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Archive for March, 2021

How to Build a Successful Content Strategy

March 15th, 2021 No comments

Gone are the days when one would upload text content with a 5% keyword density and expect it to attract customers. These days, e-commerce has become competitive and it takes a well-thought-out content strategy for your brand to get attention from your target audience.

Content development requires that you take into account essential e-commerce tools such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). To optimize your content online, you need to hire an SEO Company to help you generate the necessary traffic on your site. SEO makes use of keywords that are relevant to your brand to direct consumers to your content. Such companies employ a smart SEO content strategy that drives long-term traffic as well as enhances conversions to your webpage.

Apart from SEO, there are other ways to build a successful contents strategy and they include:

Establishing your goals

For any content that one creates, there has to be a goal behind it that has to be defined. You can create content to generate leads, make customers aware of your brand, reach out to new customers, or convert customers. When your goals are clear, you should determine whether a content strategy will help you achieve them. Based on what your outcome is, having goals will inform how you design your project strategy.

Identifying your target audience

A content strategy is only successful only when presented to the right audience. The best way to find an audience is by identifying what sites they frequent the most. Social platforms are a source of invaluable data. You can use Google Demographics and Interests to establish what social platforms your people often frequent. Google Analytics can also help you determine what content is influential. To perform this function using this tool, you will need to identify factors such as:

  • The average time a consumer spends on a page
  • The percentage of bounce rate
  • The webpage reviews

Prioritizing on the essential subject matter

There is a lot of content on the internet that is irrelevant and renders no value at all. Bad content ends up floating on the World Wide Web. If you want yours to remain relevant, you need to place some focus on a particular niche. The advantage of being focused is that you end up presenting yourself as an authority in the field that you are trying to promote. Narrowing down on one niche allows you to catch the attention of the right crowd which will improve your business significantly. You should refrain from generalized content because it ends creating superficial links that are ineffective.

Assessing your output

To ascertain whether your content is successful, you need to measure the results of content marketing. When you constantly release content without analyzing feedback from your customers, it could be detrimental to your business growth. Assessing your output enables you to identify what works and what requires improvement. There are metrics of measuring results that you could use such as:

  • Consumption metrics
  • Social sharing metrics (including conversions, assisted social conversions, and last interaction social conversions)
  • Sales metrics
  • Lead metrics

Being attentive to consumer opinions

A data assessment is not sufficient- you need to hear from the consumers to ascertain how your marketing strategy is performing. You could set out to ask your customers on social media platforms to provide their suggestions and feedback. Apart from talking to your clients directly, it would be great if you spoke to your employees as well since they tend to maintain close ties with your target audience. 

By so doing, your customers will get the feeling that their opinions are valued. The data that you collect from these people also informs on whether you need to make changes to your content strategy approach.

Tuning-up your content

Once you have built your content, amplifying it is necessary to reach the target audience. The best place to turn up your content is on the platforms that your customers tend to spend a lot of time on. This step requires that you have immense knowledge of the resources at your disposal so that you utilize them to get your content to your audience. In order for you to have more time to tune-up your content, it is recommended that you hire International Payroll Services who will manage the HR department for you. 

Conclusion

Building a successful content strategy is not impossible. You simply need to have clear goals, understand your audience, focus on the main subject, assess your output, pay attention to consumer feedback, and then amplify your content. Doing so will have you run a successful site that will skyrocket your revenue.

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How Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) Drive Cyber Security in FinTech?

March 15th, 2021 No comments

Just like most other industries fintech companies are also increasingly relying on cutting-edge technologies for delivering their services in an engaging and audience-centric manner.

In recent years, fintech solutions are particularly depending on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for strategic decision making, garnering customer insights and making the digital transaction experience better. 

Both AI and ML have the potential to simplify the transactions and overall customer experience to a great extent. Apart from enhancing the customer experience, these two technologies are also playing a great role in strengthening security and preventing vulnerabilities through preemptive steps and measures. Apart from this, it helps to understand consumer buying behavior. 

Before you hire a mobile app development company for your next fintech app project, it is important to understand these two cutting-edge technologies and their role in enhancing security. Here we are going to explain some of the key areas where this impact is particularly visible. 

AI to differentiate and detect unsolicited access

For the fintech industry addressing security concerns happens to be the topmost priority and hence leading fintech apps leave no stone unturned when it comes to solving security issues. AI-based security solutions are becoming trendy for fintech apps for their precise ability to nab threats right at the budding stage. 

Like any machine language AI is also value-agnostic and cannot differentiate between good and fishy transactions. Just because the login process and the underlying conditions remain the same for any transaction, it becomes hard to detect an attempt or a real transaction with the wrong intent.

But the same system trained with a Machine learning algorithm can just detect the anomalies, deviations, or irregularities to trigger that something fishy is going on under the cover. Instead of taking instant judgments on the transactions, AI and ML can just take note of anomalies and irregularities that can trigger some bigger threats. 

Administering the Access Control

Most of the cybersecurity threats originate from the less regulated access control mechanism and this is exactly where AI can really play a great role. The principal objective of cybercriminals and hackers is to break the access control mechanism so that they can roam around freely and steal information for their own malicious purposes. 

Access control is the key security area responsible to check identity theft. Naturally, preventing unauthorized access is regarded as the most important defense mechanism for fintech companies. The AI-powered e-signature coupled up with biometric authorization can really play a great role in this respect. 

AI chatbots helping with data-driven insights 

These days in fintech apps, intelligent AI-powered chatbots are also garnering huge traction. Chatbots apart from communicating with customers with real-time suggestions and help on different financial products and information, are also playing a great role in helping customers to find the solutions they need. 

Thanks to intelligent chatbots fintech companies can offer personalized product suggestions, portfolio recommendations, and financial planning. Both AI and machine learning technology can help a program understand customer requirements better and find solutions accordingly. 

Now, apart from delivering a better customer experience with their fintech purchase and transactions, intelligent chatbots gather a lot of customer data through communication. The huge volume of customer data collected through chatbots easily helps an AI algorithm to detect irregularities and out-of-the-box scenarios triggering security concerns. 

RPA to facilitate a proactive security

Process Intelligence (RPA) which is a subset of AI enjoys great scope to enhance security measures. In general, the mainstream AI has lesser scope in augmenting the security, while RPA comes with very specific capabilities to make security better.

In this respect, one must understand that modern fintech solutions already went way beyond conventional security measures in warding off security vulnerabilities and threats. This is exactly where RPA pitches in. RPA can take care of security safeguards with a whole array of iterative steps including protocol and ownership verification, monitoring and facilitating the checks and balance tools, etc. 

In the banking industry where the scope of security vulnerabilities goes deeper than the so-called intelligent security checks, static AI-powered security may not be enough. Just because the threats here are all-encompassing and deeply penetrating in nature, proactive, dynamic, and always alert robotic security tools happen to be more effective.

Going beyond the defensive mindset 

In spite of the fact that security challenges are really worrisome in the fintech industry, the administrators and strategists cannot be on a defensive footing. If you still feel that your system can be hacked at any point in time threatening the entire business, you lack the right attitude to deal with the ever-increasing and sophisticated security threats and vulnerabilities. Instead of echoing this threat perception, the fintech strategists must remain proactively alert and should be on the right footing in respect of best practices, measures, and tools.  

One cannot help but admit that AI and ML technologies are still not all-powerful to prevent all sorts of security vulnerabilities. Cybersecurity still involves unfathomable complexities that cannot be mitigated with any technology and tool just overnight. The positive thing that security experts should remember is that over the years security practices and measures continued to garner more strength to prevent the vast majority of security threats. 

It has been seen that fintech companies that are most exposed to security threats and vulnerabilities mostly adhere to the concept of a single-window solution to all kinds of security threats. In reality, there cannot be one comprehensive security tool to take care of multifaceted security threats in the fintech sector. Just like security threats, security measures, tools, and practices need to evolve over time as well.  

Conclusion

The question is how financial firms can actually bring the advantages of AI, ML, and RPA to their fintech apps to address the major security loopholes and vulnerabilities in the most befitting manner? Well, the answer of course lies with your choice of fintech development experts with the right skills, exposure, and experience in delivering superior fintech solutions with state-of-the-art security protocols.

Creator; Dhaval Sarvaiya one of the founders of Intelivita Mobile App Development Company
Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

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How Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) Drive Cyber Security in FinTech?

March 15th, 2021 No comments

Just like most other industries fintech companies are also increasingly relying on cutting-edge technologies for delivering their services in an engaging and audience-centric manner.

In recent years, fintech solutions are particularly depending on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for strategic decision making, garnering customer insights and making the digital transaction experience better. 

Both AI and ML have the potential to simplify the transactions and overall customer experience to a great extent. Apart from enhancing the customer experience, these two technologies are also playing a great role in strengthening security and preventing vulnerabilities through preemptive steps and measures. Apart from this, it helps to understand consumer buying behavior. 

Before you hire a mobile app development company for your next fintech app project, it is important to understand these two cutting-edge technologies and their role in enhancing security. Here we are going to explain some of the key areas where this impact is particularly visible. 

AI to differentiate and detect unsolicited access

For the fintech industry addressing security concerns happens to be the topmost priority and hence leading fintech apps leave no stone unturned when it comes to solving security issues. AI-based security solutions are becoming trendy for fintech apps for their precise ability to nab threats right at the budding stage. 

Like any machine language AI is also value-agnostic and cannot differentiate between good and fishy transactions. Just because the login process and the underlying conditions remain the same for any transaction, it becomes hard to detect an attempt or a real transaction with the wrong intent.

But the same system trained with a Machine learning algorithm can just detect the anomalies, deviations, or irregularities to trigger that something fishy is going on under the cover. Instead of taking instant judgments on the transactions, AI and ML can just take note of anomalies and irregularities that can trigger some bigger threats. 

Administering the Access Control

Most of the cybersecurity threats originate from the less regulated access control mechanism and this is exactly where AI can really play a great role. The principal objective of cybercriminals and hackers is to break the access control mechanism so that they can roam around freely and steal information for their own malicious purposes. 

Access control is the key security area responsible to check identity theft. Naturally, preventing unauthorized access is regarded as the most important defense mechanism for fintech companies. The AI-powered e-signature coupled up with biometric authorization can really play a great role in this respect. 

AI chatbots helping with data-driven insights 

These days in fintech apps, intelligent AI-powered chatbots are also garnering huge traction. Chatbots apart from communicating with customers with real-time suggestions and help on different financial products and information, are also playing a great role in helping customers to find the solutions they need. 

Thanks to intelligent chatbots fintech companies can offer personalized product suggestions, portfolio recommendations, and financial planning. Both AI and machine learning technology can help a program understand customer requirements better and find solutions accordingly. 

Now, apart from delivering a better customer experience with their fintech purchase and transactions, intelligent chatbots gather a lot of customer data through communication. The huge volume of customer data collected through chatbots easily helps an AI algorithm to detect irregularities and out-of-the-box scenarios triggering security concerns. 

RPA to facilitate a proactive security

Process Intelligence (RPA) which is a subset of AI enjoys great scope to enhance security measures. In general, the mainstream AI has lesser scope in augmenting the security, while RPA comes with very specific capabilities to make security better.

In this respect, one must understand that modern fintech solutions already went way beyond conventional security measures in warding off security vulnerabilities and threats. This is exactly where RPA pitches in. RPA can take care of security safeguards with a whole array of iterative steps including protocol and ownership verification, monitoring and facilitating the checks and balance tools, etc. 

In the banking industry where the scope of security vulnerabilities goes deeper than the so-called intelligent security checks, static AI-powered security may not be enough. Just because the threats here are all-encompassing and deeply penetrating in nature, proactive, dynamic, and always alert robotic security tools happen to be more effective.

Going beyond the defensive mindset 

In spite of the fact that security challenges are really worrisome in the fintech industry, the administrators and strategists cannot be on a defensive footing. If you still feel that your system can be hacked at any point in time threatening the entire business, you lack the right attitude to deal with the ever-increasing and sophisticated security threats and vulnerabilities. Instead of echoing this threat perception, the fintech strategists must remain proactively alert and should be on the right footing in respect of best practices, measures, and tools.  

One cannot help but admit that AI and ML technologies are still not all-powerful to prevent all sorts of security vulnerabilities. Cybersecurity still involves unfathomable complexities that cannot be mitigated with any technology and tool just overnight. The positive thing that security experts should remember is that over the years security practices and measures continued to garner more strength to prevent the vast majority of security threats. 

It has been seen that fintech companies that are most exposed to security threats and vulnerabilities mostly adhere to the concept of a single-window solution to all kinds of security threats. In reality, there cannot be one comprehensive security tool to take care of multifaceted security threats in the fintech sector. Just like security threats, security measures, tools, and practices need to evolve over time as well.  

Conclusion

The question is how financial firms can actually bring the advantages of AI, ML, and RPA to their fintech apps to address the major security loopholes and vulnerabilities in the most befitting manner? Well, the answer of course lies with your choice of fintech development experts with the right skills, exposure, and experience in delivering superior fintech solutions with state-of-the-art security protocols.

Creator; Dhaval Sarvaiya one of the founders of Intelivita Mobile App Development Company
Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

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The Insane Demand for Cybersecurity Workers Across the Globe

March 15th, 2021 No comments

With each decade, an upsurge in the demand for cybersecurity workers becomes visible. As more people move towards the digital era, guarding yourself against online threats and critical scenarios becomes as challenging as ever.

The cases of security violations and cyberattacks have also taken a toll. Every year, visibly a new percent of cybersecurity workers is hired to fill the seats of various cybersecurity offices, but due to higher demand and low supply of cybersecurity workers, many seats remain unfilled.

In this time of rapid increase of cybersecurity attacks, we have moved towards a crisis in the cybersecurity workers.

As an internet user, you must protect yourself from any cyberattack. You can always protect yourself through a VPN.

What is Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is a practice to protect users’ devices, programs, systems, data, etc. from any kind of cyberattack. With more individuals going digital, the need to protect them from cyberthreats has increased.

Cybersecurity workers need to step up their game to provide users a smoother experience and protect them from malicious or unauthorized access to user data.

Cybersecurity is significantly important. With a large number of hackers and spies all over the internet, keeping your sensitive data and information secure is a tough job. This is not limited to individuals. Cybersecurity is in huge demand in organizations whether it be medical, financial, technological, military, etc., as all organizations tend to contain huge amounts of sensitive directories and information to which unauthorized access can be harmful to huge masses.

Is the demand for cybersecurity workers increasing?

According to a prediction by Cybersecurity Ventures, a whopping number of cybersecurity positions would remain unfilled in 2021 throughout the world.

These stats are not just disturbing but also define the number of cyberattacks that are to take place globally. They also mentioned that an estimated $3 trillion damages took place in 2015 due to cybercrime. A predicted estimation for 2021 was $6 trillion in the report, reaching up to $10.5 trillion by 2025.

With rapid technological inventions and increased use of new media, hackers and cybercriminals have become more innovative and have found various advanced ways to hack sensitive content from user devices and to violate the privacy of users and enterprises.

A report by Burning Glass Technologies published in 2015 figured that the need for cybersecurity workers has increased up to three times than any other job within Information Technology.

While the 2019 Burning Technologies’ report showed that the need for cybersecurity workers has doubled since the year 2013, and is one of the fastest-growing roles in IT. This report also mentioned that while the number of positions is booming, there is a compromised supply of cybersecurity workers.

Jobs in cybersecurity account for 13% of all the jobs in Information Technology. It also takes slightly more time to fill than any other IT job.

With all this happening around us, the excessive need for cybersecurity workers is understandable as well as scary. The need to protect our data from cybercriminals should be a top priority.

What are the top cybersecurity skills in today’s time?

1. Application Development Security:

According to Burning Glass Technologies, Application Development Security is the fastest-growing cybersecurity skill in the United States. This cybersecurity skill is predicted to see a spike of 164% in its job vacancies in the next five years. Application Development Security had 29,635 job postings in a year from Sept. 2019- Oct. 2020. This number is predicted to increase severely by 2025.

2. Cloud security:

Cloud security skill has a predicted spike of 115% for the next five years, according to Burning Glass Technologies. With a salary boost of $15,008 to be seen in 2021, Cloud Security stands second in being the fastest-growing cybersecurity skill in the US.

3. Risk management:

Risk management lands third as one of the fastest-growing cybersecurity skills in the United States. It has a 5-year projected growth of 60% with 57,967 job postings in a year.

What is the future of cybersecurity in the world?

With the evolving changes in technology and most of our lives going digital, it would be strange to say that the threats are the same as a decade ago.

Cybercriminals have found new ways to get what they are looking for including sensitive data and more. Similarly, every passing day creates a new opportunity to innovate another way to hack or snoop into large and small directories of data of individuals, groups, and organizations.

The future of cybersecurity, to be exact, maybe quite unpredictable. But the threats are certainly going to evolve and become more common. According to Michel Cukier, a University of Maryland-based researcher, on average, computers get hacked every 39 seconds across the world.

Keeping a higher prediction in mind, a huge number of cybersecurity workers would be needed in the future to control this scenario globally.

A Global Information Security Workforce’s study predicted a gap of two million between job openings and qualified personnel for cybersecurity in 2022. With this huge gap, cybersecurity training would become essential.

With the rapid increase in Artificial Intelligence (AI), it would become difficult for companies to save their AI systems from any attacks. Companies spending huge amounts to build Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems would also have to invest a huge amount to protect those technologies.  

With remote working becoming a part of our lives these days, secure remote access would be just another point of concern. Personal computers logged into an office network can pose a threat to the corporate network at any time.

Conclusion

As mentioned above, a rapid increase in technology will result in a rapid increase in threats, security outbursts, data leaks, and hacks. This is sure to cause a crisis considering the ratio of cyberthreats to cybersecurity workers. To prevent personal data and information leaks yourself, you can always opt for a reliable VPN. VPNs allow you to become anonymous on the internet to prevent and secure any kind of data and information leaks. 

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Popular Design News of the Week: March 8, 2021 – March 14, 2021

March 14th, 2021 No comments

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

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

UI Design Testing Tools I Use All The Time

Basic Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Website Design

Nodes.io – a New Way to Create With Code

27 Exciting New Tools For Designers, March 2021

Conic.css – Nice, Simple Conic Gradients

Web Components Are Easier Than You Think

Glassmorphism UI – Modern CSS UI Library

8 Awesome Examples of CSS & JavaScript Polygons

Frontal.JS – Modern HTML Development Framework for Your Static Website

Buy My Side Project

The Rules of Material Design

Alertly.io – Your Personalized Slack Bot for JIRA Alerts

5 Client Onboarding Tools for Web Designers

Source

The post Popular Design News of the Week: March 8, 2021 – March 14, 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

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Comics for Designers #440

March 13th, 2021 No comments

Every month we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD.

The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers.

These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today.

So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and enjoy these funny cartoons!

No budget

Content mess

Dollar Store Web Design

Source

The post Comics for Designers #440 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

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How to Use Tailwind on a Svelte Site

March 12th, 2021 No comments
This is what we have so far in the browser. Tailwind gives us everything we need to customize this into something unique, like the header we’re about to create.

Step 6: Creating A Website Header

Starting with some basic markup:

<nav>
  <div>
    <div>
      <a href="#">APP LOGO</a>

      <!-- Menus -->
      <div>
        <ul>
          <li>
            <a href="#">About</a>
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="#">Services</a>
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="#">Blog</a>
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="#">Contact</a>
          </li>
        </ul>
      </div>

    </div>
  </div>
</nav>

This is the header HTML without any Tailwind CSS styling. Pretty standard stuff. We’ll wind up moving the “APP LOGO” to the left side, and the four navigation links on the right side of it.

What we have with zero styling whatsoever.

Now let’s add some Tailwind CSS to it:

<nav class="bg-blue-900 shadow-lg">
  <div class="container mx-auto">
    <div class="sm:flex">
      <a href="#" class="text-white text-3xl font-bold p-3">APP LOGO</a>
      
      <!-- Menus -->
      <div class="ml-55 mt-4">
        <ul class="text-white sm:self-center text-xl">
          <li class="sm:inline-block">
            <a href="#" class="p-3 hover:text-red-900">About</a>
          </li>
          <li class="sm:inline-block">
            <a href="#" class="p-3 hover:text-red-900">Services</a>
          </li>
          <li class="sm:inline-block">
            <a href="#" class="p-3 hover:text-red-900">Blog</a>
          </li>
          <li class="sm:inline-block">
            <a href="#" class="p-3 hover:text-red-900">Contact</a>
          </li>
        </ul>
      </div>

    </div>
  </div>
</nav>

OK, let’s break down all those classes we just added to the HTML. First, let’s look at the

Let’s spin up a basic Svelte site and integrate Tailwind into it for styling. One advantage of working with Tailwind is that there isn’t any context switching going back and forth between HTML and CSS, since you’re applying styles as classes right on the HTML. It’s all the in same file in Svelte anyway, but still, this way you don’t even need a section in your .svelte files.

If you are a Svelte developer or enthusiast, and you’d like to use Tailwind CSS in your Svelte app, this article looks at the easiest, most-straightforward way to install tailwind in your app and hit the ground running in creating a unique, modern UI for your app.

If you like to just see a working example, here’s a working GitHub repo.

Why Svelte?

Performance-wise, Svelte is widely considered to be one of the top JavaScript frameworks on the market right now. Created by Rich Harris in 2016, it has been growing rapidly and becoming popular in the developer community. This is mainly because, while very similar to React (and Vue), Svelte is much faster. When you create an app with React, the final code at build time is a mixture of React and vanilla JavaScript. But browsers only understand vanilla JavaScript. So when a user loads your app in a browser (at runtime), the browser has to download React’s library to help generate the app’s UI. This slows down the process of loading the app significantly.

How’s Svelte different? It comes with a compiler that compiles all your app code into vanilla JavaScript at build time. No Svelte code makes it into the final bundle. In this instance, when a user loads your app, their browser downloads only vanilla JavaScript files, which are lighter. No framework UI library is needed. This significantly speeds up the process of loading your app. For this reason, Svelte applications are usually very small and lightning fast.

The only downside Svelte currently faces is that since it’s still new and doesn’t have the kind of ecosystem and community backing that more established frameworks like React enjoy.

Why Tailwind?

Tailwind CSS is a CSS framework. It’s somewhat similar to popular frameworks, like Bootstrap and Materialize, in that you apply classes to elements and it styles them. But it is also atomic CSS in that one class name does one thing. While Tailwind does have Tailwind UI for pre-built componentry, generally you customize Tailwind to look how you want it to look, so there is less risk of “looking like a Bootstrap site” (or whatever other framework that is less commonly customized).

For example, rather than give you a generic header component that comes with some default font sizes, margins, paddings, and other styling, Tailwind provides you with utility classes for different font sizes, margins, and paddings. You can pick the specific ones you want and create a unique looking header with them.

Tailwind has other advantages as well:

  • It saves you the time and stress of writing custom CSS yourself. With Tailwind, you get thousands of out-of-the-box CSS classes that you just need to apply to your HTML elements.
  • One thing most users of Tailwind appreciate is the naming convention of the utility classes. The names are simple and they do a good job of telling you what their functions are. For example, text-sm gives your text a small font size**.** This is a breath of fresh air for people that struggle with naming custom CSS classes.
  • By utilizing a mobile-first approach, responsiveness is at the heart of Tailwind’s design. Making use of the sm, md, and lg prefixes to specify breakpoints, you can control the way styles are rendered across different screen sizes. For example, if you use the md prefix on a style, that style will only be applied to medium-sized screens and larger. Small screens will not be affected.
  • It prioritizes making your application lightweight by making PurgeCSS easy to set up in your app. PurgeCSS is a tool that runs through your application and optimizes it by removing all unused CSS classes, significantly reducing the size of your style file. We’ll use PurgeCSS in our practice project.

All this said Tailwind might not be your cup of tea. Some people believe that adding lots of CSS classes to your HTML elements makes your HTML code difficult to read. Some developers even think it’s bad practice and makes your code ugly. It’s worth noting that this problem can easily be solved by abstracting many classes into one using the @apply directive, and applying that one class to your HTML, instead of the many.

Tailwind might also not be for you if you are someone who prefers ready-made components to avoid stress and save time, or you are working on a project with a short deadline.

Step 1: Scaffold a new Svelte site

Svelte provides us with a starter template we can use. You can get it by either cloning the Svelte GitHub repo, or by using degit. Using degit provides us with certain advantages, like helping us make a copy of the starter template repository without downloading its entire Git history (unlike git clone). This makes the process faster. Note that degit requires Node 8 and above.

Run the following command to clone the starter app template with degit:

npx degit sveltejs/template project-name

Navigate into the directory of the starter project so we can start making changes to it:

cd project-name

The template is mostly empty right now, so we’ll need to install some required npm packages:

npm install

Now that you have your Svelte app ready, you can proceed to combining it with Tailwind CSS to create a fast, light, unique web app.

Step 2: Adding Tailwind CSS

Let’s proceed to adding Tailwind CSS to our Svelte app, along with some dev dependencies that will help with its setup.

npm install tailwindcss@npm:@tailwindcss/postcss7-compat postcss@^7 autoprefixer@^9

 # or

yarn add tailwindcss@npm:@tailwindcss/postcss7-compat postcss@^7 autoprefixer@^9

The three tools we are downloading with the command above:

  1. Tailwind
  2. PostCSS
  3. Autoprefixer

PostCSS is a tool that uses JavaScript to transform and improve CSS. It comes with a bunch of plugins that perform different functions like polyfilling future CSS features, highlighting errors in your CSS code, controlling the scope of CSS class names, etc.

Autoprefixer is a PostCSS plugin that goes through your code adding vendor prefixes to your CSS rules (Tailwind does not do this automatically), using caniuse as reference. While browsers are choosing to not use prefixing on CSS properties the way they had in years past, some older browsers still rely on them. Autoprefixer helps with that backwards compatibility, while also supporting future compatibility for browsers that might apply a prefix to a property prior to it becoming a standard.

For now, Svelte works with an older version of PostCSS. Its latest version, PostCSS 8, was released September 2020. So, to avoid getting any version-related errors, our command above specifies PostCSS 7 instead of 8. A PostCSS 7 compatibility build of Tailwind is made available under the compat channel on npm.

Step 3: Configuring Tailwind

Now that we have Tailwind installed, let’s create the configuration file needed and do the necessary setup. In the root directory of your project, run this to create a tailwind.config.js file:

npx tailwindcss init  tailwind.config.js

Being a highly customizable framework, Tailwind allows us to easily override its default configurations with custom configurations inside this tailwind.config.js file. This is where we can easily customize things like spacing, colors, fonts, etc.

The tailwind.config.js file is provided to prevent ‘fighting the framework’ which is common with other CSS libraries. Rather than struggling to reverse the effect of certain classes, you come here and specify what you want. It’s in this file that we also define the PostCSS plugins used in the project.

The file comes with some default code. Open it in your text editor and add this compatibility code to it:

future: {
  purgeLayersByDefault: true,
  removeDeprecatedGapUtilities: true,
},

Tailwind 2.0 (the latest version), all layers (e.g., base, components, and utilities) are purged by default. In previous versions, however, just the utilities layer is purged. We can manually configure Tailwind to purge all layers by setting the purgeLayersByDefault flag to true.

Tailwind 2.0 also removes some gap utilities, replacing them with new ones. We can manually remove them from our code by setting removeDeprecatedGapUtilities to true.

These will help you handle deprecations and breaking changes from future updates.

PurgeCSS

The several thousand utility classes that come with Tailwind are added to your project by default. So, even if you don’t use a single Tailwind class in your HTML, your project still carries the entire library, making it rather bulky. We’ll want our files to be as small as possible in production, so we can use purge to remove all of the unused utility classes from our project before pushing the code to production.

Since this is mainly a production problem, we specify that purge should only be enabled in production.

purge: {
  content: [
    "./src/**/*.svelte",
  ],
  enabled: production // disable purge in dev
},

Now, your tailwind.config.js should look like this:

const production = !process.env.ROLLUP_WATCH;
module.exports = {
  future: {
    purgeLayersByDefault: true,
    removeDeprecatedGapUtilities: true,
  },
  plugins: [

  ],
  purge: {
    content: [
     "./src/**/*.svelte",

    ],
    enabled: production // disable purge in dev
  },
};

Rollup.js

Our Svelte app uses Rollup.js, a JavaScript module bundler made by Rich Harris, the creator of Svelte, that is used for compiling multiple source files into one single bundle (similar to webpack). In our app, Rollup performs its function inside a configuration file called rollup.config.js.

With Rollup, We can freely break our project up into small, individual files to make development easier. Rollup also helps to lint, prettify, and syntax-check our source code during bundling.

Step 4: Making Tailwind compatible with Svelte

Navigate to rollup.config.js and import the sveltePreprocess package. This package helps us handle all the CSS processing required with PostCSS and Tailwind.

import sveltePreprocess from "svelte-preprocess";

Under plugins, add sveltePreprocess and require Tailwind and Autoprefixer, as Autoprefixer will be processing the CSS generated by these tools.

preprocess: sveltePreprocess({
  sourceMap: !production,
  postcss: {
    plugins: [
     require("tailwindcss"), 
     require("autoprefixer"),
    ],
  },
}),

Since PostCSS is an external tool with a syntax that’s different from Svelte’s framework, we need a preprocessor to process it and make it compatible with our Svelte code. That’s where the sveltePreprocess package comes in. It provides support for PostCSS and its plugins. We specify to the sveltePreprocess package that we are going to require two external plugins from PostCSS, Tailwind and Autoprefixer. sveltePreprocess runs the foreign code from these two plugins through Babel and converts them to code supported by the Svelte compiler (ES6+). Rollup eventually bundles all of the code together.

The next step is to inject Tailwind’s styles into our app using the @tailwind directive. You can think of @tailwind loosely as a function that helps import and access the files containing Tailwind’s styles. We need to import three sets of styles.

The first set of styles is @tailwind base. This injects Tailwind’s base styles—mostly pulled straight from Normalize.css—into our CSS. Think of the styles you commonly see at the top of stylesheets. Tailwind calls these Preflight styles. They are provided to help solve cross-browser inconsistencies. In other words, they remove all the styles that come with different browsers, ensuring that only the styles you employ are rendered. Preflight helps remove default margins, make headings and lists unstyled by default, and a host of other things. Here’s a complete reference of all the Preflight styles.

The second set of styles is @tailwind components. While Tailwind is a utility-first library created to prevent generic designs, it’s almost impossible to not reuse some designs (or components) when working on a large project. Think about it. The fact that you want a unique-looking website doesn’t mean that all the buttons on a page should be designed differently from each other. You’ll likely use a button style throughout the app.

Follow this thought process. We avoid frameworks, like Bootstrap, to prevent using the same kind of button that everyone else uses. Instead, we use Tailwind to create our own unique button. Great! But we might want to use this nice-looking button we just created on different pages. In this case, it should become a component. Same goes for forms, cards, badges etc.

All the components you create will eventually be injected into the position that @tailwind components occupies. Unlike other frameworks, Tailwind doesn’t come with lots of predefined components, but there are a few. If you aren’t creating components and plan to only use the utility styles, then there’s no need to add this directive.

And, lastly, there’s @tailwind utilities. Tailwind’s utility classes are injected here, along with the ones you create.

Step 5: Injecting Tailwind Styles into Your Site

It’s best to inject all of the above into a high-level component so they’re accessible on every page. You can inject them in the App.svelte file:

<style global lang="postcss">
  @tailwind base;
  @tailwind components;
  @tailwind utilities;
</style>

Now that we have Tailwind set up in, let’s create a website header to see how tailwind works with Svelte. We’ll create it in App.svelte, inside the main tag.

Step 6: Creating A Website Header

Starting with some basic markup:

<nav>
  <div>
    <div>
      <a href="#">APP LOGO</a>

      <!-- Menus -->
      <div>
        <ul>
          <li>
            <a href="#">About</a>
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="#">Services</a>
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="#">Blog</a>
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="#">Contact</a>
          </li>
        </ul>
      </div>

    </div>
  </div>
</nav>

This is the header HTML without any Tailwind CSS styling. Pretty standard stuff. We’ll wind up moving the “APP LOGO” to the left side, and the four navigation links on the right side of it.

What we have with zero styling whatsoever.

Now let’s add some Tailwind CSS to it:

<nav class="bg-blue-900 shadow-lg">
  <div class="container mx-auto">
    <div class="sm:flex">
      <a href="#" class="text-white text-3xl font-bold p-3">APP LOGO</a>
      
      <!-- Menus -->
      <div class="ml-55 mt-4">
        <ul class="text-white sm:self-center text-xl">
          <li class="sm:inline-block">
            <a href="#" class="p-3 hover:text-red-900">About</a>
          </li>
          <li class="sm:inline-block">
            <a href="#" class="p-3 hover:text-red-900">Services</a>
          </li>
          <li class="sm:inline-block">
            <a href="#" class="p-3 hover:text-red-900">Blog</a>
          </li>
          <li class="sm:inline-block">
            <a href="#" class="p-3 hover:text-red-900">Contact</a>
          </li>
        </ul>
      </div>

    </div>
  </div>
</nav>

OK, let’s break down all those classes we just added to the HTML. First, let’s look at the

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Platform News: Defaulting to Logical CSS, Fugu APIs, Custom Media Queries, and WordPress vs. Italics

March 12th, 2021 No comments
Source:

Looks like 2021 is the time to start using CSS Logical Properties! Plus, Chrome recently shipped a few APIs that have raised eyebrows, SVG allows us to disable its aspect ratio, WordPress focuses on the accessibility of its typography, and there’s still no update (or progress) on the development of CSS custom media queries.

Let’s jump right into the news…

Logical CSS could soon become the new default

Six years after Mozilla shipped the first bits of CSS Logical Properties in Firefox, this feature is now on a path to full browser support in 2021. The categories of logical properties and values listed in the table below are already supported in Firefox, Chrome, and the latest Safari Preview.

CSS property or value The logical equivalent
margin-top margin-block-start
text-align: right text-align: end
bottom inset-block-end
border-left border-inline-start
(n/a) margin-inline

Logical CSS also introduces a few useful shorthands for tasks that in the past required multiple declarations. For example, margin-inline sets the margin-left and margin-right properties, while inset sets the top, right, bottom and left properties.

/* BEFORE */
main {
  margin-left: auto;
  margin-right: auto;
}

/* AFTER */
main {
  margin-inline: auto;
}

A website can add support for an RTL (right-to-left) layout by replacing all instances of left and right with their logical counterparts in the site’s CSS code. Switching to logical CSS makes sense for all websites because the user may translate the site to a language that is written right-to-left using a machine translation service. The biggest languages with RTL scripts are Arabic (310 million native speakers), Persian (70 million), and Urdu (70 million).

/* Switch to RTL when Google translates the page to an RTL language */
.translated-rtl {
  direction: rtl;
}

David Bushell’s personal website now uses logical CSS and relies on Google’s translated-rtl class to toggle the site’s inline base direction. Try translating David’s website to an RTL language in Chrome and compare the RTL layout with the site’s default LTR layout.

Chrome ships three controversial Fugu APIs

Last week Chrome shipped three web APIs for “advanced hardware interactions”: the WebHID and Web Serial APIs on desktop, and Web NFC on Android. All three APIs are part of Google’s capabilities project, also known as Project Fugu, and were developed in W3C community groups (though they’re not web standards).

  • The WebHID API allows web apps to connect to old and uncommon human interface devices that don’t have a compatible device driver for the operating system (e.g., Nintendo’s Wii Remote).
  • The Web Serial API allows web apps to communicate (“byte by byte”) with peripheral devices, such as microcontrollers (e.g., the Arduino DHT11 temperature/humidity sensor) and 3D printers, through an emulated serial connection.
  • Web NFC allows web apps to wirelessly read from and write to NFC tags at short distances (less than 10 cm).

Apple and Mozilla, the developers of the other two major browser engines, are currently opposed to these APIs. Apple has decided to “not yet implement due to fingerprinting, security, and other concerns.” Mozilla’s concerns are summarized on the Mozilla Specification Positions page.

Source: webapicontroversy.com

Stretching SVG with preserveAspectRatio=none

By default, an SVG scales to fit the element’s content box, while maintaining the aspect ratio defined by the viewBox attribute. In some cases, the author may want to stretch the SVG so that it completely fills the content box on both axes. This can be achieved by setting the preserveAspectRatio attribute to none on the element.

View demo

Distorting SVG in this manner may seem counterintuitive, but disabling aspect ratio via the preserveAspectRatio=none value can make sense for simple, decorative SVG graphics on a responsive web page:

This value can be useful when you are using a path for a border or to add a little effect on a section (like a diagonal [line]), and you want the path to fill the space.

WordPress tones down the use of italics

An italic font can be used to highlight important words (e.g., the element), titles of creative works (), technical terms, foreign phrases (), and more. Italics are helpful when used discreetly in this manner, but long sections of italic text are considered an accessibility issue and should be avoided.

Italicized text can be difficult to read for some people with dyslexia or related forms of reading disorders.

Putting the entire help text in italics is not recommended

WordPress 5.7, which was released earlier this week, removed italics on descriptions, help text, labels, error details text, and other places in the WordPress admin to “improve accessibility and readability.”

In related news, WordPress 5.7 also dropped custom web fonts, opting for system fonts instead.

Still no progress on CSS custom media queries

The CSS Media Queries Level 5 module specifies a @custom-media rule for defining custom media queries. This proposed feature was originally added to the CSS spec almost seven years ago (in June 2014) and has since then not been further developed nor received any interest from browser vendors.

@custom-media --narrow-window (max-width: 30em);

@media (--narrow-window) {
  /* narrow window styles */
}

A media query used in multiple places can instead be assigned to a custom media query, which can be used everywhere, and editing the media query requires touching only one line of code.

Custom media queries may not ship in browsers for quite some time, but websites can start using this feature today via the official PostCSS plugin (or PostCSS Preset Env) to reduce code repetition and make media queries more readable.

On a related note, there is also the idea of author-defined environment variables, which (unlike custom properties) could be used in media queries, but this potential feature has not yet been fully fleshed out in the CSS spec.

@media (max-width: env(--narrow-window)) {
  /* narrow window styles */
}

The post Platform News: Defaulting to Logical CSS, Fugu APIs, Custom Media Queries, and WordPress vs. Italics appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

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What Digital Marketing Strategies to Use as a SaaS Company

March 12th, 2021 No comments

What is a SaaS company?

A SaaS company is a subscription-based software that makes an application available to customers over the internet. SaaS acronym stands for Software as a Service. In other words, a software company offers a service for which customers pay annually or monthly. The company creates, develops, and updates the product itself. 

SaaS is not a new concept, but its popularity has grown in recent years. Therefore, many growth strategies have been created.

Benefits of SaaS companies

There are many benefits that SaaS businesses have compared to one-time-sales businesses. Some of them are:

  • cost savings
  • mobility
  • security and reliability
  • possibility to make changes with ease, without buying a new software
  • the possibility to be integrated with other software if wanted
  • no need for the customer to do manual upgrades
  • customization available
  • flexible pricing
  • different platforms use
  • wide audience possibility

Also, besides these, the most important differences between traditional software and saas software are real-time collaboration and cloud-computing. Only SaaS companies offer these two features.

Types of SaaS companies

There are different types of SaaS companies. Some help in business communication, others help with task management, others have different features that help in marketing, sales, analytics and measurement, project management, human resources, website creation, content management, mind mapping, etc.

A SaaS company offers saas products to businesses, to customers, or both.

Some of the top SaaS companies that offer B2B (business to business) services are HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack, Mailchimp, Adobe Creative Cloud.

Some examples of successful SaaS companies that offer B2C (business to client) services are Amazon Prime Video, Spotify, Netflix, Whatsapp.

When you start a SaaS company, you will have to analyze your customers and see what would work better. You can test both and offer different features. Make sure to create personalized offers. Some services that work for personal use maybe will not work for a business.

Many SaaS companies offer both B2B and B2C services, like Google G. Suite, Dropbox, Shopify, Wix, Mindomo, etc.

When it comes to a SaaS company, product, support, revenue model, and marketing are key points in its development. All these aspects of your business should go together. Also, software development is very important, but these mentioned before make the products be a service.

There are three stages of a SaaS business model: the start, the growth, and the stabilization.

We must admit that no matter how good a software product is, if it is not promoted properly it will not be as successful as another that may not be that good, but has applied certain marketing strategies. 

Digital marketing strategies for SaaS businesses

As a SaaS company, there are many digital marketing strategies that you can use, from general strategies applied to any type of business to more specific strategies like offering a free trial. Try as many marketing channels as you can. 

First of all, you need to fully understand the SaaS business model and then you can start applying certain strategies to your small business.

You can start by building a sales funnel. At first, you can offer something for free. Offer a free trial or personalized training. Require their email address. Contact them through email. Invite them to participate in webinars and tell them more about the SaaS solutions offered by your software company.

During these stages, provide support whenever needed.

1. Grow organically.

Organic growth goes hand in hand with Search engine optimization. Take care both of your on-Page and Off-Page SEO.

Publish quality content regularly and SEO-optimize it.

Content is the key for SaaS businesses.  It assures you brand awareness and helps your SEO (ranking and backlinks).

Create a blog for your company if you don’t have one already. If you had a blog, but you didn’t do it the right way until now, optimize old blog posts and create new ones. You should focus on long-form and data-driven content. 

It will take some time until you get the results you want. However, the situation will be better in the future. You will start to get more and more traffic.

Some ideas for your blog content would be:

  • tips and tricks for using your tool
  • interviews with experts from your company
  • results from a survey research
  • add facts
  • show off good reviews

You can also add articles directly on website pages for more exposure. In this way, people will land directly on your site, right near the page where they can create an account or purchase the product. Furthermore, it will help your SEO rankings.

If you are an information purveyor, you can attract more customers that are interested in your articles. You can even accept guest posts to have more content. Make sure to carefully review the content that will be posted to your website. Also, review the links that have been added.

Create articles and post them on every channel where you are present and where you think they would be suitable.

Do keyword research.

Try to rank on keywords related to your business. If you are a small company and just started applying marketing strategies, you should at first create content optimized on long-tail keywords or keywords that are not so competitive, until you catch up with those who have more authority in your area. Then you can start competing with them on keywords with more searches. The sooner you start optimizing old posts and creating new ones, the better. It will take some time until your keywords will increase their rankings.

Even if you use keywords, you have to make sure that your articles are useful for your audience. An article that is stuffed with keywords but has no value for people that open it will only increase your bounce rate, without converting page visitors into customers.

Make your content understandable.

Use headings and bullet points when you are explaining different concepts. Long-form content is used to rank better, but you need to make sure that the content is scannable and will be appreciated by your audience. Include many images and optimize them. For example, add alt tags to them.

After you create so much valuable content, promote it to get backlinks. For SEO optimization, you can use a tool like SEMrush or Moz.

2. Use paid advertising.

You can use the following channels for paid advertising:

  • Google Ads
  • Facebook Ads
  • Twitter Ads
  • Linkedin Ads
  • Pinterest Ads

Also, create remarketing campaigns. Advertising works better for freemium services. First, you have to attract many free customers. Then, you can use retargeting for these users that signed up for a free subscription to transform them into paying users.

Also, you can use influencer marketing. Contact vloggers from your area of interest or the ones that make app reviews. Make sure to collaborate with them only if their audience would find this content valuable and would be interested in the SaaS applications that you promote.

3. Be active on social media.

Facebook

Organize giveaways to win followers for your page that would be interesting in buying your products.

Create engagement posting in Facebook groups related to your field and also create your own group.

Instagram

Create stories and ask people to interact with them. Ask them questions like what they like about your product and what improvements they would like to see.

Create Instagram grids to have content and to make your users marvel at how your posts are organized. The impression you create on social media matters.

Youtube

First, create videos to explain how people can use your service. Then, you can use the articles from your company blog that have been most successful to create Youtube videos after them. This is one easy way to create engaging videos without investing too much time in them.

4. Use email marketing.

Firstly, you have to establish your goals and build an email list. When you want to start an email marketing campaign, you can use tools like MailChimp (which is a SaaS company) for automatization and newsletter customization. Make sure to measure your results and find ways to improve your emails.

5. Keep customers engaged.

If you keep your customers engaged, it will increase their lifetime value.

Ways to keep them engaged:

  • Affiliate program
  • Upselling
  • Create social media posts and blog posts constantly
  • Organize training and webinars
  • Offer them gifts
  • Organize giveaways
  • Create many Youtube videos
  • Create funny posts and videos which can go viral on the internet

Offer tool setup and instructions in case it is required. If the users do not easily understand your interface, they will not like it. Offer them training (videos, tutorials, or how-to articles). 

Upselling

Create the option to purchase a 3-year premium subscription, maybe there will be people interested in that offer. If they already are long-term users, maybe they would prefer this type of subscription to receive a discount for being customers for a long time. Also, as a bonus at this type of subscription, you can offer them additional storage, speed, or data.

6. Collaborate with others to achieve your common goals

Referral marketing

Offer additional features or storage to the referrer and the one being referred. Don’t forget to display your referral program on your home page.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing can bring you a lot of income. Besides, you will more easily retain your existing customers. 

Offer bonifications to people who are promoting your business. Unlike an application for which you only pay once, SaaS software tends to be more appealing for people that are willing to enroll in an affiliate program because they can earn income for a longer period. Customers who have great results with affiliate marketing will stick with you for a long time and will also bring new customers.

You need popularity. People can spread the word. Influencers will help you enter new markets. Use promo codes to encourage purchases and ask influencers to promote you on social media. 

Collaboration with other companies

Collaborate with SaaS companies that are not your direct competitors. Their customers can also become yours. Before doing that, make some research to be sure their customers will be interested in your product so you don’t invest time and money in something that does not work. Choose trustworthy companies that invest in their software development and are concerned about their customers.

7. Use the freemium pricing model.

Sell a freemium tool. You will allow your customers to try your tool and get used to it. Then, they can decide if they want to use the premium features. Many of the customers that use the free version can get used to your product and become paying customers.

Offer templates, free samples, or the whole product for a limited period. Offer a free trial for a period or a free version. It can make customers get used to your app and subscribe for a paid version. 

Allow your users to customize or personalize their subscriptions based on their needs. There is nothing wrong with having an option to use the application for free and for a paid subscription to offer more features. This is how SaaS companies work. Some have the option to try, others do not have it. But make sure to tell this to your customers from the beginning. Offer them the possibility to test your app with a free account and if it is what they were looking for, they will sign up for a paid subscription to receive access to more features and unlimited use.

However, the customer must know exactly what he is buying. You will have to be transparent about prices. All cost details should be specified on the site. Any additional costs that may arise along the way will cause the user to lose confidence in your product. He needs to know from the beginning what he is paying for and how much he is paying.

And, of course, create services that are worth that money.

8. Use Account-Based Marketing and Inbound Marketing

These two strategies should work together and make customers very interested in your SaaS products.

Inbound marketing means attracting customers with valuable content, and SEO-optimized to offer them exactly what they are searching for. 

Account-Based Marketing means offering a personalized buying experience to accounts, not individual customers. 

Both strategies have in common the fact that you need to create a buyer persona to think about what content potential customers need and which are channels where you will deliver it.

Inbound marketing helps you attract specific customers based on their interest in the content you create and Account-Based Marketing offers them a good customer experience combining marketing and sales.

At first, when you are applying the Account-Based Marketing strategy, you have to identify your relevant accounts based on company size, location, revenue, and other data. Create only content that matches perfectly with their interests. Then you can decide if you will use sales or marketing to get to them, based on their characteristics. You can contact them through email. Make sure to analyze your results and improve your approach over time.

Offer option to use many devices.

SaaS software runs on a cloud server and can be used from a web browser. But what if you offer them the option to work offline and then synchronize? There will be many that will like this feature.

The mobile app, browser app, desktop app, and synchronization between them with the cloud are all possible for SaaS applications and your customers will enjoy choosing from such a variety of technologies. Also, offer them the possibility to work offline.

Make the registration easier for the customer.

Allow third-party authentication. Ask only for necessary details at the free subscription part (name and email). Then you can ask for credit card information when they have decided they want to upgrade to a Premium subscription.

Listen to customers’ feedback.

Ask for customer’s feedback. In this way, you can improve your service. Listening to your customers’ feedback, understanding their ideas, and implementing new features only to make them content will increase customer lifetime value (CLV).

Anyway, even if every client is important, you have to consider that what is good for a customer is not necessarily what many other customers want. For example, some users want more features and some users want the interface to remain simple and easy to use. You have to find a balance and implement only features that will please a larger number of people and will not bother other users.

Offer your unconditional support.

Allow booking of calls, e-mail contact, training, and webinars organization from time to time for several users, especially in B2B or one-to-one online meetings.

Use video conferencing to better explain information to your users and to connect with them and socialize. In general, webinars with a larger number of people are preferable, because they can ask more questions, start discussions and save time you would use for one-on-one training or explanations.

To retain more customers as a SaaS business, you will need to take care of the ones you already have. You will grow at some point. The more customers you have, the more revenue, so you can invest in developing your service and offering even better solutions to your customers. You can use customer service software like HubSpot.

You can use a Recent Sales Pop-up to show customers your popularity. This will make them aware that there are people that are interested in your product and buy a subscription at the same moment when they are looking at your page.

Create a forum to communicate with customers, understand their needs, and improve your business based on their requirements. Also, think of an exit strategy. You will never know exactly whether a SaaS service will bring you much success or not.

In the SaaS industry, people that bought from you can not even be called customers, they can be called users. If they continue to pay for a subscription, it means that they frequently use the SaaS applications provided by you.

In this competitive market, to win many users and increase their lifetime value, you will need to have at first a very good product and then very good customer support to keep the users interested in your product. Customer retention is important. Try to always offer valuable information and support. The way SaaS businesses manage their customers has a massive impact on the company’s results. Create products that users love and offer support throughout their experience with your products.

Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash

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Table of Contents with IntersectionObserver

March 11th, 2021 No comments

If you have a table of contents on a long-scrolling page, thanks to, say, position: fixed; or position: sticky;, the IntersectionObserver API in JavaScript is the perfect companion to highlight items in the table of contents when corresponding content is in view.

Ben Frain has a post all about this:

Thanks to IntersectionObserver we have a small but very efficient bit of code to create our table of contents, provide quick links to jump around the document and update readers on where they are in a document as they read.

Compared to older techniques that need to bind to scroll events and perform their own math, this code is shorter, faster, and more logical. If you’re looking for the demo on Ben’s site, the article is the demo. And here’s a video on it:

I’ve mentioned this stuff before, but here’s a Bramus Van Damme version:

CodePen Embed Fallback

And here’s a version from Hakim el Hattab that is just begging for someone to port it to IntersectionObserver because the UI is so cool:

CodePen Embed Fallback

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

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