Lea Verou had a dang genius idea to use an emoji as a favicon. The idea only recently possible as browsers have started supporting SVG for favicons. Chuck an emoji inside an SVG element and use that as the favicon.
Now that all modern browsers support SVG favicons, here’s how to turn any emoji into a favicon.svg:
I made a quick little demo project so you can see it at work. See the deployed project to actually see the favicons. That works in Firefox and Chrome. Safari only does those “mask” style icons in SVG so this doesn’t work there. Maybe it could though? I dunno I’ll let you try it.
You could duck a prefers-color-scheme media query in the SVG if you wanted to do something special for dark mode (although emojis generally work well on any background)
Scrolling is something we all know and do on the web to the extent that it’s an expectation or perhaps even a habit, like brushing our teeth. That’s probably why we don’t put too much thought into designing the scrolling experience — it’s a well-known basic function. In fact, the popular “there is no fold” saying comes from the idea that people know how to scroll and there is no arbitrary line that people don’t go under.
Scroll-based features tend to involve some bespoke concoction of CSS and JavaScript. That’s because there simply aren’t that many native features available to do it. But what if we could accomplish something that only uses CSS?
Take this ingenious horizontal scrollbar with CSS, for instance. I want to do something similar, but to indicate scrolled sections rather than capture continuous scrolling. In other words, rather than increasing the length of the indicator during scroll, I only want to increase the length when a certain section of the page has been reached.
Like this:
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Here’s my plan: Each section carries an indicator that’s undetectable until it reaches the top of the screen. That’s where it becomes visible by changing color and sticks to the top of the viewport.
The exact opposite should happen in reverse: the indicator will follow along when scrolling back up the screen, camouflaging itself back to being undetected to the naked eye.
There are two key parts to this. The first is for the indicator to change color when it’s near the top of the screen. The second is for the indicator to stay put at the top of the screen and come down only when its section is scrolled down to.
The second one is easy to do: we use position: sticky; on our elements. When a page is scrolled, a sticky element sticks to a given position on the screen within its parent container.
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That brings us to changing colors. Since the background of an HTML document is white by default, I’m keeping white as the base color for the demo. This means the indicator should look white when it’s over the base color and turn to some other color when it’s over the indicator bar at the top of the screen.
The dashed indicator is currently invisible, but becomes visible when it sticks to the top and blends with the background color of the indicator container.
This is where CSS blend modes come into play. They give us so many options to create a variety of color amalgams. I’m going to go with the overlay value. This one is quite dynamic in nature. I won’t explain the blend in depth (because the CSS-Tricks Alamanac already does a good job of that) but taking this demo into account, I’ll say this: when the background color is white the resulting foreground color is white; and when the background is some other color, the resulting color is darker or lighter, depending on the color it’s mixed with.
The indicator stops in the demo are black. But, because of the blend, we see them as white because they are on a white background. And when they are over the indicator container element, which is a lovely shade of violet, we see a dark violet indicator stop, because we’re mixing the indicator stop’s black with the indicator container’s violet.
Pretty straightforward, right? There’s a sticky container at the very top that holds the indicators when they reach the top. From there, we have three sections of content, each one topped with an indicator that will stick to the top with the indicator and blend with it.
Here’s the CSS:
.passageStops {
background-color: black; /* Each indicator stop is black */
mix-blend-mode: overlay; /* This makes it appear white on a white background */
width: 33.3%; /* Three sections total, so each section is one-third */
top: calc(1em + 3px);
}
#passage,
.passageStops{
height: 10px;
}
#passageWrapper,
.passageStops {
position: sticky; /* The container and stops should stick to the top */
z-index: 1; /* Make sure the indicator and stops stay at the forefront */
}
#passage {
background: violet; /* Will blend with black to make a darker violet indicator */
margin: 0 0 20px 0;
}
#passageWrapper{
background-color: white; /* Make sure we're working with white to hide indicator stops */
height: 40px;
top: 0px;
}
/* Each stop will shift one-third the width of the indicator container to cover the whole thing when the last section is reached. */
.passageStops:nth-child(4){ margin-left: 33.3%; }
.passageStops:nth-child(6){ margin-left: 66.6%; }
/* More styling, blah blah. */
The indicators (.passageStops) are black. But the overlay blend mode makes them appear white when it blends with the white background under it. Since there are three sections, each indicator is of one-third width.
The indicators have position: sticky; with a top distance value. This means the indicators will stick once they reach the calculated position from the top of the screen. When that happens, the black indicators that appeared white blend with the violet indicator container, which makes them appear to be a dark violet, representing the new scroll position on the page.
The reverse is also true. When an indicator loses its sticky position, it will move from the violet background of the indicator bar to the white background of the page, hiding it once again… like it was never there!
Here’s the demo again:
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That’s it. You can perhaps further experiment with this by having a non-white background with another blend mode, or a gradient for the indicator bar or stops.
I’ve had a number of browser tabs open to articles all related to web performance and gosh darn it if blogging them is a way for me get some closure. They are all good!
Yes, I know, it depends. 543 KB aren’t always bad, but on that specific page there’s only a single image (the logo ~20 KB) and a single paragraph. So why then is the page still relatively large, where are the remaining 523 KB coming from?
Spoiler: it was the JavaScript. Also, I had no idea Google has a recommended ideal DOM that:
Bundle splitting will result in more requests being made to load your app. But as long as the requests are made in parallel that’s not a big problem, especially if your site served over HTTP/2.
This is all about assuming the app is largely a client-side JavaScript site. I think there is a huge pile of low-hanging performance fruit, but it’s almost like a different list when talking about client-side JavaScript sites. It makes code-splitting one of the top priorities.
In this post, I’ll discuss what I did at ALDO to measure the revenue impact of web performance without having to spend time making performance improvements.
Not surprising that users with faster experiences generate more revenue. What is surprising is that it’s a lot more. Over 3x more on mobile and nearly 6x more on desktop.
When the time has come to make some changes to your website-building toolkit there’s no shortage of tools or services you could use to smooth out your workflow, save money, add to website capabilities, or put bigger smiles on your clients’ faces.
There are literally hundreds of tools and services you could choose from, if you had the time to make the necessary comparisons, and if you could be confident your choices were good ones.
Or, at our invitation you can browse our selection of top tools and services for 2020. Each of our choices is based on comprehensive reviews, comparisons, and careful analyses. Any one of these tools or services is quite capable of not only making your day but changing how you do business – and for the better.
1. UXPin
Prototyping and collaboration have time and again proven to be not only useful but powerful techniques web design teams count on to achieve successful outcomes, especially for large or very complex projects.
UXPin is a highly advanced prototyping and collaborative tool that lets you build prototypes that look and feel like the final product.
It is not difficult to use UXPin. Some might refer to it as Google Docs on steroids as far as the collaborative features are concerned. These features include:
Reusable design elements and components team members can use to quickly create prototypes;
Interactive form elements, such as check boxes, text fields, and radio buttons;
Vector drawing tools than enable team members to create prototype elements that are limited only by their imaginations;
Material Design, iOS, and Bootstrap design element libraries.
Click on the banner to find out more about this powerful tool and its many additional features.
2. BeTheme
BeTheme, with its more than 40 core features, including a huge assortment of website-building elements, is the biggest WordPress theme of them all. Be has virtually everything you would want or expect from a premium multipurpose WordPress theme, which is a very good reason for including it in this list.
This theme is fast, it’s flexible, and it’s very easy to work with. A beginner could create a traffic-generating website on the first try. Experienced web designers appreciate how easy Be makes it for them to satisfy a large and diverse clientele.
The package includes:
What has to be the highlight; Be’s selection of 500+ responsive and customizable pre-built websites. They cover 30 industry sectors, a wide range of business niches, and all the major website types.
An Admin Panel, a Shortcode Generator, and a selection of shortcodes that gives users a multiplicity of design options and eliminate the need for coding.
The powerful Muffin Builder 3 page builder, a Layout Generator, multiple grid layout options, and much, much more.
Click on the banner to find out more about this popular theme.
3. Mobirise Website Builder
Three good reasons to select a website builder are (1) if you can use it however you want, (2) if it’s affordable, or better yet, free, and (3) if you are given complete control over your design/build process.
Mobirise satisfies these criteria, and there are many other reasons for choosing it as well.
Mobirise is offline. All you have to do is download it. Then, you can use it as you please.
Mobirise is free. No strings attached, and you can use it for both personal and commercial purposes.
You’re not tied to a given platform. This, along with being offline, is why you have complete control over what you do.
In addition, Mobirise has a great selection of HTML themes, homepage templates, and over 2,500 trendy website blocks to work with, no coding is required, and your sites will be 100% responsive and exhibit crazy-fast performance.
Click on the banner to learn more.
4. LayerSlider
LayerSlider is, as many designers already know, a great tool for designing sliders, popups, and other animated website elements.
Features include:
A drag and drop visual builder and a Photoshop-like image editor;
Animated page blocks that make it possible to build a complete website;
A large selection of slider templates, including templates especially designed for beginners;
LayerSlider is SEO and mobile device friendly as it includes a variety of layout options to work with.
5. Dr. Link Check
If you have a large website featuring an abundance of links, you’ve probably come across one or more broken links from time to time. Even a single broken link should be unacceptable, and Dr. Link Check is a service that inspects code to identify broken links.
Dr. Link Check also:
Checks server response times and error codes;
Checks for proper URL formatting;
Can be scheduled to check on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
Click on the banner to learn more about this important service.
6. Uncode – Creative Multiuse WordPress Theme
Uncode is a creative top-seller multiuse theme for creatives who need a tool like this to best serve their needs. Uncode is ideal for building portfolio, blogging, or magazine-style sites or websites for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and startups.
Uncode’s many features include:
A powerful frontend editor, an advanced grid system, and adaptive image system;
400+ Wireframes Sections;
WooCommerce and WPML compatibility.
The showcase is definitely not to be missed. Click on the banner to see it.
7. Stockfresh
Three things to look for in a stock photo agency is a large, well-organized inventory, quality items, and reasonable prices. It’s also nice to be able to browse through the inventory before you pay a penny. That’s what Stockfresh is all about.
Stockfresh has an inventory of millions of items;
Sign up for free to see what’s available before choosing a plan;
The items are categorized (30 categories) and the prices are competitive.
One way to get precisely the eCommerce store you want is to build it from scratch. That’s the hard way. Putting XStore to work may seem like a lazy approach, but it’s actually far better; not to mention faster.
There are several reasons for letting XStore do the heavy lifting:
90+ ready-to-go customizable stores;
XStore’s powerful product page builder;
Inspirational product demos;
$300 worth of premier plugins;
Powerful header builder.
They add up to a stress-free way to build your store.
9. Slider Revolution
7 million worldwide users have made Slider Revolution a popular tool for incorporating creative sliders and special effects into web designs. Slider Revolution 6.0 does a great deal more.
6.0 enables you to create awesome sliders, content modules, carousels, and hero headers;
A host of ready-to-go templates, addons, and 2,000 royalty-free elements give you almost unlimited design possibilities;
With 6.0, you can even build a complete website.
10. 8b Website Builder
8b is brand new. It’s super-fast. It’s a joy to work with. You can create websites from your desktop, from a mobile device, or both.
Among the reasons for incorporating such a new tool on our list of top tools are these:
8b sites get fast Google rankings;
The package features 250 cool templates;
Features include AMP, PWA, and Site Export;
8b is free to use, plus you get a free domain.
Check 8b out today!
11. WhatFontis
You’ve found the perfect font. You can’t identify it or locate its source. Sound like a bad dream? It happens to web designers all too often.
It’s time to call upon WhatFontis. Download an example of the font in question and you can expect a response in seconds:
A positive identification;
A very close match if the exact font can’t be located;
Alternatives with prices if the font is too pricey.
Seems like a very good deal. It is.
12. Goodiewebsite
Goodiewebsite is a development platform servicing a web designer in need of assistance, or a small business owner who wishes to establish an online presence.
You can expect outstanding results from goodiewebsite if you:
Need a simple WordPress website;
Intend to conduct business via a simple WooCommerce site;
Have a 1 to 10 page website in mind.
Goodiewebsite also provides responsive email templates to help its customers with their marketing.
13. Heroic KB – Knowledge Base Plugin
FAQ pages tend to give “stock” responses which often fail to completely answer a user’s question. Giving those same users fact-filled responses can do wonders for your business. With the Heroic Knowledge Base plugin you can:
Provide visitors with a wealth of useful, accurate, and up-to-date information;
Make this information available 24/7 via rapid search;
Apply Heroic KB’s actionable analytics and feedback to improve your customer service operation.
In other words, the Heroic Knowledge Base plugin is a wise investment.
14. Rank Math
Trying to optimize your site to make the search engines love your content isn’t always an easy task. A better way is to let Rank Math do your SEO heavy lifting. Rank Math offers the following:
Analyses of 40 different SEO factors to help your website attract more traffic and make it an eCommerce powerhouse;
A cool selection of Elementor, Automated Image, WooCommerce, and Local SEO tools;
404 Monitor;
Sitemap, redirection, and error checks.
15. Movedo Theme
Movedo is a theme that can make 2020 a year you’ll fondly remember. It was created by a top rated author who didn’t mind straying outside the envelope on occasion to provide users with an assemblage of nifty, extremely useful special effects, e.g., things that are either moving or simply appearing to so.
Gives you a clean, modern design to work with;
Is responsive and extremely flexible;
Offers 24/7 support.
Movedo can indeed make this a year you’ll remember. It rocks!
*****
The above selection should make it easy to find a tool or service that will save you time, minimize your business costs, and help to streamline your design workflows or business operations. You’ll also avoid having to sift through hundreds of tools and services to find something that would work best for you.
These tools and services practically guarantee to increase the amount of time you’ll have to devote to your more pressing tasks and items.
[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of BeTheme –]
It’s hard to run a business these days without hearing about cloud services. You can do your books in the cloud, find employees in the cloud, sell your services in the cloud, and store your files in the cloud.
Cloud storage has boomed over the last decade, and now almost three-quarters of all businesses either use cloud storage or plan to migrate to it soon. Cloud storage seems to be everywhere, but what is it?
With the popularity of cloud storage, it might shock you to learn that few people really understand what it means. Even more shocking, cloud storage was born as an accidental byproduct and not as some brilliant business idea somewhere in a Silicon Valley garage.
An unlikely start
To understand cloud storage, it’s important to know a little bit about what the internet is. Don’t worry, we’re not going to bore you with all the gory details — in fact, we promise that there won’t be a single flowchart or technical diagram in this piece.
The internet is just a lot of computers that are linked together. Many of these computers are personal devices — laptops, phones, desktops, even smart thermostats and the like. But many more of these computers are servers — devices in the background that store websites, control internet traffic, and power all of the cool apps that make life (and business) easier.
These servers were put in place by companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon while they were busy taking over the internet. But they found that they had more space than they needed. A lot more. Rather than let this unused capacity just sit, these companies decided to rent this space to customers and other companies very cheaply, giving birth to the cloud-storage industry.
Your files everywhere
Knowing how the cloud-storage industry started is interesting, but it still doesn’t tell us exactly what cloud storage is. For cloud-storage users, it might seem to be no different than the hard drive inside your computer. More advanced users might think it’s similar to a backup server you could use in your business for archived documents. Both of those are good ways to think about cloud storage, but they don’t tell the whole story.
The most important difference between cloud storage and a regular hard drive, or even a backup server, is how the files are stored. Instead of your documents residing on a single hard drive, your files are stored across a lot of different servers. The reason for this is simple: Companies with a lot of servers had a lot of extra space, but it was spread out in small blocks across thousands of computers.
Think about it like filing cabinets: If you have a thousand cabinets each with enough space for 10 pages, you have 10,000 pages worth of space, but you couldn’t stick a 10,000-page file into a single cabinet. You’d have to spread it out across all of your cabinets. That’s exactly what cloud-storage providers do.
One of the benefits of this approach is that it makes your files incredibly safe. If a single computer dies, you don’t lose your documents. Another benefit is the ability to access your documents from anywhere through the internet. This makes cloud storage incredibly powerful and useful for companies and individuals alike.
In this guide, we’ll help you navigate the complex world of cloud storage and figure out if cloud storage may be right for your business. We’ll give you a more in-depth explanation of how cloud storage works in Chapter 1, give you an overview of must-have cloud-storage features in Chapter 2, identify the different types of cloud storage in Chapter 3, teach you how to use cloud storage in Chapter 4, and guide you through the differences between personal and enterprise cloud storage in Chapters 5 and 6.
How does cloud storage work?
In the last section, we talked about how cloud storage came to be. In this section, we’ll go a little more in depth into how cloud storage works. We’ll also cover the benefits of cloud storage, some advantages compared to traditional storage options, and an overview of the biggest cloud-storage providers.
How cloud storage really works
We mentioned in the last section that cloud storage was born when large internet companies had more server space than they needed. We also talked a little bit about how the available space was broken down into small chunks rather than large blocks.
That’s all most people need to know about cloud storage to start using it for their business. For anyone who is curious about how the whole thing works, however, we’re going to explain it in greater detail here.
Imagine for a second that you have a large library in your home. It’s mostly full, but you have a couple of open spaces on multiple shelves. You want to add a new book, but there’s a problem — the book is too big to fit in any single available space.
For a personal library, the solution is pretty obvious: Just move some books over and rearrange things until one of the spots is big enough to hold the new book. For cloud storage, however, things aren’t as simple.
A lot of the “books” (the files already on servers managing important apps) can’t be easily moved. Sometimes important services rely on certain files to be in a certain place at a certain time. Other times, the files are simply too big to be rearranged. And moving important pieces of something like Google Search or Amazon Shop can cause problems for people using those services.
Long story short, rearranging is usually not an option. So how do cloud-storage providers find room for your files?
Since there’s not enough space on your imaginary bookshelves for a whole book, what you could do is break the book into pieces — maybe by chapter — and put each chapter on a shelf separately. This is exactly how cloud-storage providers find space for the file you’re trying to store.
To make finding these “chapters” easier, each file piece is labeled with the name of the file it belongs to. Finally, a record is created that points to where all of these chapters are stored so they can all be put back together when you need to access a file. Best of all, this is done completely in the background with absolutely no action required from users. For you and other businesses, cloud storage just seems to work like any other hard drive.
The benefits of cloud storage
Even though cloud storage seems to work like any other storage solution, it definitely has benefits that make it stand out from traditional options. These benefits can largely be broken down into three categories: ease of use, compliance, and archiving.
Ease of use
Ease of use is, not surprisingly, how easy a system is for everyday users. Ease of use can cover a couple different things. It can be very literal and only deal with how easy it is to use the interface. This definition answers the following questions:
Does this solution require a lot of training?
Do things work the way you expect them to in this solution?
Can someone sit down and figure out what they need to do just from looking at the interface?
Ease of use can also refer to a more high-level idea — how easy is it to fit the solution into your workflow? This definition answers these questions:
Does this solution make it easier to accomplish my tasks?
Is this solution faster/easier/more convenient than what I’m currently doing?
Will this solution require effort to implement, or will people want to use it?
Thankfully, cloud storage ticks off both of these boxes. The interfaces and integrations for most cloud-storage services are very simple and intuitive. Because these services are all very similar in what they offer, they all try to stand out from the crowd by making things as easy as possible. In many ways, they are almost easier to learn and use than the folders on a standard computer.
They also offer a lot of ease of use in your workflow. Being able to access your files from anywhere and on any device using only an internet connection means you can get more done quicker.
A lot of cloud-storage providers offer integrations with popular apps and programs to make working with them even easier. Most cloud-storage providers also make it easy to share files, allowing you to collaborate with people anywhere in the world with the click of a mouse.
Compliance
Compliance simply means following applicable laws and security best practices. You are, in short, compliant with all relevant rules. Compliance may seem like it only matters to highly regulated industries, like healthcare or finance, but it should be an important consideration for just about any business. That’s because being compliant helps keep your documents secure.
Lately, it may seem like there’s a new story every week about how a popular internet service was hacked and its user information exposed to thieves. Despite all of this seeming doom and gloom, you might be surprised to learn that there hasn’t been a single large hack on a cloud-storage provider. That kind of security is invaluable to individuals and businesses and makes a strong case for using cloud storage.
On the other side of the compliance definition, many popular cloud-storage platforms go out of their way to get certified for specific industries. There are cloud-storage providers that meet all requirements for many industries, from law to healthcare to finance, and have the certifications to prove it. Getting certified can be a lengthy and expensive process, so letting someone else do it on your behalf is a major selling point.
Archiving
When you archive a file, you don’t have to worry about its location or whether it will still be there in a month or a year or a decade. When we talk about archiving, what we’re really talking about is the safety and integrity of documents.
Archiving and data integrity are some of the biggest benefits of cloud storage. Cloud-storage providers do several things that traditional storage options can’t when it comes to the integrity of your files.
One obvious example is the fact that cloud-storage solutions store your files in a different location than the one where you’re located. This keeps your files safe from physical damage — things like fires, natural disasters, or electrical issues that might affect your home or office. This functionality makes cloud storage especially useful for people living in disaster-prone areas.
Another advantage is that files are kept on multiple computers, often with several backups of each file piece. Even if the cloud-storage provider has a catastrophic failure, your file is backed up across enough servers that your files are unlikely to suffer damage or get lost.
Advantages of cloud storage
If the benefits of cloud storage are ease of use, compliance, and archiving, how does cloud storage compare to other storage options? What are the pros and cons of cloud storage?
Ease of use
Local storage is obviously the easiest option for users to learn. Most people have used a computer and understand how files and folders work. Even networked storage has become relatively commonplace in offices, and most people have some idea of how the N: drive (or Z:, or F:, or whatever letter your IT department has settled on) works. Cloud storage can often be set up to work just like a local drive, drive letter and all, but takes a bit of work to set up.
Where cloud storage wins by a mile is the ease with which large files can be shared and the ability to access files from anywhere on any device. Local storage is only available from the computer it’s attached to.
Network storage can be set up for outside access, but getting to it is much harder than just typing in a web address. And opening up the network to the outside reveals potentially huge security holes. Also, you can’t really share files with anyone outside of your organization.
Compliance
Network and local storage can be compliant, but you have to bear the cost and complexity of setting up these systems to be compliant. Likewise with security, it’s possible to make your local or network storage very secure, but it’s up to you to do so.
If you use cloud storage, on the other hand, compliance and security are the responsibility of the cloud-storage provider. If you’re using a well-known, reputable provider, this should be no problem. For smaller or lesser-known providers, you may need to do some research to make sure they’re certified and able to meet your needs.
One con for cloud storage is that bigger companies make bigger targets than smaller companies, so there is some chance of your data being caught up in a large attack on the provider. However, there haven’t been any records of an attack like this happening yet.
Archiving
Local storage is limited by the size of your hard drive. If you want to store more files, you have to remove your old hard drive and install a new one — a potentially complicated procedure. For cloud storage, all you have to do is buy more space. In fact, most providers will automatically increase your available space so you never run out.
Cloud storage also has the advantage of redundancy and an off-site location. As we mentioned earlier, if something happens to your office or home, your files may be lost. Even network storage is limited to being in a single place and only existing as one copy. Cloud storage creates multiple copies of your files and stores them across multiple computers in different locations, so even natural disasters don’t affect your documents.
Overview of cloud-storage providers
It would be impossible to list every single cloud-storage provider available, especially the niche ones that cater to specific industries. Instead, this section will briefly cover some of the biggest and most well-known cloud-storage providers.
Google Drive. Google started providing storage not too long after they started providing email. Since their start, they have added additional services like a cloud office suite and business services. Best of all, they offer free cloud storage (with limited space) on personal accounts.
Dropbox. One of the most well-known and popular services, Dropbox was an early web 2.0 success story and technology darling. They also offer an incredibly simple-to-use and very popular service.
Amazon Drive. Even though Amazon is one of the best known companies in the world, few people are familiar with their cloud-storage offering, Amazon Drive. Some storage is available free with Prime membership.
Box. Box has been around for a very long time, and has changed their services to fit the latest technology and customer needs. They are well regarded, and free trials of their services are often bundled with new laptops.
OneDrive. The cloud-storage offering from Microsoft comes packaged with Windows 10 and seamlessly integrates with most Microsoft programs like Office. Its ease of use and integration makes it ideal for Office-heavy use cases.
Apple iCloud. Like OneDrive, Apple provides cloud storage that is seamlessly built into all of their apps. In fact, if you use an iPhone or other Apple mobile device, chances are you’re already using iCloud.
Now that you know what cloud storage is and the benefits it offers, it’s time to start looking for a cloud-storage provider. In the next section, we’ll review what you should look for in a cloud-service provider and how to pick the best one for your business or personal needs.
Must-have cloud-storage features
There are hundreds of cloud-storage providers, ranging from massive world-famous companies to small niche providers that only work with certain industries. With so many choices, it can be difficult to pick a cloud-storage provider that’s right for you. In this section, we’ll look at the features cloud-service providers offer and help you navigate the jargon to find what you really need.
In previous sections, we broke down the benefits of cloud storage into three categories: ease of use, compliance, and archiving. To make things easier, we’ll continue using these categories and group features into one of them. So what are the must-have features of cloud storage?
Ease of use
Ease of use covers things like how easy it is to use the cloud-storage provider and how easy it is to integrate the cloud-storage provider into your workflow. It also covers how easy it is to get to your files.
Interface
It seems like it should go without saying that a good cloud-storage provider should have an easy-to-use interface. Unfortunately, some companies still use designs that are difficult to use and make finding and storing your files more cumbersome than it has to be.
Desktop integrations
One of the biggest ease-of-use features a cloud-storage service may provide is a desktop integration. This allows you to store files in the cloud the same way you would store a file on your computer, using the same folder structure you currently use.
File sharing
One of the biggest benefits of cloud storage is the ability to easily share your files. You should make sure that whatever cloud-storage provider you choose can share files both with people who use that provider and with guests or people outside of your plan. Additionally, some cloud-storage providers set limits on the size of the files that can be shared, so you should verify that your large documents won’t get stuck.
Web access
Does the cloud-storage provider allow you to access your files from any device through a web connection? Do you have to install specialized software? Does the service only function on a supported connection? Being able to get to your documents with just a browser will make a cloud-storage provider a lot more useful and easier to use.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth refers to the amount of information you can send to or receive from a cloud-storage provider, and how much of that information can be sent at once. Most cloud-storage providers don’t have data transfer limits, but it’s still important to check. It’s just as important to check that the provider will be able to handle all of your transfer needs without significant slowdown.
Compliance
As you may recall, compliance is how well a cloud-storage provider handles applicable laws, regulations, and best practices. This covers things like being HIPAA compliant if you handle patient information, for example. It also covers security features, validations, and certifications.
Regulatory compliance
Working in a regulated industry like healthcare, law, or finance means that the systems you use typically have to meet or exceed some legal standards. Regulatory compliance ensures that you aren’t opening yourself up to liability by storing your files in the cloud.
Different industries have different compliance needs, so it’s important to make sure that the cloud-service provider you’re looking at has the compliance features you need. This may be easier for some industries than others. For example, most modern cloud-service providers meet basic compliance requirements for the medical industry.
Smaller, more niche industries will have to either turn to specialized providers that have the cloud-storage features they need or do a little more homework on the features offered by large providers. It’s also important to note that most cloud-storage providers will offer compliance certification only on their paid business plans.
Security
Security can be a very broad category of cloud-service features, so we’ll try to break it down as much as possible. There are two main components to security: user account security and data security. Both are equally important to keeping your documents safe. Secure cloud storage is critical, so don’t hesitate to take some extra time to evaluate these features.
User account security
User account security deals with the security of how you interact with the cloud-storage provider. Secure cloud-storage providers will make sure that
Your password is long and complex enough to be secure, often requiring special characters, lower- and uppercase letters, and numerals
All of their pages are encrypted with the latest standard and transmitted over “https” rather than “http,” including the pages you visit before you sign in
User account information is securely stored in an encrypted format
User account information isn’t shared with anyone, especially anyone outside of the cloud-storage provider
Data security
Data security deals with the security of how your files are stored and who has access to them. A secure cloud-storage provider should ensure that
You have the ability to set permissions and access levels for anyone who has access to your storage space, so you can control who has access to what files
All pages are properly encrypted using the latest SSL/TLS protocol, and all pages are served over “https,” not “http”
Your private files aren’t accessible by employees or other third parties, whether affiliated with the cloud-storage provider or not
Files are shared securely, and file sharing doesn’t allow either the shared file or other files to be accessed by anyone except the people you give permission. This includes things like making sure that shared files don’t have to be made public to be shared with people outside of your account.
Archiving
Cloud-storage archiving features focus on the ability to safely store all of your documents in the cloud for a long time. The biggest features to look for are cloud-storage capacity and cloud-storage redundancy.
Capacity
Cloud-storage capacity simply means how much space is available to store documents. The good news is that this is much less of a concern than it once was. Storage space has gotten incredibly cheap, and most cloud-storage providers offer a lot of it for free.
Dropbox, for example, offers two gigabytes for free. Microsoft OneDrive offers five gigabytes. Google Drive does even better with 15 free gigabytes. For most users, space is rarely an issue.
For those who need more cloud-storage capacity, however, most cloud-storage providers offer significantly more storage capacity with their paid plans. In most cases, increasing capacity is seamless, and you can do it on the fly as you fill up your existing storage.
Backup and restore
Some cloud-storage providers offer backup and restore features, allowing you to access an earlier version of a file. This is particularly useful if you edit your cloud files often. Sometimes a mistake can be easily undone by simply restoring a file to an earlier point. Most cloud-storage providers offer some restore and backup features, but the length of time ranges from a few hours to a month or more.
Redundancy and uptime
The last cloud-storage features you should check are redundancy and uptime. Redundancy covers how well the cloud-storage provider copies your files to make sure you always have access to your documents.
Most cloud-storage providers will make backups of your files across multiple servers in different locations, ensuring that they’re always safe and accessible even if one server is damaged or goes offline.
Uptime is a measure of how available your file is. Most cloud-storage providers don’t make any promises of uptime for their free plans, but business plans typically offer 99.9 percent uptime in their service level agreements (SLA). That means that your cloud storage will be available 99.9 percent of the time. To put it another way, your files will be unavailable for no more than 43 minutes per month.
Knowing which features are important to you and your business can help you narrow down your search for a cloud-service provider. Most providers will be very similar but will offer enough differences to either move them up the list or rule them out. Knowing the different types of cloud storage available can help narrow down that list even further, and that’s the next section of our guide.
Types of cloud storage
When we explained how cloud storage works in Chapter 1, we gave a very high-level overview that glossed over an important fact: There are different types of cloud storage, and they don’t all act exactly the same.
Don’t worry; if you aren’t interested in the nitty-gritty details about how cloud storage works or the types of cloud storage, our original explanation is good enough. But if you’re considering more advanced use of cloud storage, then the different types of cloud storage become important.
There are three main types of cloud storage, and they all function a little differently. This makes some cloud-storage types better for some applications than others.
Cloud object storage stores your data as objects composed of a unique identifier, the data itself, and metadata, or data that describes the object. The data is unstructured and has a flat hierarchy.
Cloud file storage stores your data as files inside a standard file structure. This type of storage is the most similar in appearance to the way personal computers store files, and it’s often found on networked file servers.
Cloud block storage keeps files in specific places on the storage server in small chunks, or blocks. This is most similar in operation to a traditional computer hard drive, and is often considered identical to direct-attached storage (DAS) systems.
Cloud object storage
Cloud object storage is the most modern of the three types of cloud storage, and in general offers the most benefits. Instead of building a structured file system, object file storage makes all files the same. Each object that’s uploaded is assigned a unique file ID and is made up of three parts — the file ID, the data itself, and some metadata about the file.
The file ID is simply a way for the cloud object storage system to keep track of every file. The IDs are stored in a directory in a centralized location (or, more often, in several directories for redundancy) for easy file location.
The data stored in the object is whatever data you actually upload. This could be a document, a movie, a picture, or some other information. Because cloud object storage is unstructured, it can easily store any kind of data without any modifications.
Finally, the metadata is a set of labels or descriptions of the data being stored. Typically, this will include things like the name of the file, the type of file or file extension, and often the date the file was uploaded. The metadata is also unstructured, so there are almost no limits to what it can contain. Many cloud object storage providers use metadata to keep track of who uploaded a file, when it was accessed and by whom, the version of the file, and more.
Files in cloud object storage are stored in a flat hierarchy. This means that there is no real “file structure” the way there is on your hard drive — there are no folders or levels of files. Every file in a cloud object storage system is on the same level. This seems like it would make finding files difficult. However, thanks to a combination of the file ID, the file directory, and the file metadata, clever cloud-storage providers can actually build the appearance of a hierarchy without having to rely on a prebuilt system. This in turn makes it easy to customize user interfaces.
The big advantage of cloud object storage is the freedom that it offers both users and developers. Objects can be stored on any server, in any format, containing any kind of data. This makes it very easy to build systems that can scale — grow to be as big as or shrink to be as small as users need them to be. They are also incredibly robust, because it’s easy to duplicate and back up files. Most modern consumer cloud-storage solutions use cloud object storage.
The biggest disadvantage is that because the files are unstructured and scattered, it can take longer to find them and retrieve them. It also requires more work to organize files since they aren’t organized by default.
Cloud file storage
Cloud file storage is most similar in use to a standard personal computer hard drive. In fact, many cloud file storage systems have been in use since long before people started using the term “cloud.”
Most workplace file servers are built on the same technology as cloud file storage. Often, this type of cloud storage is referred to as network attached storage, because it is in essence just a storage device attached to your computer via network instead of plugged in inside your computer.
Cloud file storage is hierarchical and structured. That means files are stored in a predetermined file structure, with a specified set of descriptors. Just like files on your computer, files in this type of cloud-storage system have a file name, file size, file type, and other labels.
Unlike cloud object storage, this version of metadata is limited to whatever fields were programmed in from the beginning. Cloud file storage users and developers can’t add metadata unless it fits one of the predetermined fields.
Cloud file storage also typically has a very basic operating system or interface incorporated into it to allow it to operate as an independent file system without relying on users’ computers to provide an interface.
Besides being used for document and file storage, cloud file storage is often used in another common application: web pages. Because the files exist in a specific structure, it’s easytofind and reach them through a standard browser. This makes cloud storage invaluable for storing web pages, which are just special files written in HTML and accessed through web browsers.
The advantages of a cloud file storage system are ease of use and integration. Often, once a server is attached to a network, it’s immediately ready to use. It also looks familiar to many users.
The structured nature of the storage makes it useful for applications where specific files need to be accessed using a file address through a web browser. This makes it ideal for web pages, content management systems, and similar applications.
The biggest disadvantage is that it combines the flaws of cloud object storage with some unique problems. It isn’t the fastest way to access files stored in the cloud and therefore isn’t suitable for applications that require a lot of speed.
It’s also a lot more rigid than an object-based cloud-storage system, making it difficult to modify, customize, and extend. And finally, it’s a lot less flexible and robust because the files typically have to be located on the same server or server cluster to work well.
Cloud block storage
Cloud block storage is actually the most similar in the way it works to a traditional hard drive. In fact, a “block” in a cloud block system is little more than a virtual hard drive with a set size. These blocks are considered “raw” storage space because they don’t have any kind of interface or even a rudimentary operating system and rely entirely on users’ computers to provide a human-to-machine interface.
In cloud block storage, data is broken down into sequential blocks of equal size and stored in a set order. If a specific file is larger than the predetermined block, it might be split across multiple blocks. Alternatively, the block sizes might need to be adjusted to fit files, depending on the setup used. Sometimes this adjustment can be made automatically, but sometimes it must be made manually.
In addition, each block acts as its own hard drive that has to be “attached” to a user’s system independently. This creates some limitations — for example, in a cloud-block storage system, multiple users can’t use the same block at the same time.
This can also create problems if you’re trying to access files on different blocks at the same time, since you’ll have to attach one block, get the files you need, unattach it, and attach a second block (or multiple blocks as multiple drives simultaneously), etc. Since these blocks are formatted as traditional file systems with no interface, they may not work with all computers if they use a file system your computer can’t read.
Where cloud block storage shines is in the speed that it can deliver to users. Because each block is essentially an independent hard drive that is “mounted,” or attached, just like a regular hard drive, reading and writing files is much faster than the other two types of cloud-storage systems.
This benefit makes it incredibly useful for applications where reading and writing large data sets is important. Cloud block storage is often implemented in large enterprise database systems, in which the system knows where certain kinds of data is located.
Some of the biggest disadvantages include the lack of sharing resources and multiple access, as mentioned earlier. Another big disadvantage for smaller businesses is the inefficient use of space. Since all of the blocks have to be the same size, some blocks may be almost full while others may be mostly empty. And since resizing the blocks can be difficult, companies might need to purchase more space than they need today in anticipation of future use.
Each type of cloud-storage system has advantages and disadvantages, and none works for every kind of business. Selecting the right kind of system, for advanced users, requires understanding how it’s going to be used and matching the advantages of the system to those needs.
Hopefully you now have the tools you need to evaluate cloud-storage providers. In the next section, we’ll put some of this theory into practice by explaining how to use cloud storage, and we’ll move closer to helping you identify the best cloud-storage provider for your business.
How to use cloud storage
There are probably as many different ways to use cloud storage as there are people using cloud storage. Still, most of the basic use cases fall into a couple of major categories:
Cloud file sharing
Cloud hosting
Cloud backup
Cloud data storage
Cloud photo storage
In this section, we’ll dig a little deeper into these categories and show you how to use cloud storage for your business or personal needs.
How is cloud storage used for file hosting?
One of the most common ways to use cloud storage is for sharing large files with friends, clients, and coworkers. Cloud file sharing was one of the main reasons cloud storage managed to grow so quickly in popularity.
For security reasons, many email clients severely limit the size of attachments that users can send. So even though inboxes keep growing, the size of files you can transfer has stayed consistently small, limiting users’ ability to quickly distribute important documents — whether they be large sales presentations or home movies of your nephew’s first birthday.
Cloud file sharing became a way to work around these limits. With a cloud file sharing solution, instead of trying to send a too-large file, users could upload the file and then simply send a link. As common as cloud file sharing is now, it’s hard to understand just how revolutionary the ability to easily send large files was even a decade ago.
Cloud file sharing has a lot of advantages going for it. It’s incredibly simple to use, both for sharers and the people they’re sharing with. It’s much faster than mailing flash drives or other traditional ways of sending large files. Cloud file sharing also offers the ability to restrict who you share files with or to share them with anyone who wants access and has a link to your file.
Of special note to businesses in regulated industries, many cloud file sharing services offer compliance options to help track and manage who has access to a shared file, as well as any changes they may have made to that file. These kinds of audit trails and privacy controls are essential for companies working in health care, law, and several other fields.
How is cloud storage used for file hosting?
File hosting can mean different things depending on the specific business need being addressed. The simplest form is using a cloud hosting server to make files available from any location to a select group of people. However, cloud hosting can also be used to host public files and even whole websites.
Cloud file hosting gives companies the ability to store many kinds of files on a server that’s accessible through the internet. Along with the ability to share files, cloud file hosting gives businesses a way for multiple employees in remote locations to access the same pool of documents and work together collaboratively. It also allows team members who are traveling to access document repositories, which is especially useful for sales teams that have a lot of materials or other employees who are on the road a lot.
For more advanced users, cloud file hosting can be used to host publicly available files. This can mean hosting your entire website in the cloud or just the files you need to share outside of your company, like marketing collateral or public presentations.
How is cloud storage used for photo hosting?
Speaking of marketing collateral, this is a good time to talk about cloud photo storage. Most people with a cell phone are already familiar with cloud photo storage. iCloud and Google Photos are two of the most common cloud photo storage options and come baked into almost every modern cell phone.
These consumer-grade cloud photo hosting options help users free up storage on their phones and make their photos available to friends and family members. Companies can also take advantage of these technologies to share photos and other media with employees, clients, and prospective clients.
Of course, using cloud photo storage for business requires more sophisticated tools than consumer-grade software like iCloud or Google Photos. Fortunately, all of the business-grade cloud-storage tools we mentioned earlier can easily handle photo storage.
It’s also important to remember that photo cloud storage doesn’t have to end with photos ? it can include any media. Photos, movies, audio, and the like can be stored in the cloud. Cloud storage can give your business a powerful platform to share, distribute, or simply store all of your media files.
How is cloud storage used for data storage?
It’s possible to store more than photos, movies, and work files in the cloud. Many companies find that they generate a lot of data in the typical course of operations. From customer databases to manufacturing data to account files ? this data can also be stored in the cloud. In fact, moving databases to the cloud is one of the most popular business uses of the technology among more tech-savvy users.
The advantages of moving data to the cloud are similar to the advantages of using cloud storage for more traditional files. The biggest ones are safety, redundancy, and access. Data stored in the cloud can be backed up multiple times automatically and can be backed up to multiple servers so that an outage in one place doesn’t interrupt your business.
Cloud data storage also allows you to access and work with your data from anywhere, often simultaneously from multiple locations. Moving business data to the cloud allows you to decentralize your company’s work.
Instead of requiring information to be stored on the same server, it can be safely located in a large server offsite while multiple machines use it from anywhere on earth. As work becomes increasingly remote, this ability to spread your work globally is incredibly powerful.
How is cloud storage used for backup?
Finally, cloud storage is a great option for storage and backup of your files and data. Companies like Carbonite, Backblaze, and iDrive allow you to easily create automatic backups of your files to the cloud. This, in turn, leaves you far less vulnerable to data loss and outages.
Data security researchers have a saying: “If your file doesn’t exist in three places, it doesn’t exist.” That might be a bit of an overstatement, but it has more than a grain of truth. It’s incredibly easy to lose data.
Almost everyone has experienced some form of data loss at one point or another ? maybe a laptop hard drive crashed, or they damaged their phone beyond repair. Businesses have suffered similar problems, including flooding, fires, and other disasters.
Cloud storage gives you a way to back up data to a second location. Better yet, many cloud backup services let you back up your data to multiple locations, spreading it out for increased security.
You can also store multiple backups, which gives you options of where to revert in a worst-case scenario. This is becoming important as a way to protect your company against increasingly common attacks from hackers, especially “cryptolocker” style attacks that hijack your data and hold it hostage until you pay a ransom ? something that recently happened to a city in Florida. Had the city made use of offsite backups, they could have simply reverted their systems to an earlier backup point.
Cloud storage offers a tremendous number of possibilities and use cases. The ability to safely and securely store your files on a remote server gives companies and individuals freedom like never before.
However, with so much power comes responsibility: Cloud-storage users need to make sure that the solution they choose is right for their specific application. This can include checking for features, as we mentioned earlier. It can also mean verifying that whatever solution you pick has been validated and certified as compliant with the laws that govern your industry.
In the next two chapters, we’ll help you identify the best solutions both for your personal use and for enterprise use.
What is personal cloud storage?
One option for cloud storage we’ve briefly mentioned is personal cloud storage. This might sound like cloud storage for individuals rather than businesses, and some people do refer to individual cloud-storage solutions as “personal,” but that isn’t what we mean here.
Instead, personal cloud storage refers to running and maintaining your own local cloud-storage server. In addition to “personal cloud storage,” this kind of configuration is also sometimes referred to as home or private cloud storage.
Besides purchasing space from a large-scale, public cloud-storage provider, some companies choose to run their own cloud-storage servers so they can keep full control over their information. Running your own personal cloud keeps everything inside your organization, giving you many of the benefits of a traditional public cloud while avoiding some of the concerns.
Personal cloud storage usually takes the form of a hard drive or hard drives with a server built in, though it can also be software that you set up on your own server hardware.
Getting started with personal cloud storage requires connecting the device to your network and setting it up to function the way you want it to. This could be as simple as plugging in a box and setting a password or as complicated as doing intense configuration for both hardware and software, depending on your needs and your provider.
Like a traditional cloud-storage provider, personal cloud storage allows you to store and share files over the internet. Unlike a traditional cloud-storage solution, personal cloud storage doesn’t upload your files to servers controlled by a third party. Home cloud storage has a few major advantages:
The personal cloud-storage service doesn’t store your files on public servers. You maintain full control of how and where your files are stored. They aren’t placed on servers outside your control.
The personal cloud-storage service gives you full control. You get to decide where the server is located, who has physical and network access to it, how it’s configured, and what kind of server is used.
Of course, no solution is perfect, and personal cloud storage is no exception — otherwise there would be no reason for companies to use the public cloud. There are a couple of potential pitfalls that companies need to be aware of before jumping into managing their own home cloud-storage network:
The personal cloud-storage service isn’t really the cloud. Unlike traditional/public cloud storage, home cloud storage doesn’t move your files to an external server.
The personal cloud-storage service doesn’t have the same redundancy. Instead of storing your files across multiple redundant servers, they are instead stored in one single location, removing some of the security of a public cloud.
The personal cloud-storage service isn’t responsible for certification and validation. You are responsible for making sure that your personal cloud storage meets all the certifications your business requires.
The personal cloud-storage service can open you up to network vulnerabilities. Being able to access your personal cloud-storage solution from anywhere opens up your network to the world. Unfortunately, it can be tricky to make sure only authorized users can walk through that door.
For businesses that need more control over their files, a personal cloud-storage device can be the perfect solution. It puts a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of users, but it also offers those users a tremendous amount of control.
Common personal cloud-storage devices
Personal cloud-storage devices have been around for many years now, and the industry is mature enough that it’s difficult to find truly bad options. However, some companies and devices stand head and shoulders above the pack. These are our recommendations for the best devices for personal cloud storage in 2019.
QNAP TS-451. The QNAP TS-451 is one of the more complicated offerings on the market, but it also includes a lot of configuration options. It has four front-mounted hard drive bays, meaning it can store up to 48 Terabytes (TB) of data — more than most midsize offices will ever need, and the drives can be swapped out quickly and easily for backup or to upgrade the system.
It also comes with options for upgrading the amount of RAM (random access memory) used, from 1 Gigabyte (GB) all the way up to 8 GB if you need more powerful hardware. The system starts at about $400 but doesn’t include hard drives.
Synology DS1618+. The Synology DS218+ is a more powerful storage solution that features six hard drive bays for up to 72 TB of data. Like the QNAP system, they can be swapped out for backup or for upgrades. It also comes with a suite of helpful apps, data-protection options, and the ability to easily stream media. As for RAM, it comes with 4 GB but is expandable up to 32 GB.
The system starts at around $750, but there are both less and more powerful models available depending on your needs and budget. For example, the DS2415+ variant provides 12 hard drive bays for up to 144 TB of storage, for around $1,400.
WD My Cloud EX4. The WD My Cloud EX4, as its name suggests, includes four swappable hard drive bays for up to 8, 12, or 16 TB of data storage. Like most WD (Western Design) products, the hardware and software are user-friendly, easy to plug and play, and come with several convenient options. For example, this model features two power ports in the back, which protects you if one plug is pulled out accidentally.
There are also USB 3.0 ports and two Ethernet ports for extra storage capacity and protection against disconnections. The model without internal hard drive storage goes for about $400.
WD My Cloud PR4100. The WD DL4100 comes with four swappable hard drive bays for up to 8, 16, and 24 TB of data storage. There’s also the standard model without built-in hard drives. What makes this device stand out is its ease of use, small form factor, portability, and a web-based dashboard where you can customize permissions, set users, enable sharing, and manage backups.
Like the other WD device on this list, it provides multiple power and Ethernet ports so you can ensure redundancy. You can also set up text and SMS alerts in case there any system failures. The version without any hard drives starts at $450.
Buffalo LinkStation LS220D. The Buffalo LinkStation LS220D is a cloud-storage solution with two hard drive bays. By far the most affordable device on this list, it comes in 2, 4, and 8 TB configurations for about $180, $250, and $350 respectively. There is also a version without hard drives for around $100.
As you can imagine, this is a no-frills device. But it’s easy to set up, simple to manage via desktop and mobile apps, and offers speedy file backups and transfers over the internet, which is really the main point of devices like this. If you need a simple, inexpensive cloud-storage device, consider this one.
Enterprise cloud storage solutions
There are virtually no companies that couldn’t benefit from some form of cloud storage. Whether you need to store data securely offsite, share files over the internet, or transfer data between multiple servers, there’s a business cloud-storage use case that fits just about any situation.
One important business cloud-storage advantage we haven’t discussed yet is the ability to extend functionality with apps, plugins, and integrations. As versatile as business cloud storage is out of the box, many companies get even more out of it by connecting it to third-party services that allow them to improve their workflows and do more with less.
Business cloud-storage integrations
Cloud-storage integrations are apps that work together with your enterprise cloud-storage solution to do more than just store, share, and archive files. Integrations come in many flavors. Some are built by cloud-storage providers themselves, while others are third-party apps. Some work with all major cloud-storage providers, while others may work only with a single specific service. Some are extensions for your browser, some are desktop apps, and some live in the cloud themselves.
The range of functionality offered by integrations is equally broad. Some allow data to be automatically backed up or shared, while others can notify you of file changes, automatically email file shortcuts, or even change file names dynamically to better fit a naming structure. In short, whatever you need, there’s a good chance someone has thought of it and built a business cloud-storage integration to accomplish it. Some of our favorite business cloud-storage integrations include the following.
JotForm
We built JotForm to be one of the best cloud-storage integrations out there. Using JotForm’s cloud integrations, business owners can quickly and easily build forms into their cloud workflow. You can seamlessly send data to any number of cloud-storage providers, and our compliance certification means that you can do so without violating HIPAA or disclosing protected health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII).
Zapier
Zapier is a workflow automation tool that helps companies connect different apps, services, and integrations. For example, if someone fills out a JotForm intake form that’s uploaded to your company’s Google Drive, Zapier can parse the results, add the information to your company’s CRM, and send notification emails to the right member of your sales team based on one of the fields, such as region or industry.
Slack
Slack has become the quintessential business messaging platform. If you aren’t familiar with it, Slack allows you to keep in contact with your team by setting up chat rooms for individual teams, projects, functions, and whatever else you can imagine. It also allows you to share and manage files directly from a chat interface.
Integrating Slack with cloud storage gives you a quick way to update project teams and share task-related documents. For some cloud-storage providers, it also allows you to manage permissions and access, track changes, and monitor and notify users of updates.
Asana
Asana is a project management tool for people who don’t like project management. It allows you to create tracked tasks in the form of a to-do list, then combine those lists into projects. Because of its lightweight design, it makes managing projects much simpler than using a more robust tool. It also allows you to link cloud-storage files to specific projects and tasks, giving you the ability to easily manage who does what with which document.
These integrations are just a small sample of the hundreds of apps available for use with enterprise cloud-storage solutions. It’s no exaggeration to say that there’s probably a business cloud-storage integration available to fit any need you can come up with. Most large, well-known cloud-storage providers have integrations with dozens of apps and tools, and most well-known integrations tend to work with almost all business cloud-storage providers.
All of this leaves us with just one question, and it’s a big one: Which cloud-storage solution is right for your business? We can’t answer that question for you, but hopefully we’ve given you the tools you need to decide for yourself.
Not all cloud-storage providers are right for every business, so we’ve provided a couple of suggestions below. They’re broken down into small business cloud providers and enterprise cloud providers. While most well-known providers will work for either application, some are easier to use for large companies and others for small ones. Combined with everything you’ve learned so far, this should get you well on your way to selecting and using a business cloud-storage provider that’s perfect for you.
Small business cloud-storage providers
Dropbox Business
For small to midsize businesses, Dropbox Business should be an adequate file-storage solution. It’s easy to use, provides unlimited storage space (with some plans), and offers a plethora of options, including unlimited file recovery and versioning, the ability to set user files and permissions, password-protected links for sharing, and integrations with multiple third-party apps like Microsoft Office 365. It starts at $15 per month.
Google Drive for Work
Besides file storage, Google Drive works extremely well as a platform for collaborating with coworkers on documents and other important files. It allows users to edit, comment, and make suggestions in the same document, makes backups and keeps histories of different versions of files, and send email notifications when documents are changed. It also lets users edit documents offline and upload them to the cloud.
For business users, Google Drive provides unlimited storage space, and it integrates well with other Google products and services, such as Calendar, Gmail, and Google Hangouts. It starts at $12 per user per month.
Microsoft OneDrive for Business
Like Google Drive for Work, Microsoft OneDrive for Business offers a collaboration platform where coworkers can comment, edit, and work together on the same documents — and some plans provide unlimited storage space.
If you already use Microsoft products, like Word, integration is incredibly easy thanks to built-in features that allow you to upload files to your OneDrive account. It even lets you access files from your Xbox. OneDrive for Business starts at $5 per user per month.
Enterprise cloud-storage solutions
Box
Box provides many essential features for enterprise companies, including the ability to set users and permissions, project management tools, and workflow automation. Most notable, however, are its security and compliance bonafides, which should cover many industry regulations.
Box offers 256-bit AES encryption, which means files will be very difficult to crack. And it meets numerous regulatory requirements, including ISO 27001 and ISO 27018; plus it’s HIPAA compliant. Box starts at $15 per user per month for business customers.
Egnyte
Egnyte offers similar options as Box, including 256-bit AES encryption for files in transit and at rest, and ISO 27001 and HIPAA compliance. It also provides a key management service, which means business owners have greater control over who gets access to their data.
Egnyte has numerous third-party integrations with apps like Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, and Slack. Egnyte starts at $20 per user per month for business customers.
Amazon S3
Like Box and Egnyte, Amazon’s cloud-storage solution provides top-of-the-line encryption and meets ISO 27001 and HIPAA-compliance standards. Interestingly, you can choose where in the world your files are stored in Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) cloud, which is great in case you need to meet (or avoid) region-specific regulations.
You also get integrations with multiple third-party apps. However, due to its high degree of flexibility, Amazon S3 can be very confusing to use unless you have skilled IT professionals on board to set up and manage day-to-day operations. The pricing structure is also confusing — there’s a pricing calculator, but S3 is free to start so you can decide whether it’s right for your business or not.
Business cloud storage is a mature field, with a lot of fantastic options for any kind of business and any kind of need. In fact, as long as you choose a well-known and well-established provider, it’s hard to make a bad decision. If you’ve followed this guide all the way through, you should know how to select the right provider. Remember to look for the right kind of cloud storage, the right compliance and validation, and the right integrations.
After that, the best option is to try out a few business cloud-storage providers and see which ones you and your team prefer. Remember that the best system in the world doesn’t help much if no one likes using it! And if you find yourself stuck, look back through our cloud-storage guide to find inspiration for making the best selection.
In this episode of the Smashing Podcast, we’re talking about the user experience around converting site visitors into customers. Can our selling techniques leave customers feeling cheated? And how can that be avoided? I spoke to conversion optimisation specialist Paul Boag to find out.
Drew McLellan: He’s a user experience consultant, digital transformation expert, and conversion rate optimization specialist hailing from the southwest of the UK. He is the author of many books, including User Experience Revolution from Smashing Magazine, and the forthcoming title Click! How to Encourage Clicks Without Shady Tricks. He’s also a veteran web design podcaster with a show running more or less weekly for 15 years. So we know he’s an expert at user experience design, but did you know he’s also the world authority on papier-mache? My Smashing friends, please welcome Paul Boag. Hi, Paul. How are you?
Paul Boag: Oh, I’m smashing, apparently.
Drew: So we’re in the middle of a global pandemic.
Paul: Yeah, and you’ve just made me say I’m feeling smashing in the middle of a pandemic. That’s great. Thanks.
Drew: What I want to know is, what’s on your shopping list?
Paul: Oh, dear. Do you know, this pandemic has changed very little in my life. Social distancing, I’ve been doing that for 18 years. I’ve worked from home for 18 years. We homeschooled our son. My wife works from home. Nothing has changed in my life. In fact, if anything, I’m now more sociable because everybody’s creating these WhatsApp groups and things, where, “Oh, let’s all pull together as a community.” So I’m having to talk to people now. It’s just dreadful, dreadful time.
Drew: Oh, wow. I’ll tell you what’s on my shopping list.
Paul: Oh, yeah.
Drew: It’s a new book of yours.
Paul: Oh. That was smooth, Drew. I’m super impressed by that.
Drew: It’s a heck of a title, How to Encourage Clicks Without Shady Tricks. Tell me about that.
Paul: Well, that wasn’t the original title that I wanted. Do you know this story?
Drew: No, I don’t know this story.
Paul: Oh, okay. I got vetoed by Vitaly.
Drew: Oh, dear.
Paul: Because I wanted to call it Encouraging Clicks Without Being a… But apparently, that’s not professional enough. So the basis of the book is that we all need to improve our conversion rate. Websites aren’t there, although we talk about being user-centric and user-focused, and all those things are entirely correct, but at the end of the day, websites have to create and return on investment for whoever owns them. And that’s entirely understandable and as it should be. But increasingly, people are under enormous pressure to improve their conversion rates. Marketers have got targets they’ve got to meet, designers are under pressure. And part of the problem is, in the early days when your website is rubbish, it was easy to increase your conversion rate.
Paul: And so as a result, then that set expectations, because the conversion rate went up quite a lot every year. And so management ended up expecting that to happen over the long term, and of course, it becomes harder and harder. So the result is that people are inevitably turning to dark patterns. Not because necessarily they want to, but because they’re under pressure to. They’re under pressure to bring about results.
Paul: So the premise of this book is, first of all, to explain why dark patterns are a bad idea. And not from an ethical point of view. I don’t feel I’m the kind of person that can preach on ethics. But I talk about it from a purely business point of view, that these are the business reasons why dark patterns are ultimately damaging. And then that inevitably leads to the question of, well, if dark patterns aren’t the answer, then what is? And that’s what the majority of the book is exploring, that, what you can do to improve your conversion rate without resorting to these kinds of more manipulative techniques. So I actually got really excited about this book. It’s been one of the most enjoyable ones to write, and I actually think it’s probably the most practical and tangible book for the biggest majority of people out of the ones I’ve written.
Drew: So in a previous episode of this podcast, I talked to Michael and Trina about their book on ethical design.
Paul: Yes.
Drew: Also from Smashing magazine.
Paul: Yeah.
Drew: I guess that makes your book a good complement to that one, if they’re looking at the ethics of it, and maybe your approach is slightly more from the practical and business side.
Paul: Absolutely, yeah.
Drew: And not just the ethics.
Paul: Yeah. And I was quite chuffed when I found out that my book would be following on from theirs. I felt that that was a really good relationship between the two. Because don’t get me wrong, I think the ethics of how we design online and the decisions that we make and those kinds of things is massively important. And I think we’re in a very dangerous time in terms of that kind of thing, with many of the decisions that are being made, especially by larger organizations. But that’s not an area that I am an expert in, or that I feel I can comment on. But what I am seeing are significant long-term consequences of adopting these more manipulative techniques. Because I think there’s a perception that users are unaware that they’re being manipulated. Because these techniques work, people go, “Oh, okay, therefore people aren’t aware that we’re manipulating them. So everything’s fine.”
Paul: The truth is very different from that. Those things, these forms of manipulation, are happening on a subconscious level, yes. And they work because they’re subconscious, but people are still consciously aware of it. I’ve done a lot of usability testing on things like hotel booking sites, which are well known for this kind of thing. And the truth is, people will go, “Oh, I hate all this manipulative crap.” But then they’re still influenced by it. So it’s the impact of the fact that people are aware of it, and then also it’s got a lot of hidden costs associated with it. You tend to see high returns, you tend to see more contacting of support and those kinds of things. And a lot of organizations are not joined up enough to realize that that kind of thing is happening because of these dark patterns.
Drew: I guess it’s a bit like going to a theme park and buying lunch there. You know that you’re being way overcharged, but you want your lunch at the theme park, and so it leaves, not literally, a bad taste in your mouth, hopefully. But there’s a bit of that regret there, that you know that you’re being shafted but you go along with it all the same. But you might not be keen to return next time you’re budgeting your holiday.
Paul: Absolutely. But then there’s also the element of buyer’s remorse, that a lot of time if you bounce someone … You can bounce people into doing pretty much anything you want. And that’s fine, take out ethics for a minute. But you could argue, but that’s fine from a business point of view. But what you end up with is an audience of customers who are suffering from buyer’s remorse. Buyer’s remorse is extremely dangerous because that’s what leads people to complain online, that’s what leads people to return items and all of those kinds of things. So it’s incredibly important that people are happy with their decision, they’re happy with their purchase. And that’s really what the book is about, is how do you get people to a point as fast as possible where they’re happy with their decision without them then afterwards regretting that decision?
Drew: So say that you’ve been using some of these perhaps slightly underhanded techniques on your site, and you’ve seen that it’s converting well, you’re turning visitors into customers quite effectively. But you want to, perhaps you’re seeing more returns or you’re seeing some bad reviews, or you’re seeing some of the consequences of this buyer’s remorse that we were talking about, and you want to try and improve things, get rid of the underhanded techniques, and bring in a more ethical or more customer-friendly ways of converting people. How are you going to know if you’re actually having an effect? You presumably have to come up with some way of measuring your conversion before you can start making changes?
Paul: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, again, this is something that many organizations are quite poor at, is being clear about how they’re going to measure success. Now, yes, your conversion rate is one metric you should absolutely be following. But even with conversion, you need to be a little bit more sophisticated than how many people are buying. You also need to pay attention to average order value, you need to pay particular attention to lifetime value. So how much are customers worth over their entire life? Because you may well find that you’re getting quite high churn of customers if you’re using dark patterns and things like that.
Paul: But really, conversion should be just one of the metrics that you’re measuring. There’s also things like, you need to be paying attention to engagement, how engaged are people with your content. Because that makes a big difference in whether they eventually go on to convert. So you’re looking at things like, how much of your videos do they watch? How long do they spend on your site and what are they looking at while they’re doing it? Are they engaging on social media and those kinds of things? And then the final aspect is obviously usability. You need to be measuring how quickly someone can complete a particular task on their website, and how easy they find the system to use, and various different other criteria.
Paul: And there are loads of mechanisms that you can use for measuring those different things. There are some great tools out there. And also some good metrics that you can adopt. So, for example, with usability, there’s something called the system usability scale, which could be a very useful metric to measure. But equally, there are tools like maze.design, is one that I often use, which will measure how long it’s taking someone to make a purchase, for example, get through the checkout. So yeah, having that broad range of metrics, you’re not just focusing on how many sales did we make this quarter. You’ve got to look at the bigger picture.
Drew: Are there any dangers that you could end up measuring the wrong thing?
Paul: Yes. Yes, absolutely. And so as a result, I think any metric that you’re looking at, that’s why you really need a range of metrics. If you just focus in on one particular metric, so for example, a lot of marketing professionals are judged on the number of leads that they’ve generated in a particular quarter or whatever. If you just have one metric like that, then it’s going to, A, skew the reality of what’s going on, but B, it’s going to end up encouraging some less than perfect behavior. So let me give you an example. I worked with a company that produces project management software. And they had a marketing department and they had a sales department. And the marketing department was tasked with generating leads. That was their job. They had to generate as many leads as possible.
Paul: The sales department were judged and assessed on how many leads they converted. Now, the website was owned by the marketing department. So the marketing department came to the conclusion that it was a really good idea to, the product demo that they had on the website, they were going to make people register before they could see the product demo. Because that would generate a large number of emails and a large number of leads to help them meet their target. Sure enough, it did. It generated a huge number of leads, a lot of people just gave up and went away, but many people did actually sign up to see the demo.
Paul: Now, the problem that that created is, the majority of those leads weren’t good quality leads. They were people that were nowhere near the point of being ready to talk to a salesperson, and so when the salesperson contacted them, they weren’t interested. They didn’t want to talk to them. But the salesperson had already wasted the time and the effort in calling them. And then they also had to filter through all the people that entered “Donald Duck@Disney” as their email address. So actually they created a huge amount of internal work for the sales team, and the sales team conversion rate plummeted through the floor. Because they had all these poor quality leads. So that’s a great example of how things can go wrong if your metrics are too narrow and too skewed in a particular direction.
Drew: And I guess a lot of it comes down to understanding who the user is. In order to turn somebody into a customer, you need to understand who they are. I guess so much about user experience design is effectively putting yourself in the place of your user and empathizing with what they’re trying to do. So how do we go about understanding who our user is?
Paul: Well, again, there are lots of different ways of doing that, depending on your time and your budget and things like that. I’m a great believer in actually meeting with users. I think there is a bit of a tendency at the moment towards, we’ve got all these wonderful analytics and survey tools and that kind of thing. And sure enough, those are great. I’m not in any way knocking them. But if you’re trying to convince somebody to take action, as you say, you need to empathize with them. And knowing that somebody has 2.3 children, works in the city, and I don’t know, spends their weekends kayaking, doesn’t really help you to know and empathize with them as people.
Paul: So personally, I’m a much bigger fan of actually speaking to people and doing user interviews. Even if they’re over the phone or remotely, which they have to be at the moment. They’re very much worthwhile in terms of getting to know people. Now, that said, I think another thing that I love to do, and just kind of blows you away, you can’t do this at the moment, but hopefully you will be able to soon, which is, you go and visit people in their homes. Now, the reason that I find this so valuable is because you find out about the reality of their experience in a way that you would never get from just talking to them over the phone or from a survey.
Paul: Now, I’m not saying you need to do this a lot. Probably doing it once is enough. But essentially … Let me give you an example. I was once testing an e-commerce site, and so I decided to visit some people in their home and actually test the site with them in their own home. So I went to visit this one lady, and she opened the door, and immediately all these cats came out and crawled around my legs and disappeared off. And she was a stereotypical cat lady. I’m sorry to be rude, but she really was. Every surface in the house was covered with knickknacks and ornaments relating to cats in some way. There were pictures of cats on the wall. She had a total of nine cats, which is just insane.
Paul: So we talked for a while, and we sat down to use this, to test with this website. And we used her computer, which I tell you took 10 minutes to boot up because it was this old tower computer, it was an absolute nightmare. And that whole desk was covered with clutter and knickknacks and things. And she had post-it notes all around her screen. Now, the minute she sat down in front of that computer, a cat jumped on her lap. So she spent the rest of that usability session trying to juggle a cat that was on her lap. The cat got so fed up at one point that it wasn’t getting enough attention that it decided to crawl across the keyboard and sit on the keyboard. Which I know you understand because you’ve got a cat and I’ve seen pictures of your cat doing the same thing.
Drew: I feel seen.
Paul: Yeah, exactly. And then, on top of which, I asked her at one point, “Add a product to the basket,” which she was able to do. And then I said, “Now, go to the basket,” and I realized there’s no way she’s going to find the basket. Because she had a post-it note stuck on the screen over the top of the basket. Now, that is the real-world experience. We sit down and look at our websites and we think they’re so easy to use and so simple. But if you’re juggling with a cat and if you’re living in chaos, or you’ve got distractions and that kind of stuff, then you don’t have that clean, clear mental point of view to approach the website. You are under what is called cognitive load.
Drew: So I guess one solution to that might be for every design studio to be equipped with cats.
Paul: Yeah, absolutely. And not only that, but equipped with (bad) computers. Because we all sit, don’t we? I’m doing it right now, I’m sitting in front of a lovely iMac with this gorgeous screen. And that’s not what most people … I remember another occasion I was designing a website for an elderly audience. Well, I say I was designing it, I was doing the UX side of things. And I was getting quite frustrated with the designer, because the designer was a young guy, and he did these beautiful interfaces that was all subtle and lovely and gorgeous. And I was saying, “I’m sorry, but this old audience are not going to be able to see what you’re doing, and they’re not going to be able to click on all these little links and stuff. And you’ve got to make it more brash and horrible,” which obviously he didn’t want to do.
Paul: So I came into the office one day with a pair of reading glasses and a pair of ski gloves. And I made him put on the reading glasses and put on the ski gloves. Now, he didn’t need reading glasses, just to be clear on that. And I said, “Now use the site.” And, of course, he couldn’t. He couldn’t see properly, he had lost motor control in his hands because he had these big, thick ski gloves on. So that helped him to empathize and understand what his audience was going through. And so things like that, I think, are really important to do. Obviously, that’s a bit of an extreme example, it was me making a point and rubbing my designer’s nose in it. But you get the idea.
Drew: You mentioned the cognitive load of buying. Making personal decisions online can be fairly overwhelming at times. Are there things that we should be doing that are going to help the customer have a better experience and be more likely to convert, more likely to actually make a purchasing decision?
Paul: Yeah. It’s really funny, cognitive load is a fascinating thing in terms of how it affects us. So what cognitive load is basically, is having to think too much. We have two systems in our brains. We have system one and system two. And system one is that unconscious decision making that we make all the time, and system two is our conscious mind. Now, our conscious mind is incredibly powerful, but it easily gets overwhelmed. It easily gets tired out. And that’s known as cognitive load. And when we are overwhelmed, when our cognitive load goes up, it has all kinds of really bad impacts on conversion rate. So suddenly your website feels hard to use, it feels untrustworthy and a little bit suspicious, and it feels just downright bad. So our conscious minds are very cynical as well, so we start not believing what’s being said on the site. And it really has an enormous impact.
Paul: So the way that you lower cognitive load is really about simplifying your website. So removing unnecessary distractions that are on the website. It’s about being consistent in your website. So buttons don’t move around, things don’t change. But not only consistent within your own website, consistent with people’s expectations from a website. So to give you an example of what I mean, let’s say I asked you to search on a website. Where would you look? You’d look in the top right-hand corner, wouldn’t you?
Drew: Right.
Paul: Everybody looks at the top right-hand corner, so the first thing, they look at the top right-hand corner, then they look for an input field. They enter their search query in the input field, and they press the button next to it. That’s what’s called procedural knowledge. We have learned that that is a procedure that, if we go to a website, look at the top right-hand corner, use the input field, click the button, we will search on that website. But the minute that you break that procedural knowledge, our cognitive load goes up. So at that point, we’re starting to go, “Well, hang on, where’s the button?” Or, “Why isn’t the search field the way it’s supposed to look?” Or, “Why isn’t it in the top right-hand corner?” So that consistency with expectations matters a lot.
Paul: And then our mood matters as well. Bizarrely, you know what it’s like, some days you wake up and you’re in a really good mood. And everything seems to be easier. And then other days you wake up in a bad mood, everything seems to be harder. So actually, the mood we’re in affects our level of cognitive load. So things like design delighters, nice little friendly copy, colorful graphics, all those things, they help as well to put us in a good mood that lowers our cognitive load. So it’s really mood, inconsistencies in the interface, confusing, too much information being displayed, and then finally priming people. So in other words, setting their expectations about what will happen and why it will happen.
Drew: I guess all these things weigh into how much trust somebody has in the website. And I think trust is quite a big factor, isn’t it, in inciting someone to actually buy from you?
Paul: Oh, enormous.
Drew: Because anyone can build a website online, we all know that. We’re web people. And there are thousands of places that you can buy the same product or service from, quite often. So there needs to be some way of building up trust. Are there other ways that we can build up trust in a site?
Paul: Yeah. You’re right, people buy from people they trust and from organizations they trust. So when it comes to trust, a lot of it is about humanity. Being a human being. You know how many times you go to a website and it just feels like it’s spouting marketing BS at you? Do you know what I mean? The great example I use in a book, where there’s some copy on a university website. I think it was the University of Essex website. And basically, that copy was written in the third person. So it’s talking about the reader as students, it was talking about themselves as the University of Essex. And it just felt, it lacked any kind of humanity and any sense that they cared about you or liked you. And simply turning that around and writing it in the first person, so talking about “we” and talking about “you,” makes an enormous difference in making that connection with people.
Paul: Other ways that you can do that, obviously, is through things like social proof. You can build trust by demonstrating that you’re a trustworthy brand. But again, you’ve got to accept that people are very cynical these days. So it’s not a matter of just slapping some logos on your website and going, “There’s your social proof.” Or slapping a text testimonial. Because people know that some companies just make that stuff up. So one of the things, actually a product of your own, actually, Perch, I don’t think you do this anymore, but for a long time on your website, you used to have testimonials that came straight from Twitter. They were pulled straight out of Twitter. And that was such a good idea, because those testimonials, people can click through and see that there’s a real human being behind it.
Paul: Another example is videos. If you’ve ever watched video testimonials on websites, where the person that’s speaking is beautifully lit, has got perfect teeth, and says a whole spiel about how great the company is without pausing, without going, “um,” without making mistakes, they’re obviously just reading off a script. That’s insincere. However, if you have a shitty video that’s filmed on a webcam, that the audio’s a bit crap, that’s actually more effective. Because it’s more real. A great example of this is: there’s a guy called Paul Jarvis who sells an online course called Chimp Essentials, which teaches you how to use MailChimp. And if you go to chimpessentials.com, he’s got all these videos, just like he’s obviously just chatting to someone over a webcam and them talking about how great the course was and how much it helped. And that is so powerful, because it’s authentic, it’s real, it’s human. And that’s what it’s about. It’s about coming across as a human being and making a connection with people.
Paul: So yeah, I’m a huge fan of that kind of sincerity and openness and honesty. Buffer is another example of that. Buffer, they lay out everything online. You can see how much their employees are paid, you can see how much they earned in the last month, you can see what their diversity range of staff and employees are. You can see everything about that company. And so you know they’re not hiding anything. You know that they’re being sincere and open. And that goes such a long way.
Drew: So we understand who our customer is. We want them to buy from us. Is there a single moment when a conversion happens on our site?
Paul: No. No, conversion is very much a journey. So it’s a series of micro-interactions. And I think that’s part of the problem that people have, is that they perceive, “Okay, they’ve clicked on the ‘buy now’ button, we’re done.” Or they’ve sent us a contact form, we’re done. And actually it’s a lot more nuanced than that. There are many, many steps in a journey that someone goes on. So let’s take, I don’t know, donating to charity, for example. So the first interaction might be, you see an update that a friend shares on social media about some crisis in the world. So your first point of conversion really is just clicking on that link in that social media update, which takes you to a blogpost. And then your second conversion is actually reading that blogpost and looking at it.
Paul: And your third, maybe, is to sign up for updates about that particular crisis. And then maybe you receive some emails about it. So your next conversion point is actually opening those emails and reading the content. And then it might be that they, in those emails, ask you to make a donation. So the next step is to make a single donation, one-time donation. And then they’ll follow up with you again, and that might turn into a monthly donation. And then that might lead you to actually start volunteering for them or fundraising for them. And, eventually, it might even lead to you leaving a legacy when you die.
Paul: So actually, any point of conversion is just a step in an ongoing journey. And we need to start thinking of conversion as a journey of relationship with a customer, rather than, “Okay, we’ve got them to sign on the dotted line, we’re done.” Because there’s so much more potential than just that.
Drew: So every interaction you have with that customer is a point where really you’re selling with them. It’s always be closing, right? ABC.
Paul: Yeah. Yes, you know, I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, it’s absolutely straight off of that, isn’t it? Yeah.
Drew: So you’ve carefully designed a site, you’ve done your best to ensure that you’re going to get some good conversions without any dirty tricks, without anything underhand. You launch the site. Is that it? Are you done?
Paul: No.
Drew: What should we be doing over time?
Paul: You’re asking questions that I know you know the answers to. That’s the sign of a great interviewer, when you’re happy to ask questions that other people might need the answer. No, of course it is. You’ve run Perch for years, you know that you can’t just start something and then walk away from it. When it comes to conversion, really that initial launching is the very, very beginning of the process. And actually, what is important in the journey is that ongoing optimization, that ongoing monitoring and improvement. It’s interesting, I’ve literally just written a report for a company outlining this approach. So basically it begins, you go through a cycle. And the cycle begins with, you try and identify problem areas in your site. So typically you would look at your analytics. And you’d look at pages that have got a high dropout rate for the number of visitors that they have to that particular page. So a high percentage of dropouts. So you know that something is going wrong on that page. So that’s your first step. Then you try and narrow down, well, what’s going wrong on that page?
Paul: Now, you can either do that through session recorders, which allows you to watch back users interacting with that particular page, and you might be able to spot where it’s going wrong. Perhaps you’re having problems with a form or perhaps they scroll straight past some critical button, or something else. Alternatively, if that doesn’t work, you might want to do some remote usability testing, and that’s so cheap and easy these days, using services like usertesting.com or User Brain. There are all these great services that make it really easy to test those kinds of pages. So that will enable you, probably, to work out what the problem is. Once you’ve done that, then the next step is, now we need to identify how we’re going to fix that problem. And in that particular case, you can have a couple of different approaches.
Paul: If the problem is relatively easy to fix, so if it’s just things like changing imagery or changing button colors or that kind of very simple thing, then probably you’ll want to go straight to A/B testing. So you use something like Google Optimize to send some of your users to an alternative version of the page with these small changes being made. You see whether that improves things. And if it does, you push it live. If it’s more substantial changes, then you’ll probably want to mock that up or prototype that before you go to all the expense and time of building it properly. And then you can test that either by doing some more usability testing, or if it’s just a static mockup, in other words, it’s not an interactive thing, then you might want to do something like a first-click test, where you say, “Okay, where would you click on this mockup in order to complete X task?” And see whether people are clicking in the right place.
Paul: Or another test that you can do is something called a five-second test, where you show them the mockup for five seconds, take it away, and you ask them what they recalled. And that’s a really good way for ascertaining whether or not they spotted that call to action they previously scrolled straight past. So you have to use a bit of imagination, but basically you then test your hypothesis, if you like, about how to fix it. Presuming you’re right, you then roll it out. Now, you’re not at the end of the process then. Because you now go back to the beginning again. You look at, “Well, what’s the next page that people are most exiting the site from?” And you repeat the process. And you just keep doing that, really, forever, slowly and incrementally improving your conversion rate over time.
Drew: This all sounds very logical, very attractive to somebody who, like me, who’s a business owner and I’ve got digital product, and I think, yes, I could be doing this. Some of the listeners will be freelancers working on an hourly rate for a customer who has these sorts of problems. And I can see it might be difficult to convince that customer that this is what they should be doing, this is something they should invest in. Because all the time spent in even just setting up some monitoring and setting up something to measure conversion is money that that client is going to have to pay out for the designer to do it. What would you say to those designers? Is there an effective way they can persuade their client that this is what they should be doing?
Paul: Yeah. This is a tricky one because it’s very hard to persuade anybody of anything, in my opinion. People become very entrenched in their ways of thinking. But it’s worth finding out what they care about. Because there will be certain metrics that they want to move. It might be they want more leads, it might be they want more quality leads, it might be that they want to reduce their cost of sale. Whatever it is. And then you start talking about these kinds of optimization techniques in that context. That said, you’re never going to get someone to commit to a major program of incremental design and usability testing and all those things in one go. What I would start with is just trying to encourage them to go through that cycle once. So it might be that you even have to install the analytics on your dime. But it’s not a big deal, is it, to add something like Google Analytics or something like Hotjar for session recorders.
Paul: So you basically then just take them through it once. You say, “Okay, well, let’s give it a go for one time. Let’s see if we can make a difference to the conversion rate by looking at the analytics, by mocking up one thing, and just improving that one thing.” If that works, you rinse and repeat. They don’t necessarily need to commit to an ongoing retainer where you’re continually optimizing it. This could be done as a series of sprints, effectively, going through the loop one thing at a time. In terms of more general stuff, like for example, just simplifying the interface, then in those kinds of cases, often it’s a matter of actually showing them what better might look like. Now, I’m afraid to even say this in front of you, Drew, because I remember many, many years ago … Or no, it wasn’t you, actually, I was about to say that it was you I remember going on about speculative design. But it wasn’t. Yeah, you’re off the hook.
Paul: It was you ranting about the fold. That was the thing that I’m remembering. Anyway, that’s beside the point. So one of the things you can do there is actually try … For the first time, I’m not saying do this regularly. But if you’ve got an existing client and you’re seeing glaring problems, mock up an alternative version of doing a particular page, and then do those five-second tests that I mentioned, or do a, what was the other one, a first-click test. And see whether those can make improvements, and show that evidence to the client. So you can use a tool like usabilityhub.com that will allow you to do those tests really easily. If you don’t want to do that because you don’t want to put the effort of mocking those things up, the other thing that you can do is just record a few videos of people using the website. And then edit down all of the bits of them moaning and complaining about how crap the site is to use into a two-minute horror reel, and send it to the client. That can do it as well.
Drew: So would these generally be, would these be the tips you’d give somebody who was just wanting to get some quick wins to start? They’ve done no optimization, and they just want to get started. Are these the same sort of things they’d do for a quick win?
Paul: Yeah, to some extent. Often I find, where I start, if I get a new client, the thing I normally start with is simplifying the user interface. Because inevitably sites end up bloated with a load of things that don’t really help. So the way that I tend to do it is, I’ll take a particular page, let’s say a home page, for example, and I will systematically look at every single element on that page. And I will ask myself three questions in order. Question number one I ask is, could I remove this element? If I removed this element, what would be the negative consequences of doing so? So you’d be amazed at how much you can just strip out of a website. And of course, every element that’s on the screen is every element a user is having to process and look at. Every element adds to their cognitive load. So anything that you can remove, great.
Paul: Then if you can’t remove an element because it’s critical to the completion of a key task or convincing users to take action or whatever else, then the next question you ask yourself is, can I hide this element? Could I move it deeper in the information architecture? Could I put it under a tab? Could I put it under an accordion? Whatever else, just to get it out of the site for the majority of people. So that often helps. And then if the answer is, well, this really is absolutely critical, so I’ll give you an example, maybe you’re forced to have some compliance copy on your website. That happens, I get that a lot with my bigger clients. “Oh, yes, legal department says we have to have this.”
Paul: So my third option, my final option, is can I visually shrink this? So can I de-emphasize it, put it in the footer or make it smaller or make it lighter text? Anything to draw attention away from that and focus it on stuff that really matters. So that’s almost always my first starting point with any kind of conversion, is just to simplify everything. The other thing that I do alongside that, which is a really useful starting point, is called objection handling. So I will make a list of as many reasons that someone might choose not to act as possible. And I then make sure that those are all addressed clearly on the website. Because often they’re not. So a classic example of that might be, somebody who comes to sign up for a newsletter. Now, you think, when you sign up to a newsletter all these things go through your head, are they going to sell me an email address? Are they going to spam me? Is the content going to be relevant? Can I unsubscribe in one click?
Paul: All of these objections. Are you addressing those? And not only are you addressing them, but are you addressing them at the point that you want people to convert? So for example, yes, you probably say something about whether you’re going to sell their email address or how much you’re going to email them and stuff. That’ll be in your privacy policy. But that’s going to be buried in a completely different part of the site where no one ever looks. And to be honest, it’s all illegible anyway because it’s written in legalese. So answering people’s questions at the point they have them is also another really good starting point for just giving your conversion rate that little boost.
Drew: That’s fantastic. And I think all these tips are things that you go into in quite a lot of depth in the book.
Paul: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Drew: I found it to be a really great read, I’ve enjoyed browsing through it so far. I know it’s in the late stages of production and it’s coming out from Smashing magazine this spring, 2020.
Paul: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Drew: That’s Click: How to Encourage Clicks Without Shady Tricks. And you can find out more about the book if you go to encouragingclicks.com. And then when it’s released you can go to smashingmagazine.com/books and you’ll be able to find it and buy it from there. Now, Paul, I guess if people are listening to this, I presume that they like podcasts. You’ve been podcasting for I guess almost 15 years now?
Paul: Yeah. Yeah, we were the first web design podcast in the world, that’s my claim to fame.
Drew: There we go. If a listener hasn’t come across the Boagworld podcast, what sort of thing could they expect from it?
Paul: Nonsense, generally. No, it’s a season-based show that covers all aspects of web design in a pretty broad sense. We don’t do a lot on development, to be honest. So it’s mainly design, project management, content creation, all of those kinds of things. A lot of UX stuff, because that’s my personal passion. It’s quite a laid-back conversational show. We have seasons, and different seasons are on different topics. So for example, there’s a whole season dedicated to conversion rate optimization, if people want to learn more about that as a subject area. So you can pick and choose which seasons you listen to. Yeah, I don’t think there’s a huge amount more to say about it. The current season has been one about almost like a virtual meet-up, where we’re having conversations with people listening to the shows. You can come along and join in. But next season will be something totally different. So it’s a bit of an eclectic mix, to be honest.
Drew: I’ve listened to it on and off for a good number of those 15 years, and it’s always an enjoyable listen. So I would recommend that people check it out if they haven’t done so already. So I’ve been learning from you about honest ways to convert users into customers. What have you been learning about lately, Paul?
Paul: I’ve been getting slowly more and more obsessed with psychology. Because obviously that relates quite a lot to both user experience design and conversion rate optimization, so I’ve been realizing how little I know about psychology. So it started off very simply, by following a guy called Joe Leech, who’s written a free e-book that you can download called Psychology for Designers. So that got me thinking more about psychology and understanding how to approach the subject. And then I’ve started to read proper psychology books now. I feel like I’m a bit more of a grownup in the field. So for example, earlier I was talking about system one and system two, that comes from a book called Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, that I would highly recommend.
Paul: It’s a bit of a stodgy read at places. It’s not the easiest book to read. But it’s very, very much applicable to the kind of world that we’re looking at. So a lot about psychology. I’m also always nosing into things like marketing and sales as well, because I’m quite interested of how people apply sales techniques offline. So all that stuff I was talking about, like when I talked about objection handling, that comes from traditional sales, basically. So yeah, those are the two big areas at the minute.
Drew: If you, dear listener, would like to hear more from Paul, you can follow him on Twitter, where he’s @Boagworld, or find his podcast, blog, and details of how you can hire him to consult on your digital projects at boagworld.com. Thanks for joining us today, Paul. Do you have any parting words?
Paul: Keep safe, I guess, at the moment. That’s the sad thing that you’re having to say, isn’t it? And yeah, just start experimenting with conversion rate optimization. You’ll be amazed at the results you see.
I bet a lot of us tend to have the production website and the development website up simultaneously a lot. It’s almost a developer cliché at this point to make some local change, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, and just not see the change, only to discover you were looking at the production website, not your local development website.
It’s just funny at first, but it’s frustrating if it happens a lot. It’s also totally avoidable by having an obvious visual¹ difference between the two sites. An easy way to do that? Different favicons.
Got around to doing that thing where I change the favicon for local development. Get so confusing otherwise when you have both open, which is very common for me. pic.twitter.com/6Eu4MMfp5I
There is no real trick to this. I literally just have a different favicon.ico file in development than I do in production. On this (WordPress) site, I only version control and deploy the wp-content folder, which is not the root of the site where the favicon lives. Any files at the root I have to manually SFTP in to change. I simply changed my local version, and there it sits, being all different.
Other trickery
Just don’t have a local favicon so it shows the default logo thing for that browser. Different enough.
Use a browser extension to automatically colorize favicons based on URL matches.
Speaking of favicons…
This has me wondering what best practices for favicons are in 2020, at least for garden variety content websites like this.
I hate to say it, but I don’t really care about what the icon is when someone adds this site to the home screen on an iPad, ya know? Aside from one fellow who wanted a copy of the whole database to use the site offline to teach prisoners, nobody has ever asked me about “installing” CSS-Tricks.
Nor do I care about the tile color on a Windows 8 tablet or to customize the color of the browser chrome on Android. That kinda stuff tends to be part of the process when “generating” favicons.
I do care that the favicon looks good on high-resolution displays (a 32×32 graphic isn’t much of a splurge). I like the idea of SVG favicons. I like the idea of making sure dark mode is handled. I like the idea of doing this with as little code and files as possible. Anyone dig into this lately and want to enlighten me?
“Visual” difference. Hm. I wonder what could be done for developers with visual impairments? Ideas?
Bram covers how frustrating .bar:nth-child(2) is. It’s not “select the second element of class .bar.” It’s “select the second element if it also has the class .bar.” The good news? There is a real selector that does the former:
We had to postpone our SmashingConf in San Francisco until 10th–11th November 2020 and, like so many of you, our team will be staying firmly put at home for the next month or more. However, we know that many of you are still hoping to develop your skills, and we had workshops ready to go. We decided to find a way to bring the workshops to your home office, trying to keep as much of the live experience as possible. So, meet Smashing Online Workshops.
We have two workshops to announce today, and if there is demand, we hope to be able to bring you more of the workshops you might be missing from our live events. By doing so, we hope we can help you continue to learn and interact with the speakers and each other, and also help out our workshop leaders who are losing income by being unable to run their workshops in person right now.
You’ll study 100s of hand-picked interface design examples in this one. We’ll be designing interfaces together, starting from accordions, to mega-drop-downs, sliders, feature comparisons, car configurators — all the way to timelines and onboarding. And: we’ll be reviewing and providing feedback to each other’s work. This workshop is spread over five days, 2h each day, with a huge amount to learn and take away.
Over two days learn the key skills you need to learn CSS Layout and put it into practice in your work. A mix of theory and pragmatic advice in terms of how to deal with browser support.
Your Questions Answered
We know that a big reason why people come to Smashing Workshops is the chance to ask questions of the expert, and perhaps have a sticky issue they are facing at work discussed in person. It’s certainly one of the reasons I love leading workshops. Every time I teach CSS in-person, I learn more about the ways people are using CSS, and the challenges you face. So each workshop has dedicated time for chat and Q&A. We hope that you’ll bring your questions and ideas to the room, talk with us in the workshop, and learn from your peers, too.
Join Us
We hope you’ll join us as we bring our workshops online, there is some special early bird pricing for the initial registrations. We’d also love to know which other workshop topics and speakers you would like to see online. about the workshops and sign up here.
COVID-19 is no joke and we’re all practicing some social distancing right now.
If you’re not, and you have the choice to stay home, then you really should do it.
While social distancing can be boring or lonely, just remember that by staying home, you are saving lives, and literally changing the fate of our world.
The little things we choose to do right now are important.
And luckily for us designers, a lot of us can do our work from home.
That is a privilege I will always be grateful for and my gratitude, thoughts, and prayers are with everyone who has to go to work every day to make the world go round.
One of the many wonderful things I have noticed during this time, is that a lot designers have taken no break during this pandemic to create some beautiful designs regarding social distancing and self-quarantining.
Have a look for yourself to take your mind off of the crazy things going around us, and enjoy these 27 social distancing designs that some creative people of our beautiful world have created.
27 Social Distancing Designs To Scroll Through While We All Stay Home
