Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and web development
A closer lookMinimum Viable Product is simply a strategy in which a product is introduced to market as soon as possible and then the additional features are built while learning from customer feedback. Typically this means that a roadmap of features is drawn and features are released one by one, but in extreme cases, products aren’t even fully functional until a presale has been made.
While certainly not ideal for many products, MVP is a strategy that works well in web development as it is very easy to release updates and gather feedback. Invariable customers will have opinions and perspectives that differ from your own and getting feedback early will allow for adaptation without significant extra expense.
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Google Trends - The Universally Helpful Tool
A closer lookDo you know what your audience is doing? Spotting attention, knowing where people are focused, being in touch with current trends is important and yet so easily overlooked and misinterpreted. Without some general knowledge of where interest falls, we are flying blind and simply hoping for the best. Most online businesses use the traffic stats of their own website to gain insight into what people want and where they lose interest, but in the best case of a large company this is working within the bubble of a small data set, and when launching a new company or product this simply isn’t an option.
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Nonverbal Communication - Why feet are usually honest
Polygraph Side ChatsDuring childhood we are taught to mask our feelings to be polite and socially graceful. Our facial expressions, voice tone, arms, hands are just a few of the things we quickly learn to control. Feet motion, however, is usually not something that a parent would correct and thus we rarely learn to control our feet and their various forms of expression.
Entire volumes could be written on the body language of feet, but let’s keep it to three interesting ways feet express how people really feel.
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Email tracking - How it works and why it isn’t always reliable
A closer lookEmail tracking, or sometimes called pixel tracking, is a way to determine if someone has read an email after you have sent it. Once sent, an email is delivered to servers which you have no access to, making it difficult to determine when it is opened. There’s a solution though: using remote content, usually a small 1px by 1px transparent image. These images are tiny and clear so they don’t get in the way.
But what good does a tiny invisible image do? The answer is beautifully simple. It acts as a link back to a server to which you have access. When email newsletters are sent, an image with a unique ID is added to each individual email. Example: The email sent to Zakk may have an ID of 1234. Now whenever the server gets a request for image 1234, we can tell that Zakk has opened his email.
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The SEO tool you have and don’t know about: Lighthouse
One minute overview seriesThere’s a great little tool housed inside Google Chrome called Lighthouse. It’s a testing and reporting system to determine webpage performance and offer suggestions about speed, accessibility, best practices, SEO, and Progressive Web Apps. Don’t worry if you’re not a developer as this information is clearly presented and built into basic overall scores.
This test is run page by page (not website by website) so try running it on your home page, your product/post page, etc. Do some analysis of your site and see what needs a little adjustment to work well. And remember, this isn’t just for SEO, this is also for general user experience. Treat your visitors right and Google will reward you for it, so make that site FAST! Make it accessible, and keep your code clean and up to date.
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Don’t lose yourself while branding
One minute overview seriesThe problem with branding is how easy it is to abandon company essence by building a facade of what we think our customers wish to see. This is a bad strategy and a losing battle from the start. This distortion of the concept of branding is both ineffective and detrimental.
Good branding requires first determining your essence and being the best version of yourself and THEN communicating that in a clear, consistent way that your customers can actually hear.
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