Tushar, Author at anteelo

The Simple Weekly Workout to Improve SEO

Posted on 03/10/202113/11/2021 by Tushar

If you want to improve the success of your website, you need to keep working at your SEO. This can be difficult if other parts of your business demand most of your time. To help, we’ve put together a weekly workout of six short tasks every website owner should try to do weekly. By just spending ten minutes each day, or an hour a week, these activities can have a very beneficial effect on your website and the success of your business.

1. Update old content

Google loves to promote newer content because it provides users with the most up to date and accurate information. This is why older content slowly starts to slide down the rankings. When you update an existing piece of content, the date you publish the changes is recorded and Google becomes aware that it has been modified. For this reason, spending a little time each week updating your content can have a beneficial influence on how those pages rank and make the information more relevant for your readers. Even if you only change one piece of content each week, you’ll eventually get around to updating your whole site regularly.

2. Rework your titles and meta descriptions

Search engines rely on page and post titles and meta descriptions to discover how relevant your content is to someoneâ€™s search query â€“ the more relevant they are, the more likely your page is to rank well. At the same time, the title and the meta description appear in the search results and the better these appeal to the user, the more chance it has to be clicked on.

To give your content more chance of ranking and getting a clickthrough as a result, you should look at reworking them from time to time â€“ especially if they have stopped ranking so well. Make sure they both contain your relevant keywords and that they are written in such a way that a human would find them interesting enough to click on.

You can also update your URLs, making them cleaner and easier for a search engine to understand. However, if you do, you will be creating a new address for your page and this means that any external links to the old page wonâ€™t work. To avoid losing any traffic from links on other sites, you can set up a redirect, so that any traffic aimed at the old URL can be sent directly to your new one and not a 404 error page.

3. Deal with broken Links

Following on from this, you should swiftly deal with any broken links you have on your website, either internal links to your own content or external links to other sites. Having broken links gives your visitors a poor experience and for this reason, search engines will be reluctant to reward you with higher rankings.

Internal links can occur if you’ve changed the URL of one page and not updated menus or other links to it. It can also happen if you’ve deleted a page and forgot to remove any links.

Broken external links tend to be the main problem because you may be unaware if a website or page you linked to a while ago is still there.

The easiest way to deal with broken links is to use a plugin that automatically checks for them and notifies you when any have been found. This makes it easy to update the link or, if a suitable alternative cannot be found, to remove it altogether. If you have a lot of links on your site, it certainly reduces the amount of time needed to check them manually.

4. Promote your business on social media

Search engines are beginning to take increasing notice of how brands perform on social media, especially if they are getting good reviews or a lot of likes or shares. Besides having a positive effect on your ranking, social media can also have an enormous impact on your website traffic and business reputation.

For this reason, it is important to post content on your chosen social media platforms on a regular basis and to include links to your website whenever you can. This way, the more a post is liked and shared, the more visitors you are likely to get.

Regular use of social media platforms can increase awareness, familiarity and trust amongst consumers and develop brand loyalty among existing customers â€“ and the more likes and shares you have, the more people will feel that yours is a business which can be relied upon.

5. Check out the competition

If you are looking for content that works, the best place to find it is to see how well your competitors are doing. Analysing the competition is big business and there are many online tools specially created to help discover what content they are publishing and how well it is doing on search engines and social media. You can find titles of posts, the keywords being used, the number of shares and likes on different social media platforms and how much traffic each piece of content generates.

This can give you an in-depth insight into content that is trending and what your target market is looking for. From knowing this, you can then begin to create similar content of your own and gain a share of that traffic for yourself.

6. Reach out to influencers

One of the most important ranking factors is the number of backlinks a website has from high authority websites, especially those in a similar niche. In order to get these backlinks, you need to engage with the people who publish on these sites. You can do this in a number of ways, for example, leaving comments on their blog posts, mentioning and linking to them in your own posts, and liking, sharing, responding to and mentioning them on social media.

The more you engage with them, the more chance you will have of developing a relationship with them where they read and share your content. It takes quite a bit of time to do this â€“ some of these influencers have millions of social media followers and visitors to their sites. A single tweet won’t get you noticed.

However, a single tweet from them or a mention in their blog post can send millions of people to your website or lead to higher rankings in Google. The benefits to your business can be substantial and long-lasting. It can be worth the effort.

Conclusion

Ten minutes a day or an hour a week doing these simple but effective SEO tasks can have a significant impact on your website. They can increase ranking, improve click through rates, make site content more relevant and engaging, give you a better understanding of what to post and where, and help you get noticed by those who have influence.

Growth of Small Business Using Snapchat

Posted on 02/10/202113/11/2021 by Tushar

When it comes to business, every social media platform is a potential new marketing channel. The problem, however, is that there are so many channels out there that it is impossible to concentrate on them all. That said, there are some you shouldn’t ignore and one of these, that continues to go from strength to strength, is Snapchat.

Today, Snapchat has more active daily users than Twitter with over 178 million people viewing an incredible 10 billion posts each day. And with a focus on visual media, it’s a great opportunity for businesses to use a range of creative marketing techniques to engage new customers, build their brand and sell products.

In this guide, we’ll tell you all you need to know about Snapchat and how you can use it to market your business.

What is Snapchat?

Snapchat is a quirky camera app that lets users send â€˜Snapsâ€™ to each other. A Snap is an image or a video of 10 seconds or less. Whatâ€™s quirky about Snapchat is that anything you post only has a limited lifespan. Once all recipients have seen it, it disappears permanently. Besides individual Snaps, you can create an â€˜Storyâ€™ comprised of individual Snaps but even these only last for 24 hours. In addition, you can also send short-lived, real-time, text messages to friends – these are called â€˜Chatsâ€™.

Snapchat facts

Here are some interesting facts that show how Snapchat can be an attractive prospect for small businesses.

In terms of users, Snapchat is more popular than Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest
It has high user engagement – over 60% of users post a Snap every day
Three-quarters of users make a purchase through Snapchat every month
It’s ideal for companies targeting millennials. Over 70% of users are under 35.
It’s still an emerging channel. Despite its popularity, 99% of companies have yet to take advantage of Snapchat, meaning there’s plenty of opportunities for those who get in first.

Realistic branding opportunities

Because of the short-lived nature of Snapchat posts, it’s not a platform where businesses are going to spend thousands of pounds creating lots of professional videos. Instead, it’s an ideal place for quick, entertaining posts that offer an insight into the life of your brand. It’s for showing what happens behind the scenes or taking snaps of people, places and events and highlighting your values. By doing this, you can show the human side of your business to create connections and build relationships.

Snapchat can also be used for posting Snaps about new products or services, for promoting events and even for offering discounts or running competitions. If you send out a discount voucher, for example, users can save it to their phone for later use.

Setting up Snapchat

Setting up Snapchat is easy. Just download the app from your app store (Google or Apple, etc.) and sign up for a new Snapchat account. To keep things consistent, have the same username as you do on your other social media accounts. This will help followers find you when they search across different platforms.

Once you have registered your account, the first thing you need to do is to make sure the â€˜Storiesâ€™ feature, which keeps your posts live for 24 hours, is set to public so that all your followers can see them. To do this, tap the ghost icon to navigate to Settings, select View My Story and set it to â€˜Everyoneâ€™.

Adding friends

You can only share your Snaps and Stories with your friends, so it is important that you begin to add friends as soon as possible. If you already have other social media accounts, use these to get the message out that you are now posting on Snapchat. What youâ€™ll find is that those who prefer using Snapchat will be the ones to add you.

You can add friends by searching for their username, from your address book, by posting your Snapcode (like a QR code) or your username to other social media platforms, or by inviting contacts who are non-Snapchat users to sign up and make friends.

One great feature of Snapchat is its â€˜Add Nearby Usersâ€™ feature which lets you invite anyone in your immediate vicinity. This is ideal for organisations that have bricks and mortar stores or which run events. If you have a shop, for example, you can send an invite to every Snapchat user that enters your store.

Creating and sharing content

Creating content on Snapchat is very easy. When you open the app, you open your camera. All you have to do is take a picture or a short video. Once youâ€™ve finished, youâ€™ll then be taken to the editing screen where youâ€™ll be given a range of editing options to embellish your Snap. These include:

Stickers â€“ like sticky notes
Captions
Doodles
Tint brush (currently still image only)
Filters â€“ these let you add a wide range of text and graphic overlays and photo effects to your Snaps. (Youâ€™ll need to turn filters on in the settings first.)

Once youâ€™ve finished editing and are happy with your Snap, you can decide which contacts you’d like to send it to. This is very helpful if you are marketing to different groups of Snapchat users as you can send out different Snaps to different people. To post your Snap, simply click the blue arrow icon at the bottom of your screen. Following this, the app then changes to the feed screen.

Analytics

User engagement data is important for any business looking at the impact of its social media strategy. Luckily, Snapchat has this built-in. If you tap on the dots to the right of your Story, youâ€™ll be shown your Story analytics. These show you which users have viewed your Story and who has saved your Snaps to their phones. There is also a host of third-party applications you can use to give even greater insight into your user engagement.

Conclusion

As you can see, Snapchat is one of the easiest social media platforms to set up and get running. It’s perfect for marketing to young, millennial audiences who love this kind of highly visual, fast-paced interaction and it’s a fun and exciting way to promote your brand, products and events. Hopefully, this guide will have shown you all the basic things you need to get your Snapchat account off the ground and start posting.

All About Managed Hosting That You Must Know

Posted on 01/10/202113/11/2021 by Tushar

Businesses that need to expand or upgrade their IT infrastructure have a range of possible choices. One of the most popular is managed hosting. In this post, we’ll explain what managed hosting is, the benefits it can bring and what to look for in a managed services provider.

What is managed hosting?

Managed hosting is a type of service in which a business hires IT hardware from a service provider, such as Anteelo. All managed hardware, i.e. servers, storage and network, has single tenant occupancy, in other words, no other customer will be using the same hardware. This provides the company with all the computing resources that the hardware provides: bandwidth, performance, RAM, storage, etc., and gives the customer complete control of the hardware, OS, software and system security.

With managed hosting, the hardware is securely housed in the service providersâ€™ datacentre and the service provider takes care of its management, admin and technical support. The alternative is unmanaged hosting, where companies still hire hardware and datacentre space but choose to manage it themselves. Whilst some companies still opt for this, most find it easier and more economical to let the service provider undertake management on their behalf.

What is included in a managed hosting service?

The range of services included in a managed hosting package will depend on the individual service provider. Most hosts will provide and manage the datacentre (space, power, building maintenance, physical security, IT engineers, etc.), hardware, networking, operating system (Windows, Linux, etc.) and application infrastructure. It is also possible to extend services even more by adding application management, too. At Anteelo, we even offer bespoke IT solutions.

The list above covers a wide range of management and administrative tasks which are done on your behalf. These can include real-time server monitoring, performance optimisation, server patching, backups, intrusion prevention, application installation and so forth. Using these services means companies do not need to worry about hardware or other issues and can let their IT teams focus on more business-related projects.

Which IT uses are best suited to managed hosting?

Managed hosting is suitable for a wide range of IT uses. This includes hosting websites, as a means for extending in-house architecture and for running custom or legacy apps. Single tenancy hosting is also ideal for those who require exceptional computing performance, large-scale storage and Big Data analytics. It is also being increasingly used for backing up data and for disaster recovery.

With increasing regulation, such as the implementation of GDPR, managed hosting also offers compliance benefits for those companies that require tight data security. If you are an organisation that has a statutory requirement to have a Data Protection Officer (DPO), for example, if you process or store sensitive information or large amounts of personal data, single tenant hosting can offer increased security and help ensure compliance.

What to look for in a managed hosting service provider

It is not only the range of services mentioned above that you would need to consider if you were looking for a managed hosting service provider. Here are a range of other factors you would need to look at:

1. Technical support: Make sure your service provider offers 24/7, 365 days a year technical support. That way, if you have any issue, youâ€™ll know there is an IT expert there to help.

2. Firewall security: All managed hosting should provide strong firewall protection. Look for technology, such as Fortinetâ€™s Fortigate firewalls, which protect against a wide range of security risks.

3. Port speed: Network performance is crucial for todayâ€™s websites. Look for a 1Gbit port speed.

4. High–availability: If you are paying for a managed service, you want it to be available all the time. Make sure your service provider guarantees 100% uptime.

5. High–performance hardware: You should be provided with exceptional hardware such as Intel Xeon CPUs and SSD hard drives.

6. Full root access: If you are leasing a server, you should have full control over it. Ensure the provider you choose enables full root SSH / RDP access.

7. Control panel: the quality of the control panel you are provided with can make a huge difference in taking care of the tasks which are not part of the managed service. The best available is Pleskâ€™s Web Pro.

Is managed hosting the right choice for you?

There is a number of important questions that companies will need to ask before making the decision to opt for a managed hosting package. These include:

1) In what ways will using managed services improve your IT capabilities?

2) What are the financial implications of using a managed service?

3) If you are migrating to a managed service, how can you best manage the move to have the least impact on your business? Will your service provider help you migrate?

4) If you were to opt for unmanaged services, does your company have the in-house expertise needed to manage its own infrastructure?

Conclusion

Managed hosting isnâ€™t the cheapest hosting option available, however, it can bring enormous benefits. It can cut down significantly on the in-house IT resources you dedicate to server management, freeing up your staff for more profitable tasks. It can enhance your security and compliance and, with the right infrastructure, can improve your systemâ€™s performance and IT capabilities.

5 Ways Fintech Industry is Using Artificial Intelligence

Posted on 30/09/202113/11/2021 by Tushar

The bond which is getting seeded between Fintech business and Millennials is poised to be extremely strong. At the back of the digital inclined focus that Fintech startup companies have been operating with, the domain – as a whole – is staring at a time of complete revamp. While Fintech companies have been quick to adopt this changed demographics, the only answer to how banks could recreate themselves in the age of millennials lies in intelligence. They will have to learn the tricks of trades via introducing artificial intelligence in fintech.

Let us walk you through the Uses of AI and ML in fintech for Millennials, highlighting what both Fintech companies and banks can work around.

Since the past many years, the millennial user group has been upending the markets, making companies scramble to find the right approach to attract the industry’s first digital natives.

With more of these young adults entering the workforce and investing in their futures, monetarily, The Fintech industry too is soon realizing that it will have to relook at its complete approach to appeal to this demographic’s unique set of expectations and needs. In other words, they cannot move with the business as usual mindset with this smartphone generation.

While the millennial class of customers and users have been given a number of unflattering names in the recent years, like “trophy kids” and “entitled”, this tech-savvy lot has been hailed for being progressive and more acceptable of new finance app ideas compared to the last generations.

Millennial users value convenience and transparency. They demand personalized finance service and product on their fingertips, which is not restricted on time and geography. These primal set of characteristics are what Fintech companies need to maintain when aiming to maintain a competitive advantage in the climate of fast-evolving technological and demand change.

Many Fintech companies have already seized upon this niche opportunity – of millennials expecting digital-first service – at the back of the understanding that the traditional banking avenues are getting phased out. They, individually or in partnership with banks have started exploring the mobile domain to match the shifting consumer trends.

Even in the mobile domain, Financial mobile app development companies are now exploring avenues to present themselves as innovative brands which are aligned with the technical inclination of the end-users.

One such avenue that Fintech companies are focusing upon is Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence is one of the biggest disruptions of the business economy with almost every vertical either embracing the technology or planning to add it into their process by the next 5 years. In fact, AI is found to be one of the prime fintech trends for 2020 & beyond, and fintech centric AI and Machine learning app developers are also putting efforts to excel in this field.

The industry is finding use cases specific to Artificial Intelligence which answers why Fintech is targeting millennials using AI to not just improve the millennial customers’ experience but also revamp their business model to its entirety.

Let us look at some of the used cases that the Fintech industry has found in terms of using Artificial Intelligence to change their mobile offering. These cases should be read as a series of new opportunities for a Fintech startup.

Uses of Machine Learning and AI in Fintech for Millennials

1. Algorithmic trading

While Algorithmic trading is not a new concept in the finance domain, using AI to effectively perform the task on millions of devices is.

[Algorithmic trading uses complex formulas, combined with mathematical models and human oversight, for making decisions related to buying and selling of financial securities on the exchange.]

A great number of financial companies invest in the algorithmic trading practice as the frequency of trade that is executed through machine learning is next to impossible to replicate manually.

2. Better Targeting

A better chance at targeting is what the core ML and AI benefits in banks are.

Millennials demand personalized service on their fingertips independent of the time and place. For the purpose, fintech companies are making use of machine learning-driven robotic advisors to replace the need of human advisors at all waking hours.

This robo-advisors target towards millennials is driven with the aim to not just attract them but also remove massive processing costs for the financial institutions. The extent of personalization and promptness that the robo-advisors offer is the answer to what is the impact of AI in financial services.

3. Better Customer Support

One of the primary uses of advanced automation and AI technology in the finance industry can be seen in how the Fintech companies and banks are making their customer service digital and real-time. Let’s give a much closer look at examples of how integration of AI in customer support services can be made possible and how it becomes one of the top benefits of artificial intelligence based apps, especially those which are centered around banking and other financial services:

Chatbots

Chatbots are the basic most answer to how Fintech is targeting millennials.

By 2022, banks might automate over 90% of their interactions through chatbots (Foye, 2017).

By making use of technologies like chatbots, AI helps financial institutions solve users issues instantly. A reason why businesses look for the cost of Cleo like chatbot app. Bank of America, for example, introduced a chatbot named Erica to give their customers instant information about their transactions, account balances, and other similar information.

Personalized experience

Personalization is an answer to building long-lasting customer trust and loyalty for any organization and business. People, especially when interacting with finance-related matters value deep relationships and transparency with the institution and mobile app. This is one of the main reasons why people appreciate the introduction of AI in banking and other fintech solutions.

Personalization is the number one thing that businesses ask for when asking how to use AI to develop next-gen apps. ML algorithms can help in analyzing customers’ information and predict the services that would most or least impress the Fintech users.

A few examples of personalization in AI-backed Fintech applications can be seen in:

Capital One Second Look program, launched by Capital One monitors expense patterns. After an in-depth analysis, it helps detect if customers have been charged twice for the same purchase and can inform them in time. The platform also analyzes the tips that customers leave at the restaurant and inform them if it is over what they can afford.
MoneyLion, the personal finance platform also displays tips and tricks card and blogs to their customers depending on their monetary activities. “We have bank transaction data, credit behavior and location data; we want to be able to match that with a set of advice and recommendations,” said Tim Hong, chief marketing officer at MoneyLion, which connects to customers’ banks accounts through an API.

Applications like these clearly show the importance of AI and machine learning in financial sectors to make millennials feel important and motivated to remain hooked with the application.

4. Help with underwriting services

The underwriting process is related to assessing risks which every financial service users come with. The role of AI in this fintech process comes in the face of analyzing the true worth of the applicants by looking into their stringed data, especially ones related to their personal spending abilities on social media and other places.

The AI algorithms also help in assessing and predicting the underlying loan trends which can influence the financial sector in the coming time.

5. Stock Market Changes Prediction

With the stock market becoming one of the best investment choices for millennials, the demand for apps that would help make the navigation easier has grown. Something that has helped define newer applications of ML and AI in the fintech industry.

Several AI-backed mobile apps have been introduced which analyze the past and real-time information related to companies and their stocks. And on the basis of this information, they help investors identify which stocks should be invested in and which would prove to be a bad investment choice.

So here were the 5 uses of Machine Learning and AI in Fintech for millennials’ user base to get their attention and make them remain invested in the mobile-based financial offering. An offering that fintech companies provide with the help of their partnered AI and Machine Learning app development company.

Now that you know why fintech companies are using AI, it is time to invest in AI based fintech app development.

Having developed multiple AI software and apps for fintech startups and establishments, we have mastered the art of integrating Artificial intelligence and ML in financial processes.

Let us help you.

Digital Transformation and Enterprise Risk Management

Posted on 29/09/202113/11/2021 by Tushar

Digital transformation and enterprise risk management can be thought of as parallel highways. That’s because any transformation effort will introduce new risks and change to the organization’s overall security posture.

As organizations continue their digital transformations, the transformation of security and risk management must be an integral part of that journey. Organizations must integrate security and risk management into DevOps and Continuous Delivery (CD) processes. The ultimate goal is to have resilient systems that can not only withstand cyber attacks, but also carry out mission-critical business operations after an attack succeeds.

Taking the analogy further, imagine that each of these highways has three lanes: one for people, another for process, and a third for technology.

People in an organization form its culture. For digital transformation to succeed, many organizations will need to transform the culture around risk. That might include inculcating respect for personal information, and organizations consciously building digital services with privacy in mind. The workforce needs to be adept in using digital tools such as cloud, APIs, big data and machine learning to automate and orchestrate the management of a digital security threat response.

Process relates to how an organization overhauls its business processes to be agile and yet secure at the same time. This might involve moving from ITIL behaviour to DevOps or other proactive operational approaches. Prevention is important, but the ability to respond to manage digital threats is much more relevant, as this proactive behavior coincides with DevOps principles.

Technology can present new risks, but can also help address risk. Many top technology companies, for example, are using technologies to automate processes in a way that’s secure. Some common best practices include building loosely-coupled components wherever possible on a stateless/shared-nothing architecture, using machine learning to spot anomalies quickly, and using APIs pervasively to orchestrate the security management of digital entities in a scalable manner.

From a CIO’s perspective, each new digital entity and interaction adds risk: Who is this user? Is this device authorized? What levels of access should be allowed? Which data is being accessed?

Leading organizations will securely identify these users, devices and other entities — including software functions and internet of things (IoT) endpoints — and they’ll do so end-to-end in an environment where services are widely distributed.

Top 5 eCommerce Predictions For 2018 that you must know

Posted on 28/09/202113/11/2021 by Tushar

2018 is with us already and itâ€™s important in the current competitive market that eCommerce businesses donâ€™t standstill. In this post, we are going to take a close look at five eCommerce predictions for 2018 and explain why online businesses need to take heed of these shifting trends in order to stay ahead of their competitors.

1. Mobile sales will begin to dominate

Weâ€™ve been talking a lot about the shift towards mobile shopping over the last few years. In the UK, we already spend twice as much time surfing on a mobile as we do on computers and now we are set to see mobile sales forging ahead too. It is predicted that mobile purchases will massively increase during 2018, accounting for almost 50% of all e-commerce revenue by the end of the year.

There are several reasons which have contributed towards this shift. Mobile technology continues to improve: we have better phones and better networks, both of which make it easier to shop whilst weâ€™re out and about. For many, itâ€™s also more convenient to use a phone at home than it is to use a laptop.

In addition to phone technology, we have also seen an increasing effort by online businesses to give customers a better mobile shopping experience. Businesses are creating websites and apps which make it far easier to search for, find, look at and order products on the small screen. Improved website design and navigation have removed many of the barriers that used to make us switch to a computer when making a purchase.

Improved payment options also make mobile more attractive. Mobile phones are seen as very secure; with apps such as Apple Pay, we can even use them to pay for goods instead of a bankcard. This means customers now trust mobile payments much more than they once did.

To take advantage of the shift towards mobile, try to do the following:

Use a website theme that makes it simple and easy for customers to find your products when using a mobile phone.
Make sure your site loads quickly. You can do this by optimising your site and ensuring your web host provides the performance you need.
Start using accelerated mobile pages so even those with older phones or poor connections can access your shop quickly.
Offer a wider range of payment options that make online purchasing simpler for customers.

2. Sites that offer personalised shopping will grow more

Online retailers have realised that they make a lot more money when they are able to offer customers a personalised shopping experience. Indeed, sites which use personalisation techniques typically see a 5-10% resulting growth in sales.

These stores use a range of ways to give a customer-centric shopping experience. By employing data analysis and automation, they can provide suggested items based on a shopperâ€™s wish lists, recent searches or purchase histories. These suggestions can be provided on screen during browsing, as upsells during checkout or be remarketed using emails.

The technology needed to provide these services to customers can often be acquired through simple plugins and extensions.

3. Augmented reality shopping is the future

One of the major problems with online shopping is that customers only get to view a picture of a product before buying. This means a significant proportion of products sold online get sent back because, once opened, the customer doesnâ€™t like them. This is frustrating for the customer and costly for the retailer.

Over the years, online stores have done their utmost to provide the best shopping experience they can: image galleries, large images, videos, customer reviews, etc, have all been helpful. Now, however, retailers are beginning to use augmented reality to give users a much better understanding of how their products will look.

Augmented reality apps can be used to show customers what clothes will look like when worn or how furniture or decorations will appear in their homes. This year will see augmented reality becoming an integral element of many online stores.

4. Packaging to have increased impact on purchasing

Packaging has a number of effects on eCommerce customers. Firstly, it needs to protect your product as it is shipped to the customer. This is important as over half of all customers who receive a product damaged because of poor packaging would be reluctant to use that store again.

The way you package your goods also has an effect on your brand. Those selling â€˜high-endâ€™ goods need to make sure that the presentation of their packages meets the high standards that customers expect. Even with less valuable products, a well-presented package shows you have a respect for your customers.

The other consideration you need to think about is the eco-friendliness of your packaging. Do you use recycled and recyclable materials? Do you use overlarge containers when smaller ones will do? Do you overfill your packages with protective materials (bubble-wrap, polystyrene, tissue paper, etc)?Â Many customers are increasingly concerned with the environmental waste produced in eCommerce shipping and are also annoyed at the amount of recycling it forces them to do.

Getting your packaging right can lead to increased customer satisfaction and this can help with developing long-term relationships with customers.

5. 2018 will see a need to improve shipping

Shipping is a big deal in eCommerce and can often be the reason why a customer chooses one retailer over another. Thanks to the lead taken by Amazon and eBay, online buyers have much higher expectations about how they want their products delivered and now expect other eCommerce sites to provide similar levels of service.

In general, customers want their products delivered for free, to arrive quickly and at a time and place which is convenient for them. This means companies need to provide a range of different shipping options, for example, you could offer a free delivery within two days or a charged for, next day delivery. For customers who work, you may need to offer convenient delivery times or enable them to collect the package from another location, such as a post office.

Whilst customers like to be able to track delivery of their products, they also hate signing for them. If they are not in when the delivery arrives, they often have to go through the hassle of rearranging the delivery themselves or having to collect it from a depot â€“ all of which can put them off using your services again.

In 2018, delivery options will continue to impact upon your business. The more options you can offer, the better placed you will be to serve the differing needs of your customers.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are some surprising predictions for eCommerce in 2018 and not in the areas that most online retailers would expect. Whilst increased mobile shopping and personalisation have been promising to have an impact for some time, the effects of packaging, the way we ship our products and the rise of augmented reality are, perhaps, less expected.

Boost Up Performance Of Your Ruby On Rails Application

Posted on 17/06/202113/11/2021 by Tushar

Ruby on Rails or simply Rails is a server-side web application framework. The language used is Ruby and it is under the MIT license. So, you can design your web pages, web service, or a database using this model-view-controller framework. You can improve the performance using many well-known paradigms and software engineering patterns such as active record pattern, don’t repeat yourself, and convention over configuration.

Use The Brakeman

The brakeman is a security analysis tool. When you run it, all the possible vulnerabilities are brought out after it runs through your application. The security warnings will be grouped according to their severity – High, Medium, and Low. Sometimes, you may not have any warnings but that does not mean your system is secure. This is because brakeman at times overlooks some of the basic security pitfalls. To make sure you have the security issue under control, use a second gem called the bundler-audit. This checks the security in your Gemfile.lock for all variable versions of gems.

Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY)

Every large software project is overwhelmingly complex. Most of us are not good at handling the complexities. The strategy for reducing the complexity is to divide the code into portions where each component represents a subsystem. This subsystem accomplishes everything you need in some specific segment.

Take the case where you are building a content management system. You can keep subdividing the portions into components such as user management which has a subsystem role management. When you reach the component that has a single responsibility we implement it in a class. This is assuming that we are building something using the object-oriented application.

The DRY principles states that you can only use these pieces of knowledge exactly once in the entire system. This unambiguous unique representation shows how we achieve something.

Use The Bullet

In the development process of the application, without the use of refactoring, you cannot spot the N+1 problems. But, this is a common occurrence in Rails. This means when an object is called a second object is also called. This results in a second query. This thing becomes huge and you find that instead of running 1 query with 100 results, you may be having 100 queries and trying to get one result. Because you use a tiny dataset, this thing is difficult to see. It only becomes apparent when moving to a database that is production sized.

To avoid this problem, we use eager loading. You use. include on querying code. The way to do this is to use the Bullet gem and this will clear all your N+1 queries. It works out of the box and you only need to install the app. It will visit the various routes in the development and you get alert boxes with messages that pop out when there are database queries.

Traceroute

You can clean the routes in Rail applications with this Traceroute tool. It will detect routes mapped to non-existing controller actions and finalize those applications that are not reachable. This simple rake task will thus eliminate needles time and effort. The controller helper methods both before and after filters must remain private because they will not figure in the public API. Even though this works fine, at times on mountable engines at time it shows false positive but you can see them and overlook those that are not true.

You can use many other principles such as YAGNI (You aint gonna need it) or the Deadweight tool. They function seamlessly once you download the tool and begin to run them. You see how to improve the speed of your Rail by using these simple tools. If you have any doubts about which one is the most appropriate, consult any web designer to clear your doubt.

Adopting a Digital Platform Business to drive growth

Posted on 12/06/202121/06/2021 by Tushar

Today’s modern enterprise leverages a digital business platform as the foundation for digital applications. A digital business platform provides the agility to build and support the dynamic nature of modern applications.

So what do these platforms look like?

A digital business platform is based on three pillars: intelligence, orchestration and automation. It is a primary driver of business transformation, as it will help turn data into insights for making informed business decisions. It gives companies the opportunity to bring together business process execution with analytics to enable a smarter, faster, more streamlined enterprise.

Three pillars of a digital business platform

Intelligence
Orchestration
Automation

The digital business platform is supported by a hybrid cloud-enabled development and operations platform that encompasses:

1. Microservices: Microservices focus on doing one thing well and are contextual to specific business domains, enabling integration and facilitating rapid delivery of new capabilities (for greenfield applications) as well as modernization (for brownfield applications). And, because they are loosely coupled, microservices better enable continuous delivery activities.

2. Agile development: Efficiencies can be gained by using agile and rapid development that employs iterative and incremental steps and offers improved collaboration and continuous feedback.

3. Big data and IoT repositories: Leveraging IoT is all about gaining operational and product insights from sensor data but requires intelligence at the edge to process the massive flow of streaming events, as well as purposeful centralization of information. Data needs to be ingested, tagged and aggregated for use in streaming, predictive and preventive analytics insights that can enhance the decision support and “intelligence” of applications.

4. APIs: Business ecosystems are defined by the relationships among the participants, and information exchange brings the ecosystem to life. APIs provide the common interfaces and formats. Ecosystems based on APIs allow applications built on top of a digital business platform to extend their reach by leveraging internal and external data in an agile manner.

5. Easy-to-use intelligent automation: The platform will provide an easy-to-use ML/AI foundation that will not be limited to IT. Democratization means that employees everywhere can access the functions and data they need to write new application logic as descriptive business rules and to use ML/AI algorithmic services that improve their productivity.

6. Virtualization, containers and platform as a service (PaaS): These make it easier to create loosely coupled components for application composition and reuse, and for simplifying the implementing of key nonfunctional requirements of digital applications such as security, resilience and availability. These are game changers, allowing rapid provisioning and scalability of “infrastructure as code” services needed for application development, testing, release and deployment to production.

Over time, the digital business platform will evolve from human-derived rules to machine-derived rules, and its purpose will be to make data available and publish it (rather than process it). Consumption will be driven by serverless architecture and multimedia interfaces. And the platform will be in constant evolution.

What Makes An E-Commerce Sites Successful?

Posted on 12/06/2021 by Tushar

When it comes to selling online, the user experience is just as important as the products you stock and the prices you charge. If you want your eCommerce sites to meet user expectations and compete with your rivals, there are certain features which it has to have. Features that make shopping quicker, easier, safer and more convenient are, therefore, essential for today’s eCommerce sites. Here, we’ll look at what they are.

1. Clear menus

People visit eCommerce stores looking for specific items and one of the main ways they do this is through the menu. This is where they’ll expect to see the main product categories and their subcategories. Get the menu right and finding the right link will be quick and easy; get it wrong and the visitor will give up searching, perhaps so irritated by the menu that they never visit the site again.

Making the menu work on an eCommerce site, especially one selling a large variety of products, can be a challenge. You need to put it in the most convenient place, choose the right design and configure it to display in a way that customers can find what they want easily. There will also be a need to consider the titles for each category as this can be useful not just for SEO but for making sure you are using the same terms that a visitor would use.

You may also have to consider how you structure the actual website as a subcategory or individual product may need to be included in more than one main category. A pair of trainers, for example, might need putting in both sports and casual footwear categories.

2. Filtering search

Some users prefer using a search bar to the menu and a good website will make sure this preference is catered for. Indeed, search bars and filters are one of the most useful features on any store, enabling the visitor to type in the kind of product they are looking for and then filter the results to find the best one.

Today, there is a selection of plugins and add-ons that will provide this function, letting customers narrow down the range of products displayed by filtering attributes such as brand, price, colour, size, weight, age, condition, etc.

These features are found on many websites, usually with the search bar at the top and the filters at the left. As this has become the expected norm when visiting an eCommerce store, it’s a good idea to use the same layout on your site so that visitors are instantly familiar with how it works.

3. Product appropriate visuals

As shoppers cannot see the actual product, the images you display play a vital role in helping them decide. For many types of product, however, a single image won’t cut the mustard. While one photo might be ideal for a tin of beans on a supermarket store, for other products you may need to provide much more.

If you sell clothing, for example, customers will want a 360-degree view and the ability to zoom in and see fabric, stitching and pattern details. If you sell white goods, electrical items and similar, people often want to see videos that show them how the product is used. Other products may require images that give instructions, such as an illustration of how a device you’re selling is easily connected to a home wi-fi network.

4. FAQs

Customers may love your products and prices but if they can’t get an answer to a question, they’ll shop elsewhere. FAQ sections are essential because they allow you to answer those frequently asked questions that are key to helping customers make a purchasing decision.

For eCommerce sites, there are two types of FAQs you need to display: those for specific products and those relating to the services your business offers. The ones relating to the products need to be on the product page and the ones relating to the business, e.g. questions about delivery and returns, need to go on a dedicated FAQ page that is clearly linked to on all pages, such as in the footer.

Sites like Amazon, which have so many products that it would be impractical to write FAQs for all of them, get around this by enabling previous customers to answer questions posed by others.

5. Product recommendations

Personalised shopping is one of the most effective ways to improve the user experience and generate more sales. More advanced sites, like Amazon, use artificial intelligence powered product recommendation engines that analyse individual user behaviour to recommend products a customer is more likely to want. This type of technology is becoming increasingly more available and there are even WordPress plugins that provide it.

For visitors who are not logged in, other features, like ‘related products’, can help them find better items or even entice them to buy additional goods.

6. Mobile-first site

Mobile shopping is the fastest growing area of UK retail and over the next four years will be worth over £30 billion and account for 40% of all UK internet spending. More customers will visit your site from mobiles and will expect your site to be optimised to work on their device. If it does not, they’ll quickly go elsewhere.

Catering for today’s mobile users means going beyond using a responsive theme and making sure that when you develop your site, you use a mobile-first approach: i.e. you prioritise how the design will work for mobile users.

7. Trust, security and reputation

Trust, security and reputation are vital attributes when trying to convince visitors that your website is the best place to make a purchase. Vital features of such websites include making it easy for customers to get in touch by displaying addresses, phone numbers and contact details; installing an SSL certificate which encrypts users’ payment details and provides your site with the secure padlock icon on browsers; and reviews on sites like Trustpilot, which let new customers see independent and verifiable feedback from those who have purchased from your store in the past. Together, these provide customers with the confidence that your store is trustworthy, secure and has a track record for delivering great service.

Conclusion

E-Commerce stores are upping their game to meet the high expectations of the modern consumer and to ensure they provide a great user experience. The seven features mentioned here will help your website achieve these goals and make sure that your business remains competitive in today’s marketplace.

How to Create an SEO Friendly Homepage?

Posted on 11/06/2021 by Tushar

Homepages are unique to any website. They serve as both an online reception area and as a navigational hub for visitors wanting to find information about your company, its products and services. The key to getting more traffic, however, is improving how your homepage ranks in search engine results and here, we’ll explain how you can do this.

Distilling your USP

When ranking your homepage, search engines will use its content to understand what the page is about. Unlike other pages that can talk specifics about your products and services, the homepage’s job is to distil what is unique about your business and put it in a nutshell. This means making your unique selling point (USP) the central theme of your homepage. Although you should include information about your products and services, with links to them, promoting your USP is the homepage’s most vital task.

Getting the USP right takes some work, It has to define not just what makes your business unique’ but why it is the best choice for your customers. Don’t just tell them you are an independent financial advisor or a local estate agent, tell them the benefits of being independent or local.

Essentially, a good USP is like a mini blog post. It should succinctly show that you understand the customers’ problems and explain how your company is best placed to solve them.

Getting your keywords right

With the homepage being the navigation hub of a website, many believe it needs to contain the keywords for all their products and services. Some will even list everything they sell or offer in an attempt to do that. Overdoing this, however, can be misguided and backfire.

Every page on a website should have a focus keyword and no two pages should use the same one. If you have a landing page for selling shoes, for example, you don’t really want your homepage competing with this page. Though there is value in mentioning shoes on your homepage if they are one of your main products, multiple keywords relating to shoes should, ideally, be reserved for the shoe page.

Indeed, if a homepage is little more than a list of products and services, it doesn’t necessarily come across as useful to your customers. Search engines today are sophisticated enough to understand this. Instead, they are looking for user-friendly information about your USP and what visitors can find on the rest of the site, including your main products and services. Any keywords used should be within the headings and text and primarily for the benefit of the visitor, not the search engines.

A company visitors can trust

If search engines direct users to the websites of untrustworthy businesses, people will stop using them. To avoid this, search engines go beyond filtering out the dodgy websites of scammers and cybercriminals. Today, their algorithms analyse a wide range of trust factors to determine whether your site and your business should be listed in results.

On a technical level, they will look to see if your site has an SSL certificate, reliable hosting, quick loading and response times and a lack of broken links and 404 error pages. They will even analyse the links you point customers to, in order to make sure you don’t send them on to other untrustworthy sites.

They will also look at other information, such as user reviews and star ratings. Indeed, one of the reasons they have listing services like Google My Business is so they can verify the legitimacy of a business and gauge what the public think of it.

A homepage can also play a vital role in promoting the company’s and the website’s trustworthiness. Displaying company and VAT registration details, accreditations, qualifications, memberships of recognised organisations, customer testimonials and reviews, etc., help both the search engine and customer gain trust in you. The perfect place for these is on your homepage as this is the first page that visitors and search engines visit.

A homepage designed for the visitor

As mentioned earlier, the homepage is the navigational hub of the website and search engines will analyse how well it serves this purpose. Does it have clear information, helpfully organised with headings, images, easily readable text and links? Is it easy to navigate from the homepage using menus, search bars, category lists, etc.? Is it user-friendly on mobile devices and provide assistance for people with accessibility needs?

All these factors need to be considered when optimising your homepage.

Conclusion

To improve your homepage SEO, you need to provide what search engines want – and that is a focus on the user, not the search engines themselves. This means your homepage should display your USP, describe the main areas of the site and help people get there easily, and provide evidence of your trustworthiness. While you should place keywords where they are useful and needed, they should not be the focus of your homepage content.

1. Update old content

2. Rework your titles and meta descriptions

3. Deal with broken Links

4. Promote your business on social media

5. Check out the competition

6. Reach out to influencers

Conclusion

What is Snapchat?

Snapchat facts

Realistic branding opportunities

Setting up Snapchat

Adding friends

Creating and sharing content

Analytics

Conclusion

What is managed hosting?

What is included in a managed hosting service?

Which IT uses are best suited to managed hosting?

What to look for in a managed hosting service provider

Is managed hosting the right choice for you?

Conclusion

Uses of Machine Learning and AI in Fintech for Millennials

1. Algorithmic trading

2. Better Targeting

3. Better Customer Support

Chatbots

Personalized experience

4. Help with underwriting services

5. Stock Market Changes Prediction

1. Mobile sales will begin to dominate

2. Sites that offer personalised shopping will grow more

3. Augmented reality shopping is the future

4. Packaging to have increased impact on purchasing

5. 2018 will see a need to improve shipping

Conclusion

Use The Brakeman

Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY)

Use The Bullet

Traceroute

1. Clear menus

2. Filtering search

3. Product appropriate visuals

4. FAQs

5. Product recommendations

6. Mobile-first site

7. Trust, security and reputation

Conclusion

Distilling your USP

Getting your keywords right

A company visitors can trust

A homepage designed for the visitor

Conclusion

Delivering excellence, collaborating across time zones.

Take a look at our global hideouts.​

Contact

India (HQ)

Atlanta, USA

London, UK

Dubai, UAE

Melbourne, Australia

Surabaya, Indonesia

India (HQ)

Atlanta

London

Dubai

Australia

Indonesia

Take a look at our global hideouts.