrastructure, to configuration management, to cloud operations, to writing code in any number of languages, and so on. It’s an impressive and intimidating list. Have you considered joining the DevOps wave but have been challenged in getting a clear picture of what DevOps is or means? If so, you’re not alone.

What is DevOps?

While many organizations have DevOps teams, even within a single organization, there are likely to be multiple roles within a DevOps team. Why is that? The reason is that DevOps is a process, and various roles within a DevOps team each contribute to the process. The DevOps process is a product of the evolution of Agile development processes. With Agile, production-quality software is iteratively delivered, which drives the need to deploy software more often. The process of getting software into production needed to be streamlined, thus the DevOps movement and process was born.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

The dreaded part of every site reliability engineer’s (SRE) job eventually: capacity planning. You know, the dance between all the stakeholders when deploying your applications. Did engineering really simulate the right load and do we understand how the application scales? Did product managers accurately estimate the amount of usage? Did we make architectural decisions that will keep us from meeting our SLA goals? And then the question that everyone will have to answer eventually: how much is this going to cost? This forces SREs to assume the roles of engineer, accountant, and fortune teller.

The large cloud providers understood this a long time ago and so the term “cloud economics” was coined. Essentially this means: rent everything and only pay for what you need. I would say this message worked because we all love some cloud. It’s not a fad either. SREs can eliminate a lot of the downside when the initial infrastructure capacity discussion was maybe a little off. Being wrong is no longer devastating. Just add more of what you need and in the best cases, the services scale themselves — giving everyone a nice night’s sleep. All this without provisioning a server, which gave rise to the term “serverless.”

Source de l’article sur DZONE

Dans le cadre de sa transformation, le Groupe ISB investit dans un nouveau système d’information. La modernisation de son SI va s’effectuer par l’adoption de l’ERP SAP S/4HANA en mode cloud, avec l’offre RISE with SAP. Ce projet sera mené en partenariat avec NTT Data Business Solutions France (NDBS France).

Groupe ISB est un spécialiste du bois qui souffle cette année sa soixantième bougie. Acteur incontournable français des produits et solutions bois pour l’habitat et la construction, il est également spécialiste du rabotage de bois résineux en Europe.

L’entreprise s’appuie essentiellement sur deux marques fortes : Silverwood (bois rabotés : bardages, lambris, terrasses, etc.) et Sinbpla (trading de panneaux et bois résineux). Le groupe compte environ 430 collaborateurs, répartis sur différents sites : usines, hubs portuaires, plateformes logistiques et agences commerciales.

2015 : l’année de l’émancipation

Groupe ISB est né du rachat de la division Importation et Solutions Bois (ISB) de Wolseley par ses cadres en 2015. Suite au rapprochement en 2019 avec SCA Wood France, Benjamin Bodet a pris la direction générale du groupe et engagé la transformation d’ISB sur ses deux principaux métiers, qui sont l’importation et la transformation du bois. « Nous avons retravaillé tout d’abord notre modèle économique, puis notre organisation commerciale. Dans le cadre de notre plan stratégique Impact 2026, validé début 2022, nous avons notamment travaillé sur la création de valeur tout le long de la value chain, des pays producteurs à nos clients distributeurs et industriels. »

Groupe ISB a comme ambition de mettre sa politique RSE au cœur de ses activités, en proposant notamment des produits bas carbone, durables et toujours plus respectueux de l’environnement.

Le plan Impact 2026 comprend un volet visant à investir dans les solutions SAP avec comme projet clé l’adoption de l’ERP SAP S/4HANA. Un choix né d’une intense phase de réflexion : « Nous avons passé 18 mois à challenger les différents éditeurs du marché. La balance a finalement penché en faveur de SAP. C’est un environnement que nous connaissons bien, proposé par un acteur qui nous ressemble ; innovant et leader sur son marché. »

Un ERP nouvelle génération… en mode cloud

NTT Data Business Solutions France a été choisi pour accompagner le Groupe ISB dans la mise en place de l’ERP SAP S/4HANA, la méthodologie de travail proposée et l’expertise logistique NTT correspondant aux besoins du Groupe ISB, le logisticien du bois. Une solution que la société a souhaité construire depuis une feuille blanche et déployer en mode cloud, avec RISE with SAP. « Nous voulions disposer d’un outil global, capable d’intégrer au maximum nos processus, mais sans reproduire les défauts de l’ancien système, trop sur mesure, trop permissif et manquant parfois de rigueur, par exemple sur la gestion des données. »

« Opter pour SAP est un véritable challenge qu’on se sent prêt à relever, poursuit Benjamin Bodet. Cela va nous obliger à nous structurer. C’est aussi pour cela que nous avons choisi SAP. » La difficulté principale de ce projet reste d’adapter l’ERP aux spécificités d’un métier qui demeure particulier, le bois. « Notre approche consiste à coller au maximum aux standards de la solution, mais sans écarter toutefois la mise en place de processus spécifiques. Nous allons nous appuyer sur l’expertise en intégration de NDBS FRANCE pour cela. Mais il nous faudra rester raisonnables dans nos envies d’adaptation de l’outil. »

Le projet a été lancé en début d’année 2022 et devrait s’achever avec le go live de la solution SAP S/4HANA, programmé pour le 1er août 2023. 18 mois donc pour mettre en place un ERP au périmètre large (finance, contrôle de gestion, achat, vente, production et logistique) et couvrant toutes les entités du groupe.

Déjà des projets autour de l’ERP SAP S/4HANA

L’adoption d’une solution cloud devrait permettre de faciliter l’accès à l’ERP en France comme à l’étranger. « Nous avons des partenaires un peu partout dans le monde, explique Benjamin Bodet. L’un de nos projets serait par ailleurs d’intégrer SAP le plus en amont possible chez nos partenaires logistiques chargés d’exporter du bois en direction de nos hubs portuaires français. » L’objectif est de connaître au plus tôt et avec le plus de précision possible le contenu de chaque chargement, afin de mieux gérer les stocks et de mieux orienter les flux.

Autre sujet, le transport : « Nous affrétons 20.000 camions chaque année. Investir dans un module avancé de gestion des transports nous permettra de disposer d’une tour de contrôle de l’ensemble de nos flux, routiers comme maritimes, ce qui nous permettra de distribuer nos produits avec la road to market la plus directe possible. »

Dernier défi enfin, l’empreinte carbone, qui est au cœur du plan stratégique Impact 2026 de Groupe ISB. « Pour optimiser notre empreinte carbone, que ce soit lors de la production ou du transport, il nous faut des outils. SAP Product Footprint Management est une solution que nous souhaitons implémenter, car en nous donnant la capacité de mesurer l’impact carbone de nos produits elle pourrait nous apporter un net avantage compétitif et aligner avec les valeurs de notre entreprise que nous portons. »

The post Groupe ISB mise sur SAP pour soutenir ses ambitions de transformation en leader du bois… bas carbone appeared first on SAP France News.

Source de l’article sur sap.com