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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

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Pluralistic: 06 Mar 2020 (Stunning RPG dice, Shell funded climate denial, Church sends US predator priests to Mexico, South Korea is beating covid-19)

Today's links

The most beautiful RPG dice I've ever seen: And you can also make your own.

The king of Dutch climate denial was secretly in Shell's pay: Frits Böttcher was a packrat, and his papers detail exactly how he was paid to sow climate doubt. He was very good at it.

American Catholic officials helped priests who preyed on children escape to Mexico: At least 51 "credibly accused" priests left the US and took up positions abroad.

A grifty AI company conned the state of Utah into giving access to everything: Banjo claims it will predict and head off terrorist attacks, mass shootings, and child abductions without invading anyone's privacy.

Clearview AI says it only lets cops use its facial recognition tool but it's lying: Investors, cronies and pals got to literally use it as a party trick.

South Korea's beating covid-19 with free testing: Testing is part of the free national health system, and 140,000 tests have been administered.

The web is unusably beshitted with terrible ad-tech: "No, I don't want great articles."

For $3, a robolawyer will automatically force data brokers to delete you and sue the ones who don't: Donotpay meets the CCPA, it's like peanut butter and chocolate.

This day in history: 2005, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

The most beautiful RPG dice I've ever seen (permalink)

Sasha is a spectacularly talented RPG dice-maker, whose online store features the most beautiful dice I've ever seen – and as if that wasn't enough, she also sells dice-making kits to use at home.

https://www.sunshadeauarts.com/sunshadeauarts-academy/

Last month, ahead of the C2E2 con, she posted a series of new, not-for-sale (argh) dice that embed a variety of materials inside large D20s to form nebulas, clouds, alien landscapes, menacing eyeballs, and eldritch scenes. Check them out for yourself!

https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1232722877008490497 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1229445585717035010 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1232795390916911104 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1233370655216881664 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1233380666810806274

It's hard to say what these will cost; comparable dice on her site sell for $400. They're handmade, beautiful sculptures, after all.

https://www.sunshadeauarts.com/product/less-than-perfect-midnight-aurora-handmade-resin-inkless-titan-d20/

At that price, they're maybe too expensive for a gift for yourself, but as a graduation present, maybe? And that said, it's exactly the kind of thing I sometimes buy to celebrate selling a new novel, and that's on my roadmap for THE LOST CAUSE, my post-GND, truth-and-reconciliation novel, so I'm definitely putting a reminder in my calendar.

The king of Dutch climate denial was secretly in Shell's pay (permalink)

Club of Rome founder Frits Böttcher was the Netherlands' leading climate denier. He died in 2008. Investigative journalists combing through his papers, discovered that he was paid €500K by Shell and others to sow doubt about climate change.

https://www.ftm.nl/dutch-multinationals-funded-climate-sceptic

His network pushed out scientific frauds like the idea that excess atmospheric CO2 would be "good for plants" through books, lectures and reports.

He was good at it. His work was crucial to stalling action on climate change in the 1990s. Despite this, his 24 sponsors dumped him in 1998 after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, worried that outright climate denial had lost credibility.

No wonder! This was the guy who'd called climate science "a witch-hunt on CO2" and declared "Our planet is not a greenhouse."

In his papers, Böttcher notes that after he published these frauds, Shell contacted him and offered him giant sums to keep it up and amplify it. The work was personally commissioned by Shell managing director Huub Van Engelshoven. Böttcher was a packrat. His papers in the Noord-Hollands Archief in Haarlem stack 15.9m tall. Inside of them is an eye-wateringly detailed account of how wealthy, planet-wrecking firms deliberately and maliciously paid for climate denial.

That means that we now can name names. We think of climate denial as a kind of emergent property with no human agent, but as the world drowns, roasts, and writhes with pandemic, we have the names and addresses of the people who engineered that situation for their own gain. We know who his political allies were: the VVD party. When the Netherlands' dikes fail and the country begins to drown, these politicians might still be running for office.

It's tempting to think of the climate crisis as something we all bear responsibility for, because we didn't sort our recycling or because we didn't use the underfunded, anemic public transit options available to us. But efforts like this – from Platform Authentieke Journalistiek and Follow the Money – show we were corralled into our complicity by a network of super-rich plutes for their own gain, who knew they were wrecking the world and dooming our children but did not care.

American Catholic officials helped priests who preyed on children escape to Mexico (permalink)

A new instalment in Propublica's outstanding coverage of the Catholic Church's complicity in sexual abuse by priests shows that dozens of American priests who raped children were relocated to Mexico, where they continued to rape children

https://www.propublica.org/article/dozens-of-catholic-priests-credibly-accused-of-abuse-found-work-abroad-some-with-the-churchs-blessing#178005

These priests found new postings thanks to glowing letters of recommendation from church officials who knew that they had been accused – or, in some cases convicted – of raping children in their parishes. Some fled to Mexico to avoid prison, resisting extradition for years.

Not just Mexico: Propublica found 51 "credibly accused" US priests who are currently working in Mexico, Ireland, Nigeria, and the Philippines. Some of them continued to draw pay from their US parishes while they settled in abroad. Parishoners' donations paid for the predators who victimized their children to escape justice.

One priest, Jose Antonio Pinal, wrote letters to Church officials blaming the boy he raped, saying, "that he is not innocent of the situation he wants to blame me for completely." Pinal is still ministering in Cuernavaca. He claims his longrunning rapes of a 15-year-old were consensual, but "he was a minor; so, legally, I am screwed."

When he moved to Mexico, Sacramento church officials wrote to him promising to support him, so long as the new diocese promised to "protect the diocese of Sacramento against any financial liability for any acts committed by you while working in that diocese."

Some of these priests are listed as "inactive" in Church websites, but are still ministering in Mexico. Rev. Jeffrey David Newell, admitted to sexually abusing another 15 year old, and called it a "mistake." He currently serves in Tijuana. Newell says it was a single slip up. Other survivors of his abuse have filed lawsuits against his old US archdiocese. Newell calls their claims "totally absurd." His name has been removed from Church lists of "credibly accused" sexual predators in the clergy.

These predators' survivors are alive and deeply traumatized. And thanks to the inaction, complicity and even encouragement of US Catholic church officials, these priests are ruining the lives of new children all over the world.

A grifty AI company conned the state of Utah into giving access to everything (permalink)

The State of Utah has secretly contracted with "Banjo," a grifty "AI" company, to analyze all the surveillance and internal data generated by all the state's agencies.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200305/13422544042/ai-company-has-access-to-pretty-much-every-piece-surveillance-tech-state-utah-owns.shtml

Banjo gets all the 911 calls, CCTV camera feeds, license plate readers, and internal state databases, and its proprietary, secret algorithm will comb through all that to direct law enforcement.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/k7exem/banjo-ai-company-utah-surveillance-panopticon

The company claims there are no privacy concerns because it has a patented system for anonymizing data. The patents do not disclose their anonymization method, and every other attempt at this kind of anonymization has fallen prey to "re-identification" attacks.

Banjo gets to locate a facility inside the Utah DOT HQ, and will operate in all 29 counties, state university campuses and 23 cities (including Utah's 10 largest cities). The company's making $20.7m on this contract over five years.

Using FOIA requests, Motherboard retrieved records showing how Banjo got Utah officials to help it sell its services ot the state. When Motherboard questioned the officials about this, they flat-out lied and denied it. The Banjo pitch claims that they'll head off terrorist attacks, mass shootings and child abductions in realtime. The company provides zero evidence that they have ever done such a thing, or that they ever could.

But that lack of evidence didn't deter Utah AG Ric Cantrell:

"They do have case studies. I'm waiting for case studies from Banjo. I'm still waiting for information from them."

Uh, maybe you should have seen the studies before putting Banjo's servers behind your firewall?

Clearview AI says it only lets cops use its facial recognition tool but it's lying (permalink)

Clearview AI is another grifty "AI" company cutting secret deals with law enforcement to use its facial recognition tech, which relies on a database of nonconsensually scraped social media photos.

They claim only cops get to use this. It's a lie.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/technology/clearview-investors.html

Clearview investors, clients and cronies all have logins to the system. Long before it was selling to cops, these people were literally using it as a party trick, getting people at parties to give them photos to subject to Clearview analysis, just for shits and giggles.

For example, billionaire John Catsimatidis used it to freak out his daughter, sneaking a pic of her data while she was at a restaurant and then IDing the guy and texting her with the guy's bio while she was still eating with him.

An investor named David Scalzo gave the app to his children: "They like to use it on themselves and their friends to see who they look like in the world. It's kind of fun for people."

It sure seems like Ashton Kutcher also got to run around and use it without limit or accountability. Last time I checked, he was also not a police officer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNhYqLbsAGk&feature=youtu.be

One tech expert, Nicholas Cassimatis, uses the app as "a hobby."

Your 21st Century panopticon, folks, brought to you by compulsive liars who ask us to trust them not to get it wrong.

South Korea's beating covid-19 with free testing (permalink)

South Korea has tested 140,000 people for Covid-19. The tests are free for all as part of the nation's public health program. Testing has led to world-leading containment of the disease.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-04/south-korea-tests-hundreds-of-thousands-to-fight-virus-outbreak

President Moon Jae-in calls it a "war" and has put the country on the kind of footing that you'd expect of any existential threat, sidelining the interests of industry in favor of national survival. They're testing 10,000 people/day. Results are available in hours. You can get tested at drive-through testing centers. The kits are 90% accurate and were developed by a domestic producer, Seegene Inc.

America is learning that offshoring high-tech manufacturing to save on labor costs and allowing its private sector to dominate its healthcare resulted in a brittle situation where it can't produce reliable tests, and the unreliable tests are only available to the wealthy.

The fate of uninsured, untested, untreated Americans is not theirs alone. They're the ones preparing wealthy Americans' food and cleaning their homes.

We have a shared microbial destiny that no amount of neoliberal doctrine can handwave away.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/01/shared-microbial-destiny/#covidclasswar

The web is unusably beshitted with terrible ad-tech (permalink)

The web is unusably beshitted and encrufted with popups, interstitials, rolldowns, nagware, paywalls, autoplaying video, ads that scroll with the page, and worse. I haven't looked at the web without an adblocker in years and it's still barely usable.

https://www.cjr.org/first_person/the-infinite-scroll.php

The modern web's equilibrium is "as terrible as possible, without being so terrible that you stop reading," or, worse, "as terrible as is necessary to get you pay to bypass the paywall."

In the CJR, David Roth publishes one of the most pitiless, accurate, evocative descriptions of using the modern internet of cruft.

"The page loads, and a little video ad box rises from the bottom left of the screen and begins buffering. Then a big box pops up over the small one with an offer to subscribe to the paper at a special promotional rate… As you contemplate it, the video begins to play in a muted spasm. This throws a scrim of gray over the rest of the page, making it impossible to read…While you've been triaging a second small video player has floated up into the middle left of the screen. You manage to close these various boxes, and now you can scroll. For a few seconds, anyway, until another ad creeps down from the banner ad above the headline."

But Roth isn't merely complaining here. He's also digging into the underlying reality: dwindling margins, short-term thinking, monopolization of the ad-market, and a buyer's market for ads that lets advertisers demand worse and worse of publishers. Publishers are staffed with people who are "perpetually maxed-out and stressed and scrabbling for a dwindling and finite amount of money." They're choosing chumboxes and other garbage because they want to keep the lights on.

This happened before, of course. It's an HTML5, CSS-enabled reprise of the pop-up wars, where exploding inventory and finite advertising allowed advertisers to play publishers off against each other with increasingly obnoxious, intrusive pop-ups.

These were unbelievably terrible, even by modern standards. Pop-ups would spawn at 1px X 1px, making them invisible, autoplaying audio. Others would sense your mouse heading for the close box and move themselves away from your pointer. They'd spawn 3 more pop-ups for every one you closed, or 300, until your computer ran out of RAM and crashed, taking all your work with it.

These pop-ups didn't go away because publishers won the battle. They went away because of pop-up blocking.

When Opera, and then Mozilla, turned pop-up blocking on by default, users finally had a meaningful reason to prefer one browser to the others. One browser was usable. The other one let pop-up ads crash your computer and eat your unsaved docs. As users switched en masse to blocking browsers, publishers could tell advertisers, "Look, we'll run any garbage ad you tell us to because we need your money. But if it's a pop-up it will be blocked by the majority of our users. They just won't see it."

The pop-up wars were won because technologists helped users exercise technological self-determination. But increasingly, browser vendors are ad-tech companies. Even when they're not, browsers are being designed to serve publishers (who are under advertisers' thumbs), not users.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

We should address monopolies in ad-tech and browsers, we should create meaningful privacy protections via a federal privacy law with a private right of action. But all of that needs to be accompanied with legal cover for users who assert the right to unshittify their web sessions.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

This won't just protect users, it will protect publishers. It's one thing to prohibit publishers from intrusive advertising. But it's another altogether to make that kind of advertising literally technically impossible.

For $3, a robolawyer will automatically force data brokers to delete you and sue the ones who don't (permalink)

The always-amazing Donotpay has a new robot-lawyer service: as part of your $3/month, they'll serve every data-broker with a demand to purge your records under the CCPA, and sue the ones who don't.

https://fortune.com/2020/03/05/delete-location-data-privacy-personal-information-donotpay/

Data-brokers don't just drive nuisance calls, they also expose you to risks like being doxed and swatted, or having your identity stolen, including by stalkers and bounty hunters who exploit mobile phone tracking to get your realtime location. Every single person should purge their data from every single data-broker, period. Donotpay targets the top 20 brokers and facial recognition companies, including Clearview AI.

Donotpay automates opt-outs for these companies. It also automates suing companies that don't comply or those that make illegal demands like requiring you to send a scan of your driver's license before they'll purge your records. Once you're signed up, you can opt out your whole family, and even your friends. If you don't want a $3/month sub (which gets you tons of other awesome robolawyering), you can just sign up once, pay $3, purge your records and cancel.

Fulfilling deletion requests costs companies about $10. You can use them punitively. Any time a company pisses you off, you can just file a data-deletion demand under CCPA.

When Donot pay started, it was Ios only and I couldn't use it. Somewhere along the way, they got a web interface, too. I just signed up. I'm gonna pay for the wifi on my flight this afternoon just so I can explore all its options.

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Bram Cohen's Stanford talk on BitTorrent https://web.archive.org/web/20051124040524/http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/050216-ee380-100.asx

#5yrsago DMCA abuser ordered to pay $25K to WordPress https://torrentfreak.com/wordpress-wins-25000-from-dmca-takedown-abuser-150305/

#5yrsago Albuquerque PD encrypts videos before releasing them in records request https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150221/17074630102/albuquerque-police-dept-complies-with-records-request-releasing-password-protected-videos-not-password.shtml

#5yrsago Judge who invented Ferguson's debtor's prisons owes $170K in tax https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/06/ferguson-judge-owes-unpaid-taxes-ronald-brockmeyer

#5yrsago Hartford, CT says friends can't room together unless some of them are servants https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-hartford-scarborough-street-house-0218-20150217-story.html

#5yrsago Finnish millionaire gets EUR54K speeding ticket https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-31709454

#1yrago Zuckerberg announces a comprehensive plan for a new, privacy-focused Facebook, but fails to mention data sharing and ad targeting https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-zuckerberg-privacy-pivot/

#1yrago Ruminations on decades spent writing stories that run more than 1,000,000 words https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/03/lessons-learned-writing-really.html

#1yrago A thorough defense of Modern Monetary Theory https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2019/03/05/mmt-sense-or-nonsense/#62e9ed235852

#1yrago GOP lawmaker driven mad by bill that would decriminalize children who take naked photos of themselves, delivers a frenzied rant about anal sex on legislature's floor https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/03/05/39511377/a-bill-decriminalizing-teen-sexting-passes-the-house-causing-republican-to-scream-about-anal-sex-on-the-floor

#1yrago Bounty hunters and stalkers are able to track you in realtime by lying to your phone company and pretending to be cops https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/panvkz/stalkers-debt-collectors-bounty-hunters-impersonate-cops-phone-location-data

#1yrago From prisons to factories to offices: the spread of workplace surveillance and monitoring tech https://datasociety.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/DandS_WorkplaceMonitoringandSurveillance-.pdf

#1yrago NH GOP lawmakers mocked gun violence survivors by wearing clutchable pearl necklaces to gun control hearing https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/06/gop-lawmakers-wore-pearls-while-gun-violence-victims-testified-activists-were-outraged/?utm_term=.addd1b7a24f8

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Emptywheel (https://www.emptywheel.net/), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Naked Capitalism (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/), Super Punch (https://superpunch.net/, Bas van Beek (http://www.basvanbeek.com/).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Museums and the Web: March 31-April 4 2020, Los Angeles. https://mw20.museweb.net/

LA Times Festival of Books: 18 April 2020, Los Angeles. https://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/

Currently writing: I'm rewriting a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm also working on "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel afterwards.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Disasters Don't Have to End in Dystopias: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/01/disasters-dont-have-to-end-in-dystopias/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

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jjonassevilla · 4 years

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How to Win the “SEO vs. PPC” Debate

Believe it or not, some marketers are still taking sides in the “SEO vs. PPC” debate. I can understand the passion on both sides of the aisle, but I’d compare it to an argument about the need for “air vs. water.” Depending on your immediate circumstances, one may be more important than another—but both are necessary for survival.

To those passionately arguing that SEO is better than PPC, or vice versa, I propose a truce based on the potential for incremental gains when we work together.

For those seeking answers to the question, “should I invest in PPC or SEO,” buckle up—we’re about to unpack a debate that has raged for more than a decade to help you decide how to prioritize your digital marketing efforts.

Let’s start with the basics.

What is the difference between SEO and PPC?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of improving your brand’s visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) to attract more visitors to your web properties.

It’s not limited to just web search engines, though. SEO strategies also improve your visibility in maps search results, image and video search results, shopping listings, app stores, and social media search results.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising positions your brand in sponsored ad positions on search results pages. Advertisers have more control over the targeted keywords, audiences, and creative, but they pay for each click to their website.

A search ad is most commonly found at the top of the search results.

Many marketers oversimplify the difference between SEO and PPC with a half-truth like, “SEO is free but PPC costs money.” While it’s true that clicks on organic search results don’t cost you money, there’s a good chance that your content won’t rank consistently well unless you invest in people, content, and tools to step up your SEO game. You get what you pay for.

Another misperception is that PPC has to be expensive. Sure, PPC can be pricey if you don’t put proper safeguards in place to protect your wallet. You wouldn’t just leave your debit card hanging out of an ATM, would you? No, you protect it with a PIN and withdrawal limits. Similarly, you protect your PPC spend by setting daily budgets and monitoring your campaigns for wasteful spending on irrelevant keywords.

Which channel is better at increasing revenue?

That’s a trick question. It’s both.

SEO and PPC can generate qualified traffic to your site and improve your chances of converting more visitors to customers. And surveys conducted by Google and Nielsen suggest that brands get more combined clicks on ads and organic results when both are present on a SERP. Sharing insights and integrating your paid and organic search strategies will yield more growth than focusing all of your resources on one versus the other.

How do you measure the success of an SEO strategy vs. a PPC campaign?

Start with your business objectives. In most cases, the overall aim is to increase revenue, leads, sales, or engagement. Successful SEO and PPC strategies can create measurable impacts on your business, quantified with a few key metrics at each step in the customer journey.

This is not an exhaustive list of the metrics that you can measure, but it does show the similarities and overlaps between SEO and PPC that can be exploited.

The SEO or PPC zealots can each claim superiority in some of these metrics. But savvy marketers realize that neither channel exists in a vacuum and we should focus on the contribution of each channel to shared goals.

Attribution Is the Future Present

In most cases, consumers interact with your brand multiple times before converting. And like snowflakes, no two conversion paths are the same. There are likely multiple touchpoints that must be accounted for to get a true picture of the customer journey.

Attribution is where the SEO vs. PPC debate loses some steam. The position-based attribution example below shows multiple conversion paths that include “Organic Search” and “Paid Search” touchpoints. In each of these cases, a customer converted only after multiple interactions.

Your proportion of “Organic Search” to “Paid Search” conversions will vary depending on your brand awareness and product offerings. It’s important to keep an eye on your preferred attribution model and use the cross-channel insights to dial in your budgets and prioritize your focus where it’s needed most.

Put your strengths to work while compensating for your weaknesses.

The most polarizing arguments for SEO vs. PPC often fail to recognize each company’s inherent strengths, weaknesses, and resources. What may be easy for one company could be extremely difficult to pull off in other companies with different team structures, historical baggage, or finances.

Here are the most common factors to consider when deciding how to invest your resources:

Your Website & Landing Pages

Evaluate your current website to determine if it will support your goals. Do you have control over the code and easily editable templates? If not, your SEO success may depend on building a new site with best practices baked in. (And that can get expensive.)

Most PPC campaigns don’t need an entire site to support the visitor journey. Landing pages work exceptionally well to convert visitors into prospects or customers without messing with a content management system (CMS). Landing pages can also be a force multiplier when it comes to testing and scaling up relevant, valuable offers and experiences for multiple visitor segments.

Landing pages can enhance your PPC campaigns by delivering more conversions for the same spend. Read about how you can build tailored pages and create killer post-click experiences without bothering your devs.

Time & Money

If you have lots of spare time and very little money, SEO might be a better long-term option. Your free time can be spent creating great content to attract links and visitors, building partnerships to establish authority, and refining your site architecture to make it more accessible to search engine crawlers.

Conversely, if you need to make a splash right away and are swimming in Scrooge McDuck pools of cash, you could get immediate visibility with a significant PPC investment. Higher budgets would allow you to test your way to better results quickly.

Team & Talent

If your team can create content, build links, establish authority, and share expertise, you have the ingredients for a successful SEO initiative. PPC teams tend to skew more towards the analytical mindset with a hint of creativity.

Assess the team you have or build the team you want in order to stand out. Thankfully, people haven’t been replaced by AI (yet), so continue to invest most heavily in your talented humans. That said, the learning curves required to excel at PPC or SEO are steep and can take years to climb. It’s nearly impossible for a single person to master both disciplines. Keep your expectations realistic and don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Photo by You X Ventures on Unsplash

Content & Brand Equity

Do you have a content-rich site with oodles of authority and expertise? SEO might look more appealing. Established brands can use their reputations and communities to boost their SEO efforts. A brand new startup doesn’t yet have a foundation to build from.

If you are launching a new site or trying to build awareness for a new brand, PPC might give you the immediate boost you need to stand out.

Competitors

Any debate about the merits of SEO and PPC should also consider the strengths and weaknesses of your competitive set. Think you’ll beat Amazon to the top of Google’s organic search results for a generic term like “board games”? Not likely. However, it is possible to stand out in a local market or niche industry with just a little extra SEO attention.

Similarly, deep-pocketed PPC competitors may seem daunting until you realize there are multiple ways to outsmart and outflank them. There’s no way for even the wealthiest competitors to simultaneously target all keywords and all audiences with the perfect message.

There are always gaps in your competitors’ strategies wide enough to drive a wedge in. You can begin to exploit their weaknesses and expand your presence once you have a foothold.

Integrate your PPC and SEO data for massive wins.

Another weakness of a diehard SEO vs. PPC devotee is the inability to see the big picture. PPC and SEO don’t exist in isolation. Savvy marketers will understand how to incorporate data from one channel to improve another resulting in better overall performance. In other words, we have more to gain by working together than trying to “win” an intractable debate.

Sharing SEO Data with PPC

Organic search traffic produces mountains of data that PPC marketers can use to improve their campaigns. A few examples:

Improve the layout and flow of a PPC landing page with user experience data from site navigation paths and heatmap tracking.

Conserve PPC budgets by pausing or lowering bids on keywords with strong organic rankings and limited competition.

Expand PPC keywords that align with organic performance and goals.

Improve PPC quality scores and landing page performance by sharing SEO insights such as page speed enhancements, accessibility, and image optimization.

Sharing PPC Data with SEO

Insights from PPC campaigns can benefit SEO strategies as well:

Inform SEO target keywords or inspire new pieces of content based on PPC search terms with high conversion rates or ROI.

Improve organic search click-through rates by updating page titles and meta description tags based on successful PPC ad copy and calls to action (CTAs).

Fill in the gaps in organic search visibility with focused PPC campaigns to capture fast-moving trends in search queries, highly competitive organic results, and topics where you want to control the message.

Promote new content to target audiences before it has earned enough organic visibility to stand alone.

Once you connect your Google Search Console to your Google Ads account, you can access a somewhat useful Paid & Organic Report template that shows your paid activity alongside your organic search performance.

It’s not very intuitive and doesn’t immediately surface any insights, but if you spend some time analyzing the data, you can spot gaps in your keyword coverage and opportunities to improve your overall visibility.

How to win the “SEO vs. PPC” debate

Nobody has won this debate in the past decade. It’s not likely that a winner will emerge in the next decade either. So don’t paint yourself into a corner or limit your career opportunities by picking sides and standing in opposition to the other.

Instead, embrace the ebb and flow of paid and organic search channels. Get comfortable saying, “it depends.” Be prepared to defend that statement with an assessment of your unique situation and healthy discussion. Become a champion for integration and watch your results and your reputation improve.

from Marketing https://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/seo-vs-ppc/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#SEO

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blinkragen-blog · 6 years

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Interview with developer of Lobotomy corporation

1.Hello, i'm the Blinkraven, from russian translation team (Tales&Stories Team) , you can call me Blink or Roman. What is your name and what your role one Project moon company?

Hello, I am Kim Ji-hoon, who is the director of ProjectMoon.

2.Can you tell a bit about the company? How did you all gathered and found the company? What is your main goal in foundation Project moon game studio?

At first, I gathered friends from university game production clubs and formed a team. I started with four people, but I felt the shortage of art and programming through the project (LobotomyCorp). So I took part in university events, festivals, and various other places to gather other members. Lobotomy Corporation was finally developed with 10 people.

I always want to make a work with the theme of "human hymn(人間讚歌)". As the light shines most strongly in the darkness, I think that human beings shine in despair. The goal of the ProjectMoon is to make the content of the subculture series continuously. I want to try various contents such as comics, novels, animations as well as games one day.

3.What inspired you to create Lobotomy corp. ? Did you already have experience in making games on Unity or is it your debut?

Lobotomy Corporation was inspired by SCP Foundation, Cabin in the woods, Warehouse13, and many other institutions that deal with monsters and supernatural tools. Originally, When I saw the works mentioned above, I wanted to play a game of monster management, however, there isn't the game like that so I made it.

There have been many attempts to make games, but Lobotomy Corporation is the first finished game.

4.What do you think is the main key feature of the game? What should the game reveal with it stoyline and gameplay?

I think managing monsters and suppressing them are the most important features of game play. In the story, we paid attention to the wounds that each character had and the process of accepting them.

5.As we know, as basis for the plot of storyline contents were taken many elements of relegions and mythologies and others. Why Kaballah in the first place?

As mentioned earlier, it was clearest to convey the theme of human hymn through Kabbalah. I wanted to show through Kabbalah that a human being follows the path to becoming fully self. Likewise, we wanted to show the limits of seeing the world only through the perspective of Kabbalah.

6.Contrary to the established stereotype that almost all Korean games are focused on the grind component, there is also a thoughtful game world in your game, details of which are revealed when communicating with the sephiras, who are responsible for departaments. The question is: how often did the storyline changes during development? How much cardinally? I still remember those days of Beta-version, when Angela was an old AI-computer that uses perforated tape.

From the very beginning to the beta version, and until now, the topic of the story has not changed. However, 'Sephira' characters were added in the process of storytelling. When I wanted to communicate the story, I felt the limitations of the dialogue between the player and Angela. So I decided to make many changes in the summer of 2017.

7.Where did the ideas for the abnormalities come from? Did many of them personify human sins, is it really so?

It is hard to say that Abnormalities come from a variety of materials and are specific to one thing. Memes, original sin, urban legend, fairy tales, legends, and social phenomena. However, they have a common interpretation to match the story of the game.

8.The game has a hidden mechanics, forcing the player to "accidentally" re-play the game again and again, to uncover all the story plot twists, to study all the abnormalities. How much in your opinion the game is replayable?

If the players have seen all of the stories and unlocked Abnormalities' information, I think they really enjoyed all the content of the game. And I was intending to make the player try multiple retries in this process. Because the company turned into a mess through the Abnormalities and watching the situation was also intended to be a fun factor, I wanted to make the watching the situation in the retry of the game was also worth.

9.Approximately in July 2017, you decidet to radically change both the UI and gameplay in general. What was the reason for this? What did not suit in so-called [Legacy]-version of the game? Although the storyline also moved from "dead end", sephiras (visually they weve very interesting), the entire visual part of the game changed at all. And then closer to november, you changed again the visual part, making the game to look like as it is now. Was it hard to make that decisions?

The biggest reason for the change was 'it was not fun and it did not fit the intention'. This was a difficult decision for us, but the decision we had to do at the same time. I thought the pre-change game was just mimicking the western art style and indie game style. I thought I have to change the game style to what I can best create and the style that I like, in order to make a game that is sustainable in the future. So I decided to change everything. The process of changing was very painful, but after the change everything became clear how to build and develop the story.

10.Oh, and earlier in [Legacy]-version of the game, for normally walkthrough it was required to monitor a lot of parameters and key features, but during development, some functions were removed, some - simplified. Was this done because of fan complaints, or did you find these systems reduntant and uncomfortable for the game?

The values, genders and final observations of the Abnormality that were in the "legacy version" have been removed. Employee values and gender were changed to construct gameplay more clearly. The final observation of the Abnormality is something that has been removed due to the difficulties of realistic development. It was difficult to develop the final observation while adding various stories and scripts of Sephira through the changes, due to time and financial problems. I am sorry for this part too.

11.As I remember, earlier you had financial problems during game development. How did you manage to raise money for development? Did you have to lose something, or try to economize on something for the sake of further development?

We have not overcome financial problems using special methods. Thanks to the translation teams in Russia, China and Japan, we were able to make more sales in different countries, and as a result, we only got enough money to keep the team for a while. And now, after the development of LobotomyCorproation, only 4 team members are staying and developing. Other team members are seeking another job or going back to school. Although the size and speed of development can be reduced, I think we can keep the team longer.

12.Have you thought at the stage of development - of choosing a platform to make the game cross-platform of just PC-exclusive? For now it's very popular to make games on mobile devices, and your game with small edits of the interface could go well on mobile devices.

I focused on PC from the beginning. And Lobotomy Corporation is not going to switch to other platforms. Because the UX of the game is focused solely on PC, I thought that there would be a lot of changes if we were going to change to another platform. But the following work will consider expanding to other platforms, including PCs.

13.From the point of view of the Korean game developer, is there a great competition among your collegues in the game development industry of indie gaming? How populat are indie-games in Korea, that oriented on single player play?

There are also many indie game developers in Korea. Most of them are mobile-based indie games. So I did not see any other team in terms of competition. Compared to the indie game sector, Korea has a small sector of single-player games.

14.How, from the professional point of view, do you think that the opinion that in Korea games play only in online games is not exaggerated?

Korea is focused on mobile games and online games. But I do not think this is unconditionally bad. Because there are a lot of players in the world such as a person who loves a single game, a person who likes online games, and a person who likes mobile games. So I think it has its own meaning.

15.Has the game paid off since getting into Early access on Steam, and until now? What was your mood when you learned that the game was so popular in the world (well, and in particular in Russia)?

As a creator, there will be no greater joy. It is hard to find the driving force that makes our work world fun in many countries and expects what will happen. I want to create interesting stories and games that only we can show in the future!

Let's talk about future plans:

1.Since the release of version 1.0 (and the came out from Early Access), many players have already been able to find all the storyline endings that are hidden in the game. What do you expect the expected percentages of finding endings to be?

I think 80% of the players who have cleared up to Day50 have seen a hidden ending. If the player went to Day 50, wouldn't they want to fill in 100% of the encyclopedia?

2.In the so-called "true ending" or 100% of the Seed of light, Angela takes the complex under her control and came out from the facility to the surface for herself. Do you already have storyline sheets for the sequel and will somehow "bad" endings influence or somehow be mentioned in the sequel?

Yes. The ending of Lobotomy Corporation has had a big impact on the world, and the results will be shown in the sequel.

3.By your calculations, how much time will it take to develop a sequel, so that at least the first pl15.Has the game paid off since getting into Early access on Steam, and until now? What was your mood when you learned that the game was so popular in the world (well, and in particular in Russia)?

The development period is one year and six months until early release. We plan to spend about six months in the Eary Access period. But it always didn't go as planned. ;) I do not know if we will release the demo version, but I think I could show the gameplay within a year.

4.As for now are popular tactical turn-based games in various variations, whether it will affect the sequel or its gameplay will be like the first part - in real time with an active pause?

I'm not going to make a turn-based game as much as possible. I want to create a game that is played in as real-time as possible.

5.As I know, you monitor the appearance of content on your game on the Internet. Do you know about different memes, video parodies, etc.? What do you think about it?

Yes. We monitor videos, pictures, streaming, etc. uploaded by various fans. We are gaining great strength through the watching of enjoying the gameplay and delicate creation. In addition, problems with bugs and balances are also monitored through monitoring the world community.

6.Well, finally, your opinion about indie-game industry as a whole? What is the future of indie-games in game-development?

I think indie games are something that is unique and interesting. There are so many indie games coming out every day. What I think will become more important in the future is the unique universe of the work itself. Each game, even if it is individually, can survive in a number of indie games if it happens in a gigantic connected world. But most importantly, it has to be an attractive world, and the game must be fun.

#interview #lobotomy corp #eng

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human-synthesys-studio-review · 3 years

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Human Synthesys Studio Review

Human Synthesys Studio Review: Stunning Videos with Human-Sounding Voices

Whenever you watch a video with a boring voice-over, you might lose interest right away. That means the quality of voice-over is really important for keeping people engaged in our videos. However, one of the biggest problems with recruiting voice talent lies in the huge cost, and those who need hours of content daily may not be able to afford it.

This is why I am going to show you Human Synthesys Studio – Brand new software that will turn your text into voice-over audios. If you hate robotic voices, don’t worry because all the voices of Human Synthesys Studio sound pretty human.

Stay tuned and find out more information about this product!

Human Synthesys Studio Review – Product Overview

Сrеаtоr: Todd Gross

Рrоԁuсt: Human Synthesys Studio

Lаunсһ Dаtе: 2021-May-24

Lаunсһ Тіmе: 11:00 EDT

Оffісіаl ѕіtе: 👉VISIT OFFICIAL SITE

Frоnt-Еnԁ Рrісе: $47

Воnuѕеѕ: ҮЕЅ, НUGЕ ВОNUЅ

Rеfunԁ: ҮЕЅ, 14 Dау Nо Quеѕtіоnѕ Аѕkеԁ Money – Back Guаrаntее

Nісһе: Video & Graphic

Ѕuрроrt: Еffесtіvе Rеѕроnѕе

Rесоmmеnԁеԁ: Ніgһlу Rесоmmеnԁеԁ

What Is Human Synthesys Studio?

Human Synthesys Studio is a product created for those who want to use digital spokespeople that will talk with real human voices. You can make content with the voices this software creates by typing what you want it to say; then, the software will turn your words into voice with a natural tone.

At present, there are not many high-quality voice-over software products that can help you create human-like sound. You can easily spot the computer-generated audio or videos because of the robotic and unnatural tone. But with Human Synthesys Studio, your viewers will not easily find out that real humans do not record the voices you use.

You are a marketer or content creator but not confident with recording your own voice? Human Synthesys Studio is a great option as it will never ask you to reveal your voice, record, or hire anyone. In the long run, I believe that this software will go viral.

About The Creator

Todd Gross – the creator of Human Synthesys Studio – has spent decades creating and promoting products related to marketing and selling. He has launched several products, such as VideoRobot, AnimationStudio, Automation Bundle, MobiFirst, MobiFirst Migrate, VidSnatcher, Progressive Web Apps Agency, and Smartscene.

These products work as a sidekick who offers an easier time working on online projects and promoting services. Besides this main career, Todd is also a dedicated affiliate who joins many creators’ affiliate programs and helps them get more deals.

Human Synthesys Studio Features

Here are the fantastic features that make this tool stand out among those of the same kind:

Real Professional Actors

Human Synthesys Studio provides you with real professional voices, and you can use the voices for any kind of content you want.

Text-To-Speech Technology

With Human Synthesys Studio, you will never have to reveal your face or record your voice anymore; but instead, all you need to do is typing the content you want to convey, then convert it into a voice-over.

For this reason, those who are not English speakers and want to create professional audios in English can always do it without trying to fix their accent and learn how to speak professionally.

Human-Like Voices

No one likes the robotic sound in the video they are watching. If I watch a video and have that Google voice-over sound, I will skip that video right away.

The creator of Human Synthesys Studio understood that problem, so he and his team had been trying their best to make the voices of this product sound as “human” as possible. So if you use this product, it will be more difficult for your viewers to discover that no real people are recording the audio they are listening to.

Revolutionary Lip-Synching Technology

Besides the benefits of voice-over, you can also pick a digital “spokesperson,” then make him or her speak what you type. These digital “people” will speak with natural mouth movement because of the lip-synching technology.

Stunning Life-Like Facial Movements

The Spoke people you choose will also have stunning life-like facial movements and make everything as natural as possible.

Cloud-Based

Human Synthesys Studio is 100% cloud-based, which means you will not have to download or install anything into your PC, laptop, or phone. All you need is a valid account, a divide, and the Internet.

Easy To Use

Human Synthesys Studio is incredibly easy to use, and you will not have to take any course to use it effectively. All you need to do is follow the user guide (I will talk about it later) and start creating your first creation right away.

Background And Audio Bank

To make your videos even more appealing, Human Synthesys Studio also provides a background and audio bank that you can use for your own projects.

Simple Editing Interface

If you want to edit something with Human Synthesys Studio, you can do it easily as this software has a really simple interface.

Commercial License Available

This product also comes with a commercial license, which means you can use it to create content and videos for other people and keep all the profit.

No Need To Be On Camera

If you want to be anonymous online, then Human Synthesys Studio is a good choice because it never requires you to show your face or even your voice to share your opinion with the world.

👉VISIT OFFICIAL SITE

Who Is It Made For?

Human Synthesys Studio is for you if you need to create content with spokespeople and voice-over. Here are those who might be interested in this product:

+ Marketers

+ MMOs

+ Affiliates

+ Content creating

+ Videomakers

+ YouTubers

+ Entrepreneurs

+ And more

User Experience

I want to share some options about Human Synthesys Studio and how it can help me create easy videos. Normally, to make a video, I need to prepare the text, record my video and voice at the same time. This process takes so much time, and I have to come back and re-record them when I have some mistakes.

I also had another problem: I did not have the confidence to record videos, and I felt like my videos were pretty boring. After I learned about Human Synthesys Studio, I realized that I could do all of my videos differently – using pre-made human characters to represent myself in a video.

Moreover, now I can prepare the text and let the software do the dubbing for me. I can get things done quickly right now, and for this reason, it’s easy to post more videos and reach more people.

Besides these main features, I am also happy with the simple interface and how easy it is to use this product. I am not a high-tech person, but it only took me a few minutes to figure out how to use it.

The Bonuses

In addition, you will be getting tons the author’s greatest bonuses for your fast action:

Evaluation & Price

There are two main front-end plans for you to choose from: Personal and Commercial.

As you can guess by the name, the Personal plan will give you the right to access most of the features mentioned in this review. The Commercial plan will allow you to use Human Synthesys Studio to work with your customers and make money as an agency.

The price of the Personal options is only $47, and the other’s is $67:

I still think these prices are quite reasonable in the long run because this software gives you so many benefits.

👉VISIT OFFICIAL SITE

What’s In The Funnel?

If you want to add more features to this software, then you can consider buying these upsells once you check out:

OTO 1 – Human Synthesys Studio Pro – $67 One Time

+ 40 Additional Humatars (with MULTIPLE outfits that fit niches like nurse, doctor, casual, business attire, athletic, etc.)

+ 17 Extra PRO Real Human Voices

+ Future Humatars delivered monthly for one year

OTO 2 – Human Synthesys Studio Enterprise – $47 One Time

+ 100 Ready-Made Local Business Niches PPT/Keynote Templates; edit; add to HSS; use as a video.

+ Upload Your OWN Voice Overs/ ANY audio in ANY language (Voice will perfectly lip sync with the Humatars.)

+ Future templates delivered monthly for one year

+ Priority VIP rendering on dedicated server

+ Priority Future Software Updates

OTO 3 – Human Synthesys Studio Audio Suite – $67 One Time

+ AudioSuite brings together not one, but TWO incredible tools:

+ Synthesys, the first software to introduce human synthetic voices, and

+ Infinitunes, the first AI-Powered Music Software.

+ Both include FREE Commercial Licenses. Both for a ONE-TIME payment.

OTO 4 – Human Synthesys Studio Agency – $197 – $497

+ Agency Lite – $197 – One Time:

* Increase Video Length (1,000 characters/slide; 12 slides; 12 minutes max)

* 5 Extra Accounts For Virtual Workers & Family

* 157 Prewritten Video Scripts For The Hottest Niches

* 150 Total Rendered Videos – Credits Available For Additional Videos.

+ Human Synthesys Studio Agency Pro – $297 One Time:

* Increase Video Length (1,000 characters/slide; 12 slides; 12 minutes max)

* 10 Extra Accounts For Virtual Workers & Family

* 157 Prewritten Video Scripts For The Hottest Niches

* 250 Total Rendered Videos – Credits Available For Additional Videos.

+ Human Synthesys Studio Agency Unlimited – $497 One Time

* Increase Video Length (1,000 characters/slide; 12 slides; 12 minutes max)

* 25 Extra Accounts For Virtual Workers & Family

* 157 Prewritten Video Scripts For The Hottest Niches

* Unlimited Total Rendered Videos

NOTE:

Here are some Upgrade links for your reference. You have to buy FE firstly and then you can buy any Upgrades if you like.

If you buy Upgrades alone, you will receive NOTHING and it takes your time to ask for refund. Remember FE is a must-have package to at least make sure the software is working.

Pros And Cons

Pros

+ Reasonable price

+ Easy to use

+ No special skills required

+ Work well for all niches, products, and topic

+ Many add-ons to choose

Cons

+ The human and voice you pick might not be unique or belong only to yourself

Conclusion

During this Human Synthesys Studio review, I have shared the most important information about this product. As I mentioned, it will benefit many people, especially those who need to make videos but do not want to reveal their faces and voices.

If you are one of those, give Human Synthesys Studio a try.

REMEMBER! If you purchase through my link, you will be supported 24/7; That means you can contact me ANYTIME when you get trouble in using or can not contact with the authors/ product supporters. I will help you RIGHT AWAY!

Besides, if you buy this product through my link, you can also get these huge bonuses below (Please remember that these bonuses are not for the TRIAL or FREE versions):

👉VISIT OFFICIAL SITE

You can have an opportunity to receive extra bonuses if you finish 3 steps below:

Step 1: Order the product by Clicking here.

Step 2: Choose 1 of my huge Bonus Packages below! Remember that you can pick one more bonuses pack for each Upgrade you purchased!

Step 3: After your purchase goes through, email your receipt & your chosen bonuses pack to me at [email protected] so I can confirm your purchase and email you information about how to access to your bonus material.

I Will Always Update New Bonus

Now, Check your bonus below!

»»Plugin Bonus Package««

»»Theme Bonus Package««

»»General Bonus Package««

1 backlink dofollow from my site

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mobileapplicationupdates · 3 years

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Common Mobile App Development Mistakes To Avoid in 2021

With the invention of smartphones, mobile applications have greatly simplified people's lives. This has led to the mobile apps development company in bangalore industry emerging as the most lucrative of all. Especially with a melee competition between iOS and Android, you can see new applications arriving on the scene every day.

Both game stores have more than 1 million applications each. In such a scenario, companies struggle with each other to create first-hand applications than others. In such a case, it is clear that many common errors occur that are not seen.

Have you ever thought why some applications are better than others even though they are very similar in terms of application?

This is because some apps are perfect in terms of functionality and features, while others are trapped by common bugs.

This differentiates successful applications from unsuccessful ones. After having hands-on experience with both types of applications, I list common mistakes to avoid in your future projects.

Not adapting to market changes

Imagine a mobile application that allows you to make 6-second clips and share your life moments with others. Sounds familiar? No, I am not talking about Instagram, Tik Tok, or Boomerang. I mean Vine.

Vine was a free mobile app founded in 2012 that allowed users to record and share an unlimited number of short looping video clips with a maximum length of six seconds.

it became the fastest growing best mobile app development company India in the world.

Vine was used by actors, singers, and celebrities, but also regular users. Thanks to Vine, many people who are famous celebrities today got their initial fame.

So what went wrong? Ankur Thakkar, Vine's managing editor, said the network did not send anything for a year. So the main problem was that the application stopped following new trends and attracting users, in addition to not developing new functions.

It's critical to adapt your product to market conditions and keep track of your competition. The new functionalities increase the participation and the user experience of the mobile applications.

You can see from the Vine example that even if your product is great and gaining popularity, you need to remember to constantly take care of your top-notch user experience. Failing to adapt to market changes is one of the most common mobile application development mistakes to any avoid.

Have ambiguity about device and operating system compatibility

Providing small details about your proposal can jeopardize the relationship you want to build with your clients. If you avoid specifying your estimates, including iOS development only, for example, your customer can expect costs to include Android.

If it is not intended to work for iPad, it is your responsibility to repair it, free of charge, without deviating from the contract. Now, that can kill the project entirely, regardless of how close the deal is.

Therefore, you must ensure that the contract indicates the version, operating system, and device compatibility.

Have an application that lacks a clear purpose

If your application lacks a purpose, who will it be for? Not having a well-defined purpose to develop an application is the biggest mistake. Too often, apps are created as competitive tools to generate some curiosity just because others are doing it.

However, an mobile app development companies in bangalore without a real reason is not a recipe for more success. It only indicates an infallible failure.

Only when your application responds to some genuine concern can it be successful and rated as useful. When your app is unique and useful, it can serve as a definitive bookmark, especially for loyal users.

Build quality control throughout development cycles rather than leaving it for last. Compare the purpose of the application with the development process and run concurrent tests during development to avoid errors.

Not building an MVP

Making an MVP is a useful idea that can prevent your application from being a fiasco. An MVP or Minimum Viable Product offers you the opportunity to progressively test your product in economic situations, where you have day-to-day users to assess the exposure of the application. It is one of the trends in the mobile application market, used by most of the companies.

With a minimum viable product for startups, you'll spend the leanest assets possible to attract your first users, receive criticism, and understand your target market.

No mobile app monetization

Before spending money, time, and effort to push apps, set aside some work to plan mobile app monetization models. Building an app is one, however, interacting with target people to download apps is an unmistakable game. This is one of the crucial mistakes to avoid when developing an application for business.

There is an important test in the app stores with the argument that numerous applications are downloaded every day. It's pretty much infinite the app will download in case you don't have a solid app getting started plan.

Examine your objective requirements, advance to the app home page, get studies on your app, bundle it, use influencers to increase the promotion of your app, and distribute it effectively across multiple platforms. The implementation of this strategy is also responsible for the trends of the mobile application market in the current scenario.

Complexity

Another common user design mistake includes application complexity when it is difficult for the user to understand the functionality and usability of the application. Similarly, as a designer makes use of the best visual imagination and various color codes to deliver a message, it is also necessary to have a UX list of mobile apps development company India that makes use of significantly fewer steps to reach any other part of the application. When there is a lot of text or a complex flow that puzzles the user, it will cause them to exit the application and go somewhere else.

Spam notifications

Let's be honest about it, getting a lot of notifications from an app is annoying. Yes, you need to communicate with the user via notifications about new feature updates or subscriptions, but you should also refrain from spamming your users. You should try to build a proper balance between being aggressive with notifications and maintaining your presence. Focus on reporting relevant and important information rather than just spamming.

Partner with an inexperienced company for application development needs

This could be the biggest mistake of all those discussed above. Handing over your mobile app development requirements to an inexperienced or inexperienced company can be detrimental to your business. The decision may not only affect your customer base, but also your bottom line.

App development requires deep business understanding, analysis of customer requirements, development and design experience, best testing practices, etc.

Centimeter by centimeter imitation of competitors

When a successful business idea takes the form of an application, it attracts a lot of new competition in the market. There is nothing wrong with taking a page out of your competitor's book, but deciding to imitate your competitor inch by inch can be a huge mistake on your part. You need to instill some new ideas and approaches into the app, and try to bring a fresh experience to your users that none of the competing apps offer. Blind imitation of competitors is one thing, most people end up doing despite knowing that it is a glitch.

Too much feature stuffing

An application created by a reputable application design company should not have too many functionalities and features. If you are loaded with too much stuff, you can end up giving the impression that you are not clear about what you want to present to users. If users do not understand the specific reason for the application, there is a possibility that it will be uninstalled very soon. It is always better to be clear and concise about the content of an application.

Neglecting compatibility with other applications

There will not be just one application on a mobile or smart device, there are many applications installed. Sometimes one is too focused on developing an application that the compatibility factor can slip. If the application is not properly compatible with the rest of the applications or the device, a problem may arise for the user, such as device lag or abrupt closing of applications. If these things happen too much, the user will think carefully about getting rid of your app.

Summarizing…

With many opportunities in mobile app development, you can capitalize on and gain access to your own market, as long as you avoid common mistakes that have not been seen before.

If you have any kind of problem with mobile application development, you can get to know us by completing the following form. We will communicate with you with the smartest solutions that you will praise.

FuGenx is one of the Android application development company India for iPhone app development companies and the best Android apps development companies for devices in Bangalore. We are proud to be one of the iPhone apps development companies India due to our old projects and satisfied customers. Experienced top 10 mobile app development companies india developers who can run your mobile app without bugs or glitches. Contact us at [email protected] for a free quote

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remelitalia · 3 years

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Why SaaS Brand Advocacy is More Important than Ever in 2021

It’s no secret that the field of marketing is constantly evolving, and SaaS brands are not immune from the challenges that arise due to the fast-paced nature of the field. One great way SaaS companies can keep up is through brand advocacy.

2021 SaaS Trends that Affect Brand Advocacy

For starters, consider the overwhelming push toward personalization.

According to a Forbes article, 71% of consumers “feel frustrated when a shopping experience is impersonal.” 74% are displeased with websites that aren’t personalized.

This signals the need for SaaS brands to segment their content assets and interfaces to hone in on messages that speak directly to specific customers. Personalization will continue to be expected in the years to come, and brands will have to figure out how to deliver it.

In the SaaS industry, where every interaction is ideally tracked, the opportunities for personalization are enormous.

Changes to Facebook’s algorithm a few years ago have also caused organic reach for pages to remain in decline, though you may still be able to find some success in organic if you get creative.

There’s also the rise of automation to think about.

New and existing SaaS companies are investing heavily in AI and machine learning to reduce churn and win more new customers simultaneously. From services that provide A/B testing to conversational bots that capture leads on-site, brands are rapidly experimenting with new ways to optimize their content.

Why Brand Advocacy is Such a Big Deal for SaaS

Simply put, your content marketing strategy is at the core of your capacity to adapt as a SaaS brand. Beyond the basic benefits of driving traffic and raising brand awareness, an effective content strategy is essential to consistently nurture and onboard leads.

Conventional wisdom says that we should shell out piles of money for paid media or sponsoring influencer posts to grab people’s attention. However, is this sort of “pay-to-play” strategy really the best way to go?

In an era where social proof is such a powerful currency for marketers, it’s more important than ever for SaaS marketers to seek out brand advocates wherever they possibly can.

Who could possibly be better brand advocates than your own customers and employees? These people are already emotionally invested in your product’s success, and they know your brand better than anyone else.

Encouraging your own network to promote your content and product from their personal social accounts is a potential game-changer for SaaS brands. Rather than spend the resources to chase paid outlets and influencers, brands should focus on advocacy, which can produce better results in a shorter amount of time.

“By creating a product that solved a problem that a lot of people faced, it meant there were already millions of people looking for us when we launched,” Canva CEO Melanie Perkins told Forbes, “so when they found us, they told their colleagues, friends and families.”

Here are some of the biggest benefits associated with brand advocacy, along with some ways that SaaS marketers can get started with realizing them.

1. Overcome Content Overload

In an era where people are on their phones nearly 4 hours or more per day, your customers obviously have a lot to sift through.

While the concept of “quality content” might be cliché at this point, consider how a higher volume of shares highlights a piece of content as buzzworthy. This is social proof at its best.

Content shares and product recommendations work because people trust peers and thought leaders more than they trust brands and institutions.

Bear in mind that employees who serve as active advocates on social media can quickly emerge as influencers on your behalf. Indeed, transforming your own employees into thought leaders is a desirable byproduct of brand advocacy.

2. Expand Your Organic Reach through Brand Advocacy

No matter how you slice it, competition in the SaaS space is fierce.

Considering that there are approximately 8,000 brands in the martech space alone, SaaS companies must fight tooth and nail for the attention of potential customers.

Think of advocacy as a sort of numbers game. The more people promoting your content, paid or otherwise, the more likely you are to break through the noise and reach the people who need your product most.

When you encourage employees to regularly promote your content with their own social media audiences, you essentially amass a small army of promoters you can call on time and time again. Through social brand advocacy, you exponentially increase your social reach and potential to be seen by leads.

Keep in mind – in many cases, all it takes is for the right person to see a link and opt-in for a free trial to pave the way to the sale.

TOPO CEO Scott Albro notes that the smaller the company your prospect works for, the more likely he or she will be to stick with your product once the trial period expires:

“SaaS buyers won’t engage in more than one trial. Our data shows that this is particularly true in the small and medium size business market where buyers tend to comparison-shop less. You need to make sure that buyers find your trial first. You also need to make sure that you don’t squander that opportunity when you get it.”

3. Engage Your Employees to Help Grow Brand Awareness

Perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of encouraging brand advocates among employees is the actual task of asking them to do so.

While most workers would be glad to promote your content, keep in mind that brands should treat advocacy like any other sort of campaign. That means having a defined strategy and measuring performance.

However, SaaS teams often have highly specialized skill sets. You can’t expect everyone to be a seasoned content marketer and social seller, too.

Instead of having employees post content haphazardly, consider some of the tools out there that help streamline the process of internal brand advocacy. You can also help them with the content of their post.

One such tool is Smarp, which aggregates company news and industry-relevant content to categorized feeds. Team members can pick up the content that speaks to them most and schedule posts for their own profiles with just a few clicks.

This cuts down on potential wastes of time on social media and streamlines the process of sharing new content amongst your workers.

Features such as gamification signal the most active advocates within any given company, providing additional incentives for employees to become eager advocates. In addition to content aggregation, Smarp provides analytics on both a company-wide and personal level to identify top advocates.

This type of system works because it makes employees from all departments into partners in your SaaS product’s exponential sales growth success, a process which Roketto Co-founder Ulf Lonegren compares to the growth of a tree that spawns more trees:

“Make your employees proud of the work they do, make them feel like an important part of the process by reminding them how the software provides value and informing them of the successes, listen to their ideas, and provide a sales chart in the engine room that tracks the progress. Set sales goals and provide rewards for reaching those goals. Provide incentives for team members to make sales. In this world of mass marketing, word of mouth often provides the authenticity that buyers want when seeking a product, so remember that every member of your team could be that one oak tree, and from one tree many nuts can fall.”

4. Supercharge Your Social Selling

SaaS customers are heavily influenced by what they see on social media when it comes time to make purchases.

This rings true in terms of how often they see content and the sharers of that content. If social posts from sales pros, marketers, and brands themselves are deemed less worthy of people’s attention than social posts from peers and laymen, then your prospects are more likely to respond favorably to content shared by a high volume of people.

Research from Sana, published in 2018, indicates that social media is the number two driver of digital sales in the B2B sector, ranking just behind onsite buying. This is how the brand advocacy strategy can really boost your sales. The more people who share your content across social channels, the more customers you attract to your business.

According to LinkedIn, 87% of social customers have a favorable view of products that were introduced to them through their own network. By promoting products via employees, you have access to personal networks that you might not otherwise reach exclusively through a brand channel.

Last year, B2B buyers looked at 13 content pieces before selecting a vendor. Similarly, 61% of customers have made a purchase based on a recommendation from a blog.

A greater number of brand advocates translates into more brand equity in the minds of potential customers, which makes it easier for sales reps to build relationships on social channels and to close more deals in shorter sales cycles.

This is fortunate, as sales cycles need as much shortening as they can get, in order to remain scalable. The Bridge Group’s Matt Bertuzzi notes that the total contract value for a SaaS conversion correlates with the number of days it takes sales reps to seal the deal. According to his firm’s data, B2B SaaS sales cycles can last anywhere from five weeks to five months.

Dennis Koutoudis from LinkedIn SuperPowers told SalesHacker that he sees prospecting on social media, especially on LinkedIn, being the key SaaS sales opportunities:

“I predict that the usage of LinkedIn Sales Navigator by Sales Teams will increase considerably, enabling them both to zero in on their target prospects with extreme precision and also to delve deeper into Social Selling. The key here is to focus on providing value, build trust and develop solid professional relationships with target prospects that will ultimately improve sales figures. Great emphasis will also be placed on the way we present ourselves as Sales Professionals on the LinkedIn platform since with such fierce competition, now more than ever, we need to not only stand out in our professional field but also to engage in actions that will significantly increase our visibility on the LinkedIn platform.”

Prospecting platforms are major game-changers in this regard. Social selling teams can use them to scale operations, thanks to smart libraries of content assets that reps can append to posts on the fly, as well as sophisticated contact intelligence data that can be used for qualifying leads mid-discussion and enriching CRM entries.

5. Keep Your Content Budget Under Control

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 46% of brands spent less than $1000,000 on digital marketing budget in 2020. Given the emphasis on automation and other tools that could potentially cut into any given SaaS company’s budget, a leaner content marketing strategy just plain makes sense.

When your employees and customers are doing the legwork of promoting your brand, you cut out any sort of middleman when it comes to promotion. While there might be a time and place for paid media or influencers, SaaS brands should focus on an organic promotion strategy that keeps costs down.

Encouraging brand advocacy costs next to nothing compared to paid media. Additionally, popping up more and more via social media could actually score you earned media mentions as an added bonus.

Rather than paying for promotion and distribution, creating your own advocates represents a more financially sensible strategy.

Conclusion

As competition continues to emerge in the SaaS space, having voices on deck to promote your content becomes a critical piece of standing out from the crowd.

Not only does advocacy keep content marketing costs down, but allows SaaS brands to seamlessly signal their authority. Rather than pay for that same credibility, why not generate it yourself?

While marketing strategies at large never stay the same for long, brand advocacy is here to stay. If you want help growing your brand awareness or with any other content marketing needs, let us know!

The post Why SaaS Brand Advocacy is More Important than Ever in 2021 appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/saas-brand-advocacy/ via https://neilpatel.com

See the original post, Why SaaS Brand Advocacy is More Important than Ever in 2021 that is shared from https://imtrainingparadise.weebly.com/home/why-saas-brand-advocacy-is-more-important-than-ever-in-2021 via https://imtrainingparadise.weebly.com/home

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ericvick · 3 years

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Best Mutual Funds 2021? Start With 2020 Winners Like Fidelity Trend Fund

When it comes to crystal-balling the best mutual funds of 2021, start with the winners for 2020. That’s got to include the $3.04 billion Fidelity Trend Fund (FTRNX), run by Shilpa Marda Mehra.

Mehra’s Trend was one of Fidelity’s top-performing U.S. diversified stock funds in 2020. Any investor — whether in individual stocks, ETFs or mutual funds — stands to benefit from knowing what Mehra expects on Wall Street in 2021.

The crux of her outlook: A lot of stocks that were beaten down in 2020 should rebound big time in 2021.

Best Mutual Funds 2021: Help From Marquee Stocks

She detailed her reasoning — which types of stocks, and why they’re due to bounce back — in an in-depth conversation with Investor’s Business Daily.

She also spelled out her theses for marquee-name stocks that helped drive her fund in 2020.

Those names include some of 2020’s biggest winners on Wall Street, including chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA), cloud-based workflow management software specialist ServiceNow (NOW), online creative tool titan Adobe (ADBE), battery and electric-car maker Tesla (TSLA) and apparel maker Nike (NKE).

On Track To Be One Of The Best Mutual Funds For 2021

Trend Fund’s 2020 record was rock solid. Going into Dec. 30, Trend was up 46.40% for the year vs. 17.46% for the S&P 500 and 35.07% for its large-cap growth rivals tracked by Morningstar Direct. That put it in front of 84% of its peer group.

Trend is a 2020 IBD Best Mutual Funds Award winner. It won that distinction by topping the S&P 500 in calendar 2019 as well as over the three, five and 10 years ended Dec. 31.

Its pace this year would make it a Best Mutual Funds Award repeat winner in 2021.

See The Top Performing Mutual Funds In Q4 And 2020 See IBD’s Stock Market Outlook for 2021 Does Your Fund Own Any Of These Top Performing Companies Of 202o

Mehra has run Trend since August 2018. Prior to taking its helm, she was an analyst who rated stocks and covered segments of the financial sector. Early in her career, she tracked the generic-drug industry.

Mehra, who is 40 years old, spoke with IBD from an office in her Boston home.

What Shilpa Marda Mehra Seeks In Stocks

IBD: Shilpa, what do you look for in stocks?

Shilpa Marda Mehra: I look for companies with durable competitive moats and profiles. When I’m thinking about investment themes and trends, I think about durability over the next five to 10 years.

Many stocks are at premium valuations. So thinking about sustainability over a very long time helps de-risk the stock’s multiple to some extent.

I look for durability of secular growth trends and competitive moats.

IBD: You also own a smaller group of stocks that are less proven, right?

Mehra: Yes, I have a smaller basket of stocks with a large emerging-market opportunity ahead of them. Those companies are structurally improving, and the market doesn’t yet fully grasp the implications.

What Makes A Stock Durable: Companies With Vital Products

IBD: A stock’s durability often comes from selling some mission-critical product, correct?

Mehra: Yes. And themes are also very important. I spend a lot of time trying to understand why competitors will not be able to disrupt an industry and overtake an existing leader. Competition over the long term is what can make or break a business.

2021 Market Outlook By Manager Of One The Best Mutual Funds

IBD: I know you invest bottom-up rather than based on top-down macro trends. But with your keen understanding of the market, I’d like to know what your market outlook is for 2021.

Mehra: I’m very focused on owning durable growers with big competitive moats. But incrementally there’s some opportunity at the intersection of durable growth and attractive valuations. Those are industries impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Now that we have visibility to a vaccine, it appears we may be able to resume normal life if not in 2021 then maybe 2022. As we return to normal, that could unleash a lot of demand from consumers, who have saved up a lot of money.

They haven’t gone to restaurants, traveled, gone out. So some sectors that look interesting are in the travel area, travel services, that whole travel ecosystem. Leisure, restaurants, live events look interesting. There are a number of durable companies that were severely impacted, where I’m looking for companies that match my criteria.

IBD: You’re looking for bargains?

Mehra: My philosophy is durable growth. But you have to be opportunistic, find mispriced companies and assets. We’ve gone through a lot this year. But I’m optimistic that hard-hit areas can recover.

GPUs Provide Nvidia’s Moat

IBD: Let’s talk about some of your durable growers. Am I right in thinking that chipmaker Nvidia’s moat is mainly due to the graphics processing units it produces? GPUs are better than ordinary central processing units (CPUs) at performing fast math. These are essential for things like video games, computer graphics, autonomous driving, cryptocurrency mining, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI)?

Mehra: Nvidia has leadership in several of those areas. But competitors have seen how successful Nvidia has been and are trying to get in there.

IBD: Nvidia also has a popular software development platform, giving developers access to libraries of operating code for developing new apps, right?

Mehra: The combination of that and its GPUs creates a very strong competitive moat around Nvidia.

Why One Of The Best Mutual Funds Likes ServiceNow

IBD: ServiceNow started by supporting customers’ IT departments. They’ve expanded into support for other departments, like human resources and facilities management. Is that what makes them a dominant software-as-a-service (SaaS) player?

Mehra: Yes. Clearly SaaS over the last several years has become critical for businesses. The work-from-home dynamic imposed by the pandemic highlighted the importance of being strong digitally..

And ServiceNow is a dominant player in the enterprise digital transformation, whose pace accelerated during the pandemic.

Every time they expand into a new enterprise department, they’re showing potential for another TAM (total addressable market).

And once a company selects a SaaS provider for their digital transformation, it is sticky. That provider becomes embedded into their systems.

Still, competitors try to imitate them, but not on a similar path. So the competition is something we’ll need to watch.

How Adobe Helps One Of The Best Mutual Funds

IBD: Adobe’s creative tools are essential to people creating online marketing campaigns, aren’t they?

Mehra: Adobe has benefited from a lot of key secular trends.

Adobe has benefited from media going digital and marketing going digital. This is another sticky area. Once you train on a certain system, it’s hard to move to another. That’s part of Adobe’s competitive moat.

Tesla Reached A Sweet Spot

IBD: Earnings-per-share growth by Tesla has jumped. It was just 5% four quarters ago. The past three are 140%, 300% and 105%. Why the big bounce?

Mehra: They finally reached a crossover point. Early on, many emerging technology companies don’t make money. Then, as they get to a certain scale, their margins start to come through. That’s what’s happening with Tesla.

There’s a lot of demand for their vehicles. They got to that sweet spot where there’s not just revenue growth but earnings growth.

They still have low penetration, leaving them room to grow. But you have to watch for new competitors.

One Of The Best Mutual Funds Benefits From The Nike Digital Experience

IBD: Was the pandemic sales slowdown for Nike a temporary setback from which they’ll recover?

Mehra: Yes. Consumers did not know what would happen next. So buying a new pair of athletic shoes was a low priority for most people.

But Nike benefits from big long-term trends. People are dressing more casually. There’s more focus on being outdoors. People exercise. The whole “athleisure” apparel industry is doing well.

Nike in particular has had strong innovation. That’s what consumers want. They want cool workout clothes that are unique.

And Nike’s digital experience is something they’ve invested in. Now they have a leadership position. Consumers love shopping with Nike. They’ve made it easy to shop, compare prices, find the right sizes.

Has Chipotle Resolved Problems?

IBD: Has Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) resolved problems that led to multimillion-dollar fines due to diners getting sick from foodborne ailments?

Mehra: They had issues that they’ve mostly resolved. But there is an inherent risk in this industry.

Now Chipotle is a good business with high returns and a really good value proposition. Consumers like their foods, which are affordable and fresh. Chipotle has combined that with a great digital experience. They’ve done innovative things on the digital side.

I order from them frequently. You can have a fairly seamless experience, ordering on your app, picking it up. You don’t have to have contact with anyone. The importance of that has been highlighted in the last several months.

Less-Proven Stocks Help Position Trend To Be One Of The Best Mutual Funds For 2021

IBD: Give me an example please of a stock in that small second basket of equities you own.

Mehra: Sure. Their path is something more uncertain than the traditional core basket of durable growers. But they’re companies with huge potential. The question you have to ask is, “Is there a value proposition that consumers really want? Are there competitors?”

One is Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR). It’s a small, niche semiconductor company. They have a pretty small share of the analog semiconductor market, about 2%.

An interesting thing about analog chips is that they have long product cycles, close to 10 years. So innovation on analog chips is limited.

But Monolithic has brought innovation to that market. They’ve done that by combining digital and analog capabilities. So their chips are small but very powerful.

Chips like this are used for a lot of things that we’ve seen growth in, such as cloud-based data centers, AI, robotics, battery management.

And their founder leads the company. I always like founder-led companies. It has a very strong culture behind it, a desire to succeed.

IBD: What are your main strengths as an investor?

Mehra: First, my ability to parse through a lot of information and figure out what’s important. You have to avoid getting lost in the details, news flow and random information.

Second, I have a long-term mindset and believe that duration is one of the key advantages I have as an investor.

Third, good judgement is another strength. My job centers around weighing pros and cons and assessing risk-reward in a balanced and unbiased way.

Finally, I love what I do.

Follow Paul Katzeff on Twitter at @IBD_PKatzeff for tips about retirement planning and active mutual fund managers who consistently outperform the market.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE:

See IBD Stock Lists & Get Pass/Fail Ratings For All Your Stocks With IBD Digital

You Need This Much Retirement Savings At Your Age And Income

Check Out IBD’s New IBD Live Panel Discussion

How Long Will Your $1 Million Last In Retirement?

Which Stocks Are Breaking Out Or Near A Pivot Point? Check MarketSmith

#Fidelity #Fund #Funds #Mutual #start #Trend #Winners

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michaelandy101-blog · 4 years

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13 Great Landing Page Examples You'll Want to Copy in 2020

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/13-great-landing-page-examples-youll-want-to-copy-in-2020/

13 Great Landing Page Examples You'll Want to Copy in 2020

While many landing pages look different and use a variety of interesting strategies to pull in audiences, they all serve one major purpose. These pages get website visitors to convert to the next stage in the buyer’s journey.

What is the purpose of a landing page?

A landing page offers a prospective customer a resource, such as an ebook or webinar signup, in exchange for their basic contact information. The goal of these pages is to generate leads while you pull prospects further into the customer funnel.

Rather than serving as a basic advertisement that shows a customer a product, a landing page aims to engage and delight a customer by offering them something that relates to the product or the company’s industry. When they fill out the form and receive a reward of interesting content, they might be even more likely to trust your brand and become a customer.

Quick tip: Want an easy way to add a form to your landing page? HubSpot’s free form builder tool can help you fill your CRM with leads from your website.

Let’s talk through an example of when a landing page can be especially effective. If a business wants to sell an AI product that helps salespeople, they might create a landing page that offers audiences a free video on how to use AI in the sales industry. Interested audiences might offer their contact information in exchange for the valuable information. If they enjoy the video they’ve received, they might be more likely to respond to or purchase a product from a company rep who calls them.

In another scenario, a publishing company that targets an audience of chief executives might create a landing page that invites audiences to sign up for a webinar hosted by an executive at a major company.

After giving their email address on the signup form presented on the landing page, the leads get an email with the webinar dates and log in information, as well as instructions on how to sign up for the publication’s newsletter or subscription. If the user is pleased by the webinar, they might sign up for the newsletter or a subscription to keep up with similar publication content.

Although their purpose is simple enough in theory, actually designing a successful landing page requires some detailed planning and creative testing.

Even after launching your landing page, you’ll want to pay attention to conversion rates to see how well it’s doing.

What is a good landing page conversion rate?

According to WordStream, the average landing page conversion rate is 2.35% across industries, with the top 25th percentile of landing pages hitting 5.31% or higher.

To determine your conversion rate, simply divide the number of conversions a webpage generates by the number of people who visited that page.

If your conversion rate isn’t close to the average just yet, don’t worry. Nailing those percentages can be a bit challenging at first, especially is you have a lot of regular page visitors. Luckily, there are a number of simple conversion rate optimization strategies that can help you boost your current rate quickly.

Regardless of what your business is selling or the conversion action you hope to instigate, it’s helpful to get inspired by seeing what other great landing pages look like. And because there’s no one “right” way of designing a landing page, you’ll want to check out examples from lots of different industries for different stages of the buying process.

Want to get inspired? Check out the great landing page examples below.

We don’t have access to the analytics for each of these landing pages, so I can’t tell you specifically how well they convert visitors, contacts, leads, and customers. But many of them do follow best practices while also implementing a few new experiments that could give you ideas for your own landing pages.

13 Great Examples of Landing Page Design

1. Lyft

We love that on Lyft’s landing page, they zero in on their drivers’ main motivation: earning money easily.

We also love that, in addition to the “Apply Now” form, drivers can type their city and the number of hours they might drive for Lyft in a week to calculate how much they’d make. When visitors fill out that information and press “Calculate,” they aren’t taken to a new page. Instead, they see a dollar amount followed by a new call-to-action button to “Apply Now” (which, once clicked, takes drivers up to the form).

By offering these two conversion paths, they’re able to address two different types of people in the conversion path: those who are ready to make the decision now and those who need a little more information before they convert.

2. The Professional Wingman

Okay, so the whole idea of having a professional wingman to help you find dates and a meaningful relationship is already pretty cool. But when you’re faced with the prospect of hiring one, it also raises questions. How does it work? How much does it cost? Is this really going to help me?

That’s why we love this landing page for Thomas Edwards, the original Professional Wingman himself, which outlines exactly what a complimentary coaching session is going to achieve. Plus, it’s clear that it’s complimentary, thanks to the boldly-colored call-to-action button above the fold.

Once you click that button, you aren’t taken to a new page. Instead, an interstitial form appears right there. And while it does request a lot of information — some of it a bit personal — it also sends the message that The Professional Wingman is going to take this seriously, but only if you do, too.

3. Muck Rack

This landing page design has it all. It’s visually appealing and interactive, offers scannable yet descriptive headers about Muck Rack’s services, and uses quotes from industry professionals as social proof. Plus, the page is intuitive and easy to navigate.

The cool part about this landing page is that it can appeal to both of Muck Rack’s audiences. The top of the page is split into two, featuring their two different services side by side. Once a visitor moves his or her mouse over either of the “find journalists” or the “build free portfolio” CTAs, a very simple form appears — and that’s important, so as not to distract the user from the task at hand.

4. Cigital

There are a few things that make this Cigital landing page work. It has simple and relevant imagery. The headline is straightforward and the description of the ebook informs viewers of the specific value they will get by downloading it. There is only one call-to-action — “READ THE EBOOK” — that stands out on the page thanks to a bright yellow CTA button.

The only thing we’d change about this landing page is that we’d remove the navigation bar at the top. They tend to distract visitors and lead them away from the intended action. Not only is this a landing page design best practice, but we’ve also conducted A/B tests that’ve shown removing navigation links from landing pages increases conversion rates.

5. Khan Academy

The hard part about using your homepage as a landing page is that you have to cater to several different types of audiences. But Khan Academy’s homepage does that very well. This page is clearly designed for three different types of visitors: those who want to learn something, those who want to teach, and parents who are interested in using Khan Academy for their kids. Plus, how motivational is the emblazoned “You can learn anything” text at the top?

The remainder of the page is designed for viewers who are not completely familiar with Khan Academy. It colorfully and largely spells out the key benefits of using the learning platform — all of which are easy to scan and understand. There’s also a recurring CTA: “Start learning now.” As soon as viewers feel they have enough information, they can click the CTA to get taken back up to the form at the top of the page without having to scroll.

6. Club W

A little bit of delightful copy can go a long way on your landing page. We love the playful little aside — “(Hint: It’s Wine)” — that Club W included below the header of their corporate gifting landing page. It humanizes the brand and makes them likable, which could have a positive impact on their conversion rate.

The images below that header make a nice use of negative space, showing the user exactly what his or her gift recipient might actually receive, should they choose to gift with Club W. And, of course, there’s that bold call to action — “Email Us”.

The one thing we’d change? The CTA prompts the users email software to open, which drives traffic away from the site and the browser entirely. A form might be more effective here — not only would Club W be able to dictate what information it wants to capture, but also, it would keep the user on-site.

7. Codecademy

I like this page because it’s simple in both copy and design. The image above the fold is a computer screen displaying an HTML bracket with a blinking cursor — a whimsical, clear visual to accompany the form on the right.

The form itself is simple and only requires an email address, username, password, and a validation that you’re not a robot to create an account. Or, you can just use your Facebook or Google Plus login, shortening the conversion path even further.

For visitors who need more information before creating an account, the landing page also offers a video below the fold that explains their concept and value by way of a real-life success story. Again, this helps make the potentially intimidating world of coding more approachable for beginners.

Those who need even more convincing can continue scrolling for additional testimonials and other forms of social proof.

8. Poached

I don’t think we’ve ever lived in a time when, culturally, we’ve been so food-obsessed. Poached has turned that into a B2B model with a platform to connect proprietors and culinary talent.

When you visit the homepage, there’s no mystery about what you’re there to do — the giant “Post a job” and “Choose a city” calls to action help with that. And once you click on one of them, you’re taken to a no-frills form to become a member or log in, or a list of jobs in each city. It’s colorful and comprehensive — and, it makes us hungry.

9. Breather

Here’s another example of clever, delightful design on a landing page. As soon as you visit Breather.com, there’s an instant call to action: indicate where you want to find a space. Plus, it uses location services to figure out where you are, providing instant options nearby.

We love how Breather used simple, to-the-point copy to let the visitor know what the company does, followed immediately by the CTA to select a city. And if you need to scroll down for more information, you can see that Breather played with the microcopy with personality (“no commitment, ever”), reminding us there are real humans behind the design. That brings us a little closer to the brand. The negative space and soothing color scheme are also aligned with the product — essentially, room to breathe.

10. Startup Institute

Visitors to your website won’t hand over their personal information without knowing what they’re going to get in return. On its landing page, Startup Institute makes abundantly clear what will happen after you apply by listing a Q&A right beside the form. It might prompt some people to say, “They read my mind!”

To avoid hesitancy to fill out a form, use your landing page to set expectations upfront. That clears the air, and can also weed out the people who don’t take your content, product or service seriously.

11. Edupath

Who is your landing page’s target audience? While most of Edupath’s website content is directed toward students, there are sections dedicated to advising parents on helping their teenagers through college applications and SAT preparation. The landing page below is in one of these sections.

When parents fill out their teenager’s name, email address, and mobile number, a link to download the Edupath app is sent directly to them. The folks at Edupath know students are likely to do something if their parents ask them to — especially if it means they don’t have to surrender their phones.

Plus, it’s an easy, one-click process. This whole conversion path is a clever and helpful way to get the apps on more students’ phones by way of their parents.

12. Taster’s Club

If there’s anything we enjoy more than a fine whiskey, it’s a whiskey club homepage that makes it easy to either join or learn more about membership. Case in point: Taster’s Club, which immediately serves up those very two CTAs on its landing page — which also happens to be its homepage.

For those to wish to learn more, clicking that CTA will immediately scroll the user down to colorful, image-rich details on what a Taster’s Club membership includes. Keep scrolling, and you get user testimonials.

But clicking the “Join Now” button is where the real fun begins. After doing that, you get to pick your poison — that is, the type of whiskey you like the most — and view the membership or gifting options available for it. Once you make your selections, you’re taken to an easy-to-navigate checkout page to enter your payment information. Good design and ease of use? We’ll drink to that.

13. Microsoft IT Showcase

The landing page below has been used to market and generate leads for one episode of Microsoft’s IT Showcase webinar series.

This simple and straightforward design does a great job of presenting why the webinar being offered is important to IT professionals. Along with a quick blurb describing what the webinar will discuss, the page also includes links to similar webinars, details on the speakers, and links to Microsoft resources that touch on the topics that will be discussed.

An IT company which has access to thought leaders or experts in their industry could similarly use this webinar landing page strategy to generate both leads and prospective customer trust. Audiences who feel informed after reading the landing page might sign up expecting the webinar to be insightful.

If the webinar seems informative and credible, these audiences will think that the IT company has an expertise in the product and might have quality product offerings. This will make them more willing to talk to a representative to learn more or purchase a product.

Ready to build your landing page?

If these examples have inspired you, but you’re not a design expert, we’ve also created a great list of free, professionally designed landing page templates.

If you’re looking for more landing page design examples, check out some of our favorite HubSpot landing page examples. You can also check out this quick guide to landing page design.

Originally published Nov 13, 2020 9:47:00 AM, updated November 13 2020

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mattyunijourneybrief13 · 4 years

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An Investigation into Potential Job Roles & Agencies - Part 2

1. Junior User Experience Designer, FinancialForce

https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/job-listing/graduate-user-experience-designer-financialforce-JV_IC2698423_KO0,33_KE34,48.htm?jl=3715772076&utm_campaign=google_jobs_apply&utm_source=google_jobs_apply&utm_medium=organic

https://www.financialforce.com

The job opportunity at FinancialForce is a great one, however I won’t be able to apply for it this time as I will still be at university when the application deadline is, and I want to develop myself and my portfolio further until the end of my university course in May. Nevertheless, I believe this would be a good opportunity for me as it is close to Leeds, and is easily accessible by the motorway.

FinancialForce are a company that ‘accelerate business value with comprehensive best practices and the most intelligent analytics’.

The role itself is part of the UX team. The attractive aspect of this job is that it is a junior designer role, which would be perfect for me in my current career position. There will be an opportunities in the role to ease into more responsibility, which again is a positive as it would help me progress in the company.

What will the company offer to me in the role?

A structured plan to enable me to realise my potential and mature as a designer

Training opportunities

A place for me in a growing, market leading company

Facts about the role

The role is based in Harrogate, North Yorkshire

Expected start September 2021

I will have a dedicated mentor (who they call a Graduate Success Coach) from day 1, offering support and guidance

This is a permanent position from day 1

The first 6 months of your FinancialForce career will be spent working through our supportive Graduate Program

How can I be successful in the role?

I need to be a good communicator, with the ability to articulate my ideas effectively

Be a self starter, motivated with an appetite to learn

I must have a good understanding of a user centred design process

Experience in creating design assets - user journey maps, wireframes and prototypes

What else would give me an advantage to get the role

Worked in an Agile environment

Hands on experience with user research and usability testing

Experience of business software or a business environment

The application includes a link to your LinkedIn profile, as well as your CV and any additional files of your work. This is a reminder of how important it is to have a social profile, especially LinkedIn.

2. Pocketworks

https://pocketworks.co.uk

Pocketworks is an agency in Leeds that design apps. The company was founded in 2012 by Tobin Harris, who realised that companies were not realising their potential with their apps. I have spotted the same thing! So it is good that we both think alike.

This company sounds very interesting to work for, as they share the same ambition as me: creating experiences for clients that make their lives easier, in this case making them profit.

It was interesting to see their work process, which is to innovate, deliver, improve and learn by using data analysis and prototypes. They are aware of the UX process, which is beneficial to me as an aspiring UX Designer, as I will develop by working this way.

The project that stuck out to me was the instant match analysis data that gets sent to football referees. This project sounds really interesting, and even though the details were private, it stuck out to me. I am a massive football fan, so projects like this are unique and I would love to work on a project like this.

Here is what the client had to say about the project:

“Our users have a challenging lifestyle, often on the move. We wanted to develop a valuable and convenient tool for them to benefit from every day, and it was vital we partnered with a company that got this vision."

“We were scouting for leading expertise and skills, as well as passion for what we wanted to achieve, and we found that in Pocketworks."

"The project ran smoothly, the teams collaborated every step of the way and the final app, used by more than 500 match officials and staff across all UK professional leagues, is testament to this.”

Mike Adamson, Head of Systems & Analysis, PGMOL

3. Supremo

To look for some more agencies in and around the Manchester area, I found an agency called Supremo. It actually neighbours Salford university, which is handy.

https://www.supremo.co.uk

Supremo have a unique website, with a circle icon as a mouse. This was a fun addition to the website and shows that they are aware of design.

Their values are admirable:

- Straight talking

- Warm welcome

- Big ideas

- Open ears

I think this is very refreshing to hear, as most agencies seem to be slightly hard to reach, and it feels like you are not very welcome with the door closed. The fact that they are encouraging you to get in touch really gives you that extra confidence in yourself to get in touch with them.

They offer students positions to gain experience, which absolutely took me back. I’ve never seen anything like this before; it is so fantastic to see that they are aware of the struggles of students starting out in their design career. For example, the description below mentions the benefits such as working alongside professionals, networking and gaining skills to become ready for future employers. Just the fact that they are aware of this as an agency and are offering a service to help, is genuinely incredible.

The available roles are a design placement and a development placement. The design placement looks extremely attractive to me at this moment in time. To apply for the role, it says that you need to simply email them.

Their portfolio is easy to navigate; helped by a filter with branding, UX Design and web development.

My favourite piece of work that stood out to me was Walk the Bear, which is an app that acts as therapy, which involves walking and talking. This idea is unique and it is relatable to me, as I love a walk in the countryside.

The idea is to walk and talk with a psychologist, outside in beautiful places. What a fantastic idea!

What is behind the idea? Why walking and talking?

Exercise - Research indicates that physical activity produces changes in your brain that make you happier and more relaxed.

Fresh Air - Regular doses of fresh air help to boost your immune system, reduce stress, and maintain good overall health and well-being.

Beautiful Scenery - Trees, lakes and other natural and urban scenery inspire you to look beyond yourself to new ideas and opportunities.

https://www.walkthebear.org/about/

4. Eden Agency

https://eden.agency/work/ai-android-app

Eden Agency is an agency that began with two software developers. The team is now almost 20 people. The team includes developers and system architects, designers and UX designers, strategists, testers, project and account managers.

They have always adapted to technology, which has helped them grow as an agency. They’ve developed smartphone apps as well as interfaces for XR since the Oculus Rift was released.

Again, their aim is to create digital services that improve lives and communities.

The piece of work that stood out to me the most was an app for Hillarys, which is a company that fits blinds. They wanted to give customers an idea of the way their windows could look before booking an appointment with them, which is why they asked for Eden Agency to help.

The brief was to:

‘Help us sell the dream of great shutters to customers by letting them see the dressings in their window before our advisors visit.’

The idea is for the customer to take a picture of their window, and then choose from available blinds that can be fitted into the space. The user has 4 options to choose from: Style, Panel, Colours & Louvres.

5. UI/UX Designer Internship, WellBe

https://angel.co/company/wellbe-3/jobs/939171-ui-ux-designer-internship?utm_campaign=google_jobs_apply&utm_source=google_jobs_apply&utm_medium=organic

Another avenue I could go down is an unpaid internship, which may not be possible however if I were to change my living arrangements and move back home this could be a possibility. It is always important to keep an open mind about your career path.

An unpaid internship has its benefits, as it is not as popular due to there being no salary, however the experience and the networking opportunities would be priceless. This would be beneficial to me as I have no proper UX experience in terms of a paid job, and I will be able to grow my portfolio. Also, doing unpaid work is attractive to future employers, as it demonstrates your willingness to learn, and that money isn’t the driving factor in your career.

My responsibilities in the role will be to:

Generate wireframes and prototypes

Develop design concepts from initial sketches through to polished final screens and assets

Create and illustrate content for blogs, website, press and social media channels

Translate high level design requirements into wireframes and engaging, functional user interfaces

Assist with conducting user research

For this role, I will need to have:

Strong UX/UI skills

Solid design education or background

Ability to problem solve, nothing is unachievable

Aptitude for learning

Start-up mentality

Inquisitive, passionate and enthusiastic about getting things done

Creative and thorough, with high attention to detail

Positive, can do, go-getting energy

Ability to take direction but also be a self-start and come with solutions

My position would be reviewed after 6 months. If it is going well, I could be able to stay on as a full time paid employee.

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emorphistechno · 4 years

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Fintech App Development — The Importance of Humans in FinTech

Introduction

The arrival of automation, machine learning points towards one thing: eliminating the requirement of hiring employees (or more precisely, humans!). But today’s world is dominated by FinTech software solution where humans are not just essential, they cannot be replaced.

Just a few years ago, it was unimaginable to think of taking financial decisions without considering humans. Now come to the present scenario, most of the workings of the banking, insurance, and mortgages sector are based entirely on digital mode.

So, one thing is clear that FinTech app development company is creating a revolution in the old FinTech sector with the latest technology. Nevertheless, the most successful brands in FinTech sectors are those that lay importance to their human power. It is because; customers yearn for FinTech app development which runs with the help of knowledgeable human employees.

There has been concern among some people that the rise of FinTech will make the role of humans more obsolete in financial services. Another fear has been arising that with FinTech going digital; there will be the departure of personalized and human touch to the financial services.

However, all the above-given fears will have no impact on the working of the banks. Experts have told that the new technologies will only shift the roles of humans and not throw out from the banks.

In the following blog, let’s examine some reasons that will illustrate the importance of humans in the success of FinTech. Furthermore, by going through it; financial firms will get better tips to make their brand a victorious over the long haul.

I. For Clients, Money is their Personal Custody that can be valued by Another Person only

Most people know about the financial expert who expert its weightage in considering money as a tool. Not wrong anyway! The perception and attitude of people about money are affected by their upbringing, personal experience, and society.

Furthermore, money is also associated with the emotion of the people as it allows them to purchase what they need the most. One such example is buying a dream home is the requirement of most of the people of the USA.

Therefore, when there is an involvement of highly emotional transactions, almost three-fourth of the US citizens need humans to answer their financial-related issues. Without them, the customers will refrain from opting for online financial transactions.

The takeaway from the given fact is that the FinTech app development companies need to understand the emotions of their clients and be ready to offer them financial services with experienced human support.

II. Human Employees have Better Understanding of Customer Needs than Robots

It is difficult for professionals to manage their time between tasks related to customers and back-office in the financial service industry. It requires more time, and thus they get less time to get to know about their customers.

However, with the arrival of FinTech, professionals can have a sigh of relief as the given technology comes with a solution to their problem. The FinTech solution helps in identifying opportunities related to the quality investment by involving a large amount of data/ The given data can be analyzed by the FinTech software on a 24/7 basis and in the more effective way than a human could do it.

Nevertheless, there is an effective role played by the advisor (of course human), all thanks to the usage of AI. Although the data analysis is done by AI, getting access to the client’s information at a personal level is not their forte. They still need human intervention to convert the raw data into meaningful information that can be understood by the client.

What’s more, it will be difficult for the AI to develop a strong client relationship for a longer duration that will be based on mutual trust. It is an essential aspect of many financial services especially wealth management.

So, collaborating with AI-based data analysis, advisors for wealth management can help the client to interpret the information well and make use of better choices. They will spend more time with the clients and provide more insights that will help to offer great customer satisfaction with also winning their trust.

III. Humans (or Employees) act as a Trusted Escort for Financial Well-Being of Clients

Although mobile technology helps the consumers in gaining general awareness about their financial condition in a well-planned manner, still it lacks in guiding them to enhance their financial prospects effectively. Furthermore, offering insights and taking action on it is not the strength of the automation technology and can affect the company’s prospects in the long-run.

With the availability of humans, the FinTech industry can extend beyond its traditional role of just keeping the financial assets. They can extend their services by offering their customers with trusted advice. It can include: helping them in maintaining positive behavior for longer-term, providing benefits of saving from a financial point of view and help them in managing and proper utilization of their credit.

IV. Experience is what Matters the Most

The present age belongs to the customer experience. Almost the majority of the customers expect from the FinTech app development company to offer products and services that meet their needs and expectations. Moreover, most of the banking enterprises said that they give high priority to offering the best customer experience than towards cost-cutting, sales, and compliance.

But when FinTech is given due consideration, it will require more effort in offering the finest customer experience than the development of the best technology. The given aspect can be clearly illustrated from the fact that little more than one-fourth of the banking customers use digital mediums and comes under the least satisfied customer group.

There is a saying that when the window is clean, no one notices any issue. Same as it is, when technology works well, no one, not even the customers, notices any issue. However, whenever an issue crept out in the software (just like piling-up of dust on the windows), everyone notices and results in increased frustration among the customers.

It is a known fact that with the availability of technology, the life of people has become much easier. Nonetheless, it is still far from arousing a feeling of wellness, connection, and gratitude just like humans can do it.

Employees have experience dealing with numerous types of customers and know well about their liking and disliking. They have enormous experience in handling them and can prove to be effective in offering the best financial products and services to meet their expectations well.

V. Automation might Take Some Jobs, but will also Create New Jobs

It is the new phase of the banking industry where digitalization is dominating almost every sphere of the business world. Due to the advent of automation, many have feared that it will eat into the jobs of people thus rendering them without any employment.

Various jobs such as cashiers, data entry operators, and bank tellers now come under automation or new FinTech software as they tend to complete it swiftly with low cost. Such types of jobs will not be available to the people in the future.

Nevertheless, the arrival of new technologies such as AI in the banking and financial sector has changed the rule. How? The answer is that with it come new job opportunities that will offer more employment to the people. Notable of the newer roles include AI managers and architects, data scientists, platform support engineers, and AI specialists.

So, opening up of new digitalized profiles for banking personnel have conveyed that humans will remain indispensable to the financial sector and will remain a part of it.

Wrapping Up

So, the above-given facts are something that should be in the remembrance of the people when they have a concern about the replacement of humans with technologies in the financial service industries.

By having a closure examination, one thing is sure that FinTech will result in the improvement of human services in the financial industries. Although, technology has made the financial transaction easy when it matters the most, i.e. money; people will go for personalized experience via humans.

Originally published at – https://medium.com/@emorphis.technologies/fintech-app-development-the-importance-of-humans-in-fintech-e7624c1865ec

#Fintech app development company #Fintech application development #Fintech software solution #Fintech app development #Fintech app development companies #fintech website development

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chiauve · 7 years

Text

Algernon - Day 8

It didn't seem to matter what you were made of, metal, polymers, bone, flesh, if you lay on one side of your face on a hard surface long enough it would start to hurt. Really bad. Compound that pain on top of the fact Jet still had a bleeding hole in his mouth, a dislocated jaw, and now a nice bruise where his asshole of an assailant dropped him, and Jet was more than happy to keep blacking out.

That and the man kept ranting at him, about how much Jet had cost, about while labeled as damaged he'd been advertised as a secret government robot head found in the rubble of New York. About how he wanted an AI, not just a dumb old brain in a tin can.

My heart bleeds for you, Jet thought, oh wait, that's my fucking mouth.

"What the hell am I supposed to do with this," the man muttered, sitting down and regarding Jet.

Contacting my friends and letting me leave would be nice.

Instead Jet got a rag stuffed in his mouth and was left alone for the night. He wished his emergency power reserves would quit already as he lay there, pain throbbing through him at near every point and distorting whatever natural concept of the passage of time he may have had.

He couldn't tell if he was having nightmares or hallucinating as monsters prowled around him, scraping at his skin with metal, rusty claws and laughing. One held up Albert's head that smiled at him crookedly before it burned black, mouth and eye sockets empty and wide, before it crumbled to dust, smoking from the heat of the sun. Then the monster morphed into a savior tank and slammed its heavy arm down on Jet.

His eyes snapped open. There was light and the man was once again pacing around the room, talking to someone, though his image and voice seemed to fade in and out. Jet couldn't stay conscious and didn't bother trying.

"Yeah, it's a cyborg. Black Ghost model. …want to study advanced AIs not this…yeah it works…damaged…that's why I called you, you're into cybernetics……hell no I paid too much for this stupid thing…low price, how about that…lost time and money…"

He woke up again to fingers in his mouth and regretted his broken jaw. Cyborgs had one hell of a bite. It stung and ached as the dried blood was wiped clear and cords inserted into the emergency port.

"Might as well get something out of this," the man grumbled, "there's a background AI in there, though it's inactive, let's see if I can access that."

Jet shut his eyes again. So much for holding down the fort until he was rescued.

He was shunted aside and stripped open, his mind itself violated as the emergency control port was activated and the secondary AI took over, ready for commands. He couldn't even form imagery to control the cybernetics and was instead submerged under an endless stream of binary.

Nothing more than a ghost in carefully crafted machine.

But I'm human, he thought, almost begging.

I'm human.

After his AI specs had been stripped and his translator and short range scanners removed, Jet found himself plugged into a new power source and put into storage. He tried to self-destruct as he was shut away but that too had been deactivated. He had no outs.

Fine, this was better anyway. No more fighting to keep anyone out, no more probing into his mind. No more breaking bones and drills. He just had to wait here until the team found him. He could do that.

It was so dark and the power-pack too warm.

He slept and it helped, his various pains beginning to fade to dull aches every time he woke up. He wondered how he could feel so exhausted when he had no body.

He eventually couldn't sleep anymore and sat in the darkness. He tried to repair the damage to his secondary cybernetic brain, but he was disregarded. He'd have to work to regain control, if he even could.

Come on guys, any time now.

It had been days or maybe just hours, he couldn't tell, when he started seeing things. First the supposed walls grew scales and moved like a breathing animal, and then beetles started crawling around. Somewhere he thought he heard a symphony, but he wasn't familiar enough with any and it was just the same false notes over and over. It was eventually replaced by random bouts of screaming. Jet shut his eyes as though it would help.

Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer…

Negative two thousand one hundred and seventy-eight bottles of beer on the wall, negative two thousand one hundred and seventy-eight bottles of beer…

Take one down, taunt the starving children with it because you have nothing why are you trying to give beer to kids and is this a dry state what the fuck is even up with that and toss it in the air look magic!

Negative two thousand one hundred and seventy-nine bottles of beer on the wall!

One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small, and the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all…

Why did I get into that fight anyway? What was the point? Jets versus Sharks, how stupid. I was such a stupid kid I'm sorry I'm so sorry I killed you…

About the third time Albert showed up and yelled at him Jet finally started to cry, or would have had he the tears to spare.

I should have gone back for you, I'm sorry, why did you have to do that? Why you? I would have done it for you, for any of you! Please don't go…

The lazarus cyborgs opened the door and grabbed him, dragging him out into the burning dark as skyscrapers fell around them, roaring.

I knew, I knew!

How many people died, they shrieked at him, how many died for profit?

What could I do?!

They threw him back into the dark.

Someone please answer me. Please. Open the door I'll tell you what you want…

The darkness was split by an igniting lighter and the embers of a cigarette, glowing onto his mother's face. She took a drag and then put the cigarette in his mouth.

Hang in there a little longer, kiddo, she said and smiled.

"Hey there, cyborg head!"

The light blinded Jet as the door to his prison opened. He blinked and the left eye adjusted, the right still doing its own thing and allowing too much light in.

The man was in a good mood and was smiling as he pulled Jet out. Jet for his part was ecstatic. He was out! Here was a person! He didn't care who it was and the abuse he suffered by this man was forgotten, he was out of the dark and the heat. How long had he been in there?

Jet was set onto the workbench while the man went to work replacing his power-pack with a smaller model and extra fluid and oxygen capsules. Jet looked around best he could. There was no computer in sight but what looked like a reinforced cardboard box.

"Finally found a buyer. Had to sell you pretty cheap due to the damage and the fact your core systems are from the 60's, but at least I'll get some of my money back."

What?

A new power source attached, including fluid and oxygen, and the man began wrapping Jet in cotton batting followed by plastic wrap.

What are you doing?! No, please don't! Wait! Hook me back up, I'll give you everything! Tell you anything just please don't!

Don't send me away! How will the team find me…?

Adrenaline surged and Jet tried to breathe, to pant to cry to scream, anything, but all he could do was lay there and let it fester in him. The best he could do was blink rapidly through the batting.

He was finally placed into the box, cushioned by foam. He gave one last mental cry, begging, but the box closed and the sound of tape being applied sealed him in.

The disturbingly shiny tool closed in on his eye, ready to pry and pull.

Not the left not the left not the left…

His newest owner glanced at the computer screen, noted the malfunctioning eye, and shifted the pliers to the right.

Thank you, Jet thought, and then screamed internally as the eye was plucked out.

Another owner, another saw to his skull. He didn't know why she was bothering all his scanners had been long ago removed. He had so many gaps in his head now he wondered that his brain wasn't rattling around.

Or maybe it was. Like he could tell.

"I dunno, it's been pulled apart a lot, most of the useful cybernetics have been removed already."

It has nothing left. It tried.

"Maybe you could give it to a student or something, it's still got the core systems and the cybernetic brain is functioning, though I think it was wiped."

It cannot see. Where are you? You must move it cannot see you…

"Yeah the brain itself is still okay, I think. I've been managing its power and oxygen levels…" she paused and pat her cyborg toy on the head.

Don't hurt it, it'll be good.

"Don't worry, I'll find you a nice home."

It thanks you. It knows no one is coming.

There were friends once…they are not coming.

"Think about it, a computer can be hacked, but a human mind behind the security? A living security system!"

"It looks like shit."

"Well yes, this is an experiment I'm funding myself and this wasn't very expensive, relatively speaking considering the source of the tech…"

"I think it's dead."

"No no, the cybernetics and the casing could use some work but the brain is functioning, see? And that's all that matters."

"Fine. Hook it up to one of the doors in the basement for storage. Just that one! And it better behave, if it starts malfunctioning or giving anybody shit…"

"Don't worry, the previous owner gave me tips on how to keep it in line. Just a couple shocks here and there when it misbehaves."

"We aren't going to have to like…feed it or anything are we?"

"No, just replace the power packs and fluid now and again. Trust me, it'll work great."

#cyborg 009 #call of justice #nanowrimo #algernon #fanfic

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blogdeanfullerton · 4 years

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Week 3

This week looked at what the brief was and the future of the design industry and how important designers are in cretin fields of business.

Air Bnb - https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2017/10/25/airbnb-ai-sketches-design-code/

The team at air bnb have developed a AI that is able to take hand drawings of cretin Icons and shapes and create digital prototype elements from the drawings. This is interesting as the development of drag and drop website makers such as wix and several others means that the time to make a website for some people is becoming less and less but now the act of making prototypes from drawings is now going to take less time, someone will have to only draw to make something work. This is a great innovation but has me worried as robotics are being so heavily developed to the point where cretin jobs may become obsolete. While that idea seems far off now one only has to think of when self checkouts where first introduced and how people still preferred to use human cashiers but now in 2020 there are more self checkouts than ever some stores are actually only self checkout.

Budie Base

Design Strategy- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-create-effective-design-strategy-natalie-carosi/

The idea of strategy is something that designers are probably going to be more invested in with the rise of these tools such as as budibase and the Airbnb sketching AI, the need to create a layout can be done by anyone and the area that designers have the edge is determining what works and what will make money from a design perspective. Design strategy and business strategy interlock more than one thinks but they do differ, business strategy focuses on the product scope, budgeting, market objectives etc. The design strategy looks at how to implement the core values of the company and what message the company wants to send to the customer whiles carrying the goals and ambitions of the company and the clients to increase a flow of cash. Design is a tool that targets emotional connections with customers and builds brand awareness and reliability by speaking with more than just words.

The strategy has 6 key steps:

1:Define a brand: Defining the brand answers certain questions such as “who are you?” and “whats unique about you?”. The brand helps define questions people have and what a company is about. Knowing the brand helps go further with the design.

2:Specify the goals: This step helps set where the company is going, instead of going in a mindless direction knowing what the company wants and needs to achieve and when it needs to achieve them helps determine how to correctly use resources and time effectively.

3: Research: The research is often an aspect that people assume designers don’t do. The research into current trends, what customers want and need, how other companies are attending to those needs and what ones that aren’t is all part of how to create a design strategy and how to make a successful one that will generate cash flow. Certain audiences and needs will have a big effect on the type of design that is implemented.

4:Find Gaps: By filling the gaps one means to look at the current situation and find what things are being ignored or forgotten such as a certain customer need or what problems are in the industry and how to create a solution to the problems, the best way to be different is to actually be different so thinking outside the box is always encourage as long as there is some ground to support the thinking.

5:Turning Objectives into strategy: After the research and information is gathered its now a question of how does this get applied to a design that first into a objective for the company. The best way to showcase this is by noticing things in the design such as CTA, if the company needs subscribers the CTA for subscribing should be something the eye is attracted to, this can be done by changing the font size, type or colour. The button itself can be coloured to stand out or have hover effects. Using eye tracking and QTA sessions with people helps determine what design steps are the most appropriate and successful in reaching the goals.

6:Measure results: Measuring the success of the finished project is essential. This helps us determine what works and what doesn't work, this information helps with future projects so that the same mistakes aren’t made and things that work can be improved upon to increase their effectiveness.

The cycle

The below image shows the importance designers have in company projects. The start of the cycle started with just ab build test, which lead to having managers who stay at the beginning but the design part of the cycle doesn't show up till recently and they started at the end to add “bells and whistles” to making a massive jump towards the start of the cycle and users are also more important in the current cycle. I think that design at the start makes sense as the design of a project does have more impact on how well it works as the first impression mean everything and of course having it work well also is important but making a design and making it work rather than making systems and designing for them is much better and makes the project more appropriate for the users.

BHAG

BHAG stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goals. This sort of goal setting is something that helps get a team or an individual into a good mindset, for example if someone in the team has a question about if a task or a project is a good idea the only question that needs to be asked is “does it get us closer to the BHAG”.

For a company it may be to get the supply for demand up to 70% for the new energy drink they are making and mini goals such as giving free samples or interning with smaller retailers may help get the product into more hands and increase a demand for it. The phrase was coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in the book “built to last”. To be a good BHAG it has to have certain elements to it which can be seen below:

Is at least 70% achievable

Is a clear and compelling idea

Expands the company’s current capabilities

Is measurable

Must be connected to your company’s strategy

Is long-term (10 years or longer)

from that the types of BHAG are divided into 4 different types, target oriented (has a clear targeted goal) , competitive(Is intended to be competitive with others), role model (mimics traits of companies outside of target industry)and internal Transformation (Focuses on the transformation change of a company).

Below is an image of some commonly know BHAG that aren’t Kennedy get a man on the moon BHAG. (https://blog.growthinstitute.com/scale-up-blueprint/bhag-big-hairy-audacious-goal)

The Brief

“This semester we’ll be focused on designing the user experiences (UX) of today and tomorrow. We’ll consider the possibilities that new and emerging media offer to reimagine the news so that it’s fit for the 21st century.” —The Brief

“What might the news look like? Will it be digital? Will it be physical? Will it be both? Will there be a newspaper with different sections, or will newspapers fragment to become hyperspecialised news-focused publications (like magazines, but at a much higher frequency)?”

Above is the brief description, the original brief was very open but this is more targeted in a way. The way I read this is to take some key aspects from it, mainly “re-imagine the news so that it’s fit for the 21st century” Thinking about this makes me think further the future of how will the news be delivered in the future as in the past we had the newspaper now we have the mobile device and television but in the future I personally believe it will be more adapted to devices coming in the future, such as hands free communication, how will that be displayed, google glass seems like the most current version of future hands free communication especially since the VR scene has seen some major increase in investments from the gaming industry, this means that UI for the same for of delivery is already being created so its only a matter of waiting for people to accept wearable technology which will happen, nobody though pcs would be a common house hold item, or that hands free phones could be small enough for a persons pockets.

What might it look like

My idea was narrowed to three different directions. One being a App, the other a web extension and the other was some form of UI for google glass. I can to believe that there was no real sense in designing a way for people to see the news they already get it as it doesn't really solve any problems by doing that, the only real issue is that information is crowed on them websites but its all essential information so making it more organised makes a new problem of having to click to music to get what you want. This lead me to move towards how can I filter the news more for people to see what they want. I saw an app being a good way to have on the move access to the news, the app would filter news via country and filters such as only wanting to see sports and food on your home screen.

The main screen would also have a spinning globe which when clicked on in a certain part would zoom in and highlight with a flag the news stories for that country and area.

The browser extension would do the same idea with the filtering except it would work similar to ever note in the sense that articles could be saved, but you can save them into folders, organised by screenshots, full articles and your own articles. The articles could be shared directly to social platforms and people could highlight certain parts of the article and write annotations on it for the friends to see, the extension also used the filters to change what appears on the home screen of say the BBC news home screen so people can see and save what they want.

The google glass idea was an idea of thinking further ahead. The reason for this is that in the future how will all of this information that is crammed on websites fit on a display that also needs to allow people to still see in front of themselves but also a device that has very little touch capabilities most of the commands are down with swiping up, down, left and right or voice commands. This was interesting as google glasses are on the rise for the next innovation in our technology, wearable tech is already making its boom and hands free communication will be the future so the issue is how do we think of diapering and navigation these types of devices int he future as we cant do it the way we currently do.

User Personas Vs Jobs to be done -https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/personas-vs-jtbd/

A job to be done is a concept where a developer or designer has to put themselves into the mind of their customers and ask what is the job to be done as in why are these people going to buy this product and if they do what will they use it for, any successful product uses this method as a product that doesn't do anything doesn't sell very well and everything is bought to sever a purpose for a user. The best example I have seen was if someone buys a drill, they dont buy a drill for the sake of having a drill they buy it to complete the task of creating a specific sized hole or to screw a specific sized screw or they have it as a benchmark to save themselves the bother of buying one later and avoiding a situation where they need a drill and dont have one.

A user persona is a fictional personalty profile of your ideal customer. The basic idea is doing some user research so you can pin what they as a user or customer need from the project. The persona incorporates the end goals of the project with the actual needs of the customer or the end user. Understanding the customer first is one of the keys to a successful project as the team can develop the project around user needs making more likely to be a success with the end users.

The idea of one verses the other is not the answer, the answer is that they are both valuable ways of determining a customers mind set and help develop a successful end product and also help create goals in which the team can strive for during development. As using one without the other is useless as with personas it can sometimes isolate cretin types of users where the jobs to be done is centred around getting a job done that everyone wants done but Jobs to be done doesn't calculate the human factor of the customers which is where personas come into play. The main answer is to use both with each other for maximum success.

Brand and logo

The below images are my sketches for my logo and some of the inspiration I used for the logo. The left side of the image is the name generation, as I wanted to get it right first before moving to image logos. Trying to come up with something different was key to the logo for me but I also wanted it to look like it was meant for the product and of course worked with the UI of the hardware. I beloved a play on the fact that the news was in front of thew persons vision was a good discretion to go for, or the “Ok” key word that people use to wake the device which is why I scraped it due to not wanting to cause confusion. I attempted something to do with floating such as “Air News”. I decided to go with the “In front news” idea as I seen it was connected to the way the content is displayed and was different but also allowed the “IN” part to be separate but still repeating the meaning of the logo.

#ixd303

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