In this day and age on the internet, users have no patience for websites with poor loading speeds or substandard performance.

Half a second can make a world of difference on whether or not someone stays on your site. Website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each second of load time according to a study by Portent. Simply put, allowing your website to be bogged down by oversized images, unoptimized files, or shoddy design can be the downfall of any website in 2021. 

Topics like optimization, compression, and content delivery networks can be a pain to master. Add on top of that Google’s new Core Web Vitals implementation that every web professional is scrambling to understand and you’ve got yourself a lot of homework to guarantee your website ranks well. Your users expect your web pages to load fast, and they won’t stick around if they don’t. It’s important to know what to avoid when building your site in order for it to perform. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the top five common mistakes that increase website loading time.

1. A low score on Google’s Core Web Vitals

Google started to roll out its new search ranking metrics, referred to as Core Web Vitals, in mid-June 2021. These metrics are designed to help web professionals and site owners optimize websites for a streamlined user experience. Each one of the Core Web Vitals provides the desired benchmark for a specific factor, based on the user experience of an average site visitor.

The Core Web Vitals are three metrics that Google has identified as crucial in affecting website load time and search ranking. The first is Largest Contentful Paint, which is calculated by the time it takes for a page’s main content to load, with the ideal measurement being faster than 2.5 seconds. First Input Delay is the second metric. This is the time it takes for a page to become interactive, with the ideal measurement being under 100 milliseconds.

The final vital statistic is the Cumulative Layout Shift. It’s frustrating to website users when an entire site seems to change its layout just as they’re about to click on a link. This is due to a site being designed with a complete disregard for Cumulative Layout Shift. The amount of unexpected shift in the visual layout of page content should be less than 0.1%.

Describing the finer details of Google’s Core Web Vitals can easily make up an entire article on its own. There are many resources online that can further assist you in making sure your websites meet all of Google’s desired benchmarks, but understanding how they affect your website’s load time before starting a build can go a long way in avoiding complex site changes in the future.

2. Images that are not optimized properly

Do you remember back in the early 2000s when dial-up internet was still a thing and websites would load a huge image painfully slow down your screen? We may have much faster internet today, but this issue surprisingly persists on websites that are not designed properly. All of the images you use on your site need to be resized and compressed to reduce their total file size. This immediately improves how fast they load on your website. The other key to making sure your images load rapidly is to use modern file formats that are optimized for website loading speed. These file types include Google’s WebP, JPEG XR, and AVIF. And I know what you’re saying, what about good ol’ JPGs or PNGs? Despite their popularity, JPGs and PNGs are terribly slow to load if they are not optimized and are no longer the standard. You’ll begin to see their use in web design be phased out more in the coming years as more web professionals catch on that they’re old news. Which leads us to…

3. Files that are not minified and compressed

When designing a website, it is crucial that you minify the files you use in your design whenever possible. Minification means removing all the extra spaces, line breaks, comments, and just about anything else that is non-essential for your users to see. After putting your files through minification, it is critical that you compress them to further optimize loading time. When a browser visits your website, you want the file to be zipped up for quick delivery by using GZIP or Brotli. Compressing all of your files into a ZIP archive will go a long way in making sure your website moves quickly. Think of it as a way of packaging files together at once.

For example, when you’re moving between houses, you don’t pick up things one at a time as you move; you neatly package them to make moving everything at once much easier and faster. The same applies to zipping files for rapid delivery on your website. The graph below can provide insight into how compression affects site speed. Once you begin to minify and compress your files, you’ll notice a world of difference in website loading time. 

4. Not deferring or delaying the loading of JavaScript

The saying, “Do your hardest task first” does not apply in the world of web design. In fact, the phrase would be the opposite, “Do your hardest task last.” When designing for rapid load times, you want to place any type of JavaScript used on your site towards the end of the page or bottom of the HTML.

You should prioritize content at the top of your website such as the navigation menu, header, and hero image. It’s clever to move all of your slow and complex JavaScript to the bottom of the page to make sure all of the content up top loads immediately. There may be some critical pieces of JavaScript that need to load earlier, but deferring most of it will benefit your website’s loading time. This way you save all of the stuff that is rough on your website’s loading time to be loaded after the site visitor has a chance to get started browsing.

5. Forgetting to load JavaScript and CS files asynchronously

Why would you do one task at a time when you have the ability to multitask? This is the mindset in play when deferring or asynchronously loading your JavaScript and CS files. JavaScript is an essential part of any modern web application, and the way you decide to load it has a direct impact on your website’s load speed. Novice web professionals are notorious for failing to load JavaScript and CS files asynchronously, which can really bog down your website’s loading time. Loading everything simultaneously, on the other hand, allows your browser to download everything in parallel — rather than in stages. This results in a much faster website load time. 

6. Disregarding a CDN

It is vital that you leverage a CDN when designing your website for speed. According to a study by BuiltWith, over 41% of the top 10,000 websites are using a CDN, and it’s easy to see why. A CDN, or Content Delivery Network, has servers all over the world. When a user goes to your website that utilizes a CDN, the server closest to your location will be used. Since the server is local, your internet connection and download times to that CDN will be much faster. A great analogy for how a CDN works is to think of when you play online video games. When you play a video game online you choose the server closest to your location to speed up loading and avoid lag. The same exact process applies to how CDNs operate.

A million little errors can truly add up and slow down a website that would otherwise load in an instant. It’s easy for your website to get bogged down by common mistakes in web design, but avoiding these six major bungles will help guarantee that your website is lighting fast. 

We all want a little more fun and games in our lives. So, why not add some gamification to your next interactive content campaign?

By 2025, the gamification market is expected to witness a massive 30.1% growth rate, with global sales revenue reaching around $32 billion. 

That’s because gamification adds more entertainment to the website experience and gets audiences engaged. The idea behind gamification is to bring game mechanics into the design of a website or piece of content. There are many different ways to do this. 

Some companies add hidden achievements and bonuses to their blogs that customers can collect by visiting every page and reading their content. Others allow readers to collect points for leaving comments or play games to win potential prizes. 

Used correctly, gamification is a fantastic way to connect with your audience and increase engagement levels. So, how can you use gamification in interactive content?

The Evolution of Gamification 

Elements of gamification have appeared in everything from marketing campaigns to web design and even eCommerce strategies. 

In 2014, an Apple App Store review of more than 100 health apps even found that gamification elements in applications led to greater participation and higher user ratings. In other words, customers are more likely to get involved with an activity that includes gamification components. 

While gamification can take on many different forms, the aim for most companies is to create an environment where customers can feel more invested in their interactions with the website. For example, if you win a point every time you comment on a blog post, and you can trade those points in for prizes, you have more of a desire to keep commenting. 

The promise of being able to “accomplish” things with pieces of interactive content and websites also appeals to the competitive part of our psychology that pushes us to keep doing things in exchange for the promise of a kind of reward. 

Many companies have generated a lot of enthusiasm for their brands through leaderboards, time events, and similar experiences. For example, just look at how popular McDonalds becomes each year when the monopoly game rolls out as part of the purchasing experience. 

People buy more items than they usually would during McDonald’s Monopoly just for the opportunity to win. This same boost in engagement benefits your content strategy too. 

6 Ways to Add Gamification to Your Content

There’s no one right way to gamify your website or your marketing content. The method you choose will depend heavily on your audience and the kind of experience they respond best to. 

The key to success is finding a way to grab your customer’s attention and hold onto it. Here are some of the tried and tested strategies to explore:

1. Create an Actual Game Experience 

When it comes to incorporating gamification into your website design and content, you don’t necessarily need to be clever. You can be extremely straightforward and just design an actual game. For instance, to help attract more people to the American Army, the US created a war simulator that potential applicants could play on Steam. 

The game aimed to introduce young people who might consider a career in the military to what that job might be like. If the kids liked what they saw on Steam, they could visit the military website and learn more. 

For companies who can’t afford to build an entire fully-featured game, something a little smaller can be just as engaging. For instance, rather than using a standard pop-up with a discount code to entice customers to buy the rental service, Gwynnie Bee created a scratch card. People could scratch the spaces using their smartphone or computer cursor and win money off. 

The great thing about the interactive content from Gwynnie Bee is that it encouraged potential visitors to connect with the business in a lucrative way. To use the scratch card, you first had to give your email address. This meant the company could build its email list while delighting consumers. 

When designing a game experience for your marketing campaign, remember:

• Get the right support: Designing a great game is tough, particularly if you want something more complicated than a scratch card. Don’t take the risk of creating something that doesn’t work properly; hire a developer. 
• Promote the experience: Make sure everyone knows about your new game. Share screenshots on social media and talk about it in your email campaigns. 
• Focus on fun: Remember, games are supposed to be fun. Measure the reactions of your audience to ensure they’re having a good time. 

2. Design a Loyalty or Reward Program

Loyalty is one of the most valuable things your audience can give you. So why not reward them for it? Loyalty programs are fantastic tools for business growth and engagement. They give you a way to turn one-off clients into repeat customers and advocates for your brand. 

How you choose to reward your customers (and when) is up to you. Some companies might give customers points every time they share a post on social media or comment on a blog. This encourages more engagement with your brand. 

On the other hand, you might just let your customers earn rewards for every purchase they make. This is a strategy that Starbucks uses with its reward program.

As customers increase their spending with Starbucks, they get the reward of extra points that they can put towards future purchases. This keeps customers coming back for more and may even entice some clients to buy Starbucks when they otherwise wouldn’t. 

The oVertone company is another excellent example of a brand using gamified rewards with its marketing strategy. The loyalty program breaks down into tiers, where users can see how much they need to spend to ascend to the next level. New rewards and perks appear with each level. 

Remember, when building a loyalty program:

• Make your customers feel special: Ensure that your audience feels good about being one of the lucky few in your loyalty program. Give discounts and offers they can’t get elsewhere.
• Keep them informed: Make it easy for your customers to see what they need to do to get their next reward, so they keep coming back for more. 
• Mix things up sometimes: To stop the experience from getting boring, roll out things like “double points” days and bonuses for your most active customers. 

3. Encourage Customer Interaction

The biggest benefit of gamification is that it encourages and increases customer interaction. You can give rewards to participants that comment on your blog posts, for instance, or share your posts on social. The customer benefits from the reward, while you get the advantage of a better business presence. 

Samsung drives interaction with gamification with a function on its website that allows customers to discuss issues and watch videos. The most active participants get a badge for their efforts. 

If your business structure requires a lot of engagement from your audience, then using gamification elements can encourage them to stick with you for longer rather than losing interest. For instance, language learning software Duolingo has a four-point gamification strategy for its users.

Duolingo knows that learning a new language takes a lot of time, so it asks users to set small specific goals instead. The smaller tasks bring users back regularly, and consistent users gain rewards. There’s even a progress bar to help you track your progress compared to other customers. 

Gamification gives your customers another reason to keep coming back and connecting with your brand. That makes a lot of sense for companies that rely on long-term relationships with customers, like Duolingo and other teaching brands, for instance. Remember:

• Make it simple: People will only want to interact with your brand if it’s easy to do so. Make it clear what you want your customer to do and what they need to do next. 
• Reward every action: Keep people coming back for more by rewarding them for their actions, even if it’s just with a gold star or digital sticker. 
• Nudge inactive customers: If a client gets involved in your interactive content, then stops participating, send an email reminding them why they should come back. 

4. Run Contests and Offer Prizes

Probably one of the easiest ways to use gamification in your advertising campaigns is with a competition. Contests and competitions have been around since the dawn of business. They’re a useful way for companies to collect information from customers, particularly if you ask your clients to sign up to your site with an email address to get involved. 

Competitions are also a way to push your audience into doing positive things for your company. For instance, you could run a competition where consumers share a social media post and tag a friend to enter. Or you could have a competition that asks your clients to refer a friend to get involved. 

When KIND, a healthy snack company, wanted to connect with its customers and create a new product, it didn’t just do market research. Instead, the company created the “Raise the Bar” contest to let customers cast a vote for which flavor they wanted to see next.

When 123ContactForm wanted to engage its audience, it gave people the chance to win one of three platinum subscriptions for 6 months. 

Contests are naturally exciting and fun to take part in. They’re an opportunity to get your audience excited, and you don’t need to give anything huge away either. Just make sure that the prize you offer is something that your audience will be interested in. 

A few more pro tips include:

• Generate hype first: Don’t just launch a contest out of nowhere; get people excited about the idea with announcement blogs, social media posts, and emails. 
• Give people a lot of ways to get involved: If people can’t take part in the competition on social media, let them do something on your website instead. 
• Follow up after the win: When someone does win something from your website, follow up with that winner and post pictures in the form of a blog/case study. This will generate more hype for your brand and get people excited about the next event. 

5. Get Your Audience Feeling Competitive

No matter how much they might deny it, most people are at least a little competitive. So when you’re implementing a gamification campaign into your content and marketing efforts, it pays to tap into that sense of competition. All you need to do is find a way to encourage your followers to compete. 

The best example of a company that did this particularly well is Nike. Nike and the Run Club app teamed up to motivate people to get involved with healthy activities. The app allowed users to customize and build their ideal training program based on their athletic level. 

At the same time, you could also win badges and trophies to share with your running community. The more you took part in challenges on the app, the more you could potentially win. 

The Fitbit application has a similar way of keeping customers engaged. When you download Fitbit, you can access information about your exercise strategies and potentially track your progress towards your goals. However, there are also measurable achievements to earn – like a badge when you first walk 500 miles. 

Users on Fitbit can also find their friends using the same app and compete with them in various challenges. 

To successfully add a competition to your gamification strategy, remember:

• It needs to be social: People will be more inclined to get involved if they show off their achievements. So make sure that people can showcase their accomplishments. 
• Make people want to win: There needs to be a reason to get to the top of the leaderboard. You might offer people discounts or exclusive prizes if they accomplish certain goals. 
• Show progress: Prompt people to keep working on reaching their targets by showing them how close they are to success. 

6. Make Boring Content Seem More Interesting

Some content is naturally more engaging than others. If you want to showcase some important information or data, you might create a whitepaper or a report. Unfortunately, the result can be a relatively bland piece of content.

With elements of gamification, you can make the experience a lot more engaging and interesting. Sites like Daytum.com allow users to turn personal stats and information into charts that showcase information in engaging ways. You can allow your users to track their progress through the report and rack up points as they go. 

Adding subtle elements to otherwise clinical and less interesting information is a wonderful way to make the experience more exciting. The more enticed your customers are by your content, the more likely it is that you’ll sell them on your business. 

Gamify Your Marketing Strategy

Gamification isn’t a new concept, but it’s one that many companies and designers can begin to take advantage of these days. Thanks to more advanced browsers and smartphones, customers can more fully enjoy the interactive elements of websites and content campaigns. 

As your audience dives deeper into the digital world, they expect more unique experiences from you. Gamification can make any website or marketing experience more memorable. It’s time to take advantage. 

Source

The post 7 Ways to Use Gamification in Marketing Campaigns  first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Now let’s use the circle() value to create a circular shape. We can specify the position and radius of the circle using this value. For example, to clip a circular shape at the coordinate position (70, 70) with a radius of 70px, we can specify the clip-path property value as:

clip-path: circle(70px at 70px 70px)

So, the center of the circle is placed at the coordinate (70, 70) with a 70px radius. Now, only this circular region is clipped and shown on the element. The rest of the portion of the element is hidden to create the impression of a circle shape.

Next, what if we want to specify the position at (0,0)? In this case, the circle’s center is placed at the (0,0) position with a radius of 70px. That makes only a portion of the circle visible inside the element.

Let’s move on to use the other two essential values, inset() and polygon(). We use an inset to define a rectangular shape. We can specify the gap that each of the four edges may have to clip a region from an element. For example:

clip-path: inset(30px)

The above clip-path value clips a region by leaving out the 30px values from element’s edges. We can see that in the image below. We can also specify a different inset value for each of the edges.

Next is the polygon() value. We can create a polygonal shape using a set of vertices. Take this example:

clip-path: polygon(10% 10%, 90% 10%, 90% 90%, 10% 80%)

Here we are specifying a set of vertices to create a region for clipping. The image below shows the position of each vertex to create a polygonal shape. We can specify as many vertices as we want.

Next, let’s take a look at the ellipse() and the url() values. The ellipse() value helps create shapes by specifying two radii values and a position. In the image below, we see an ellipse at the position where the radii is at (50%,50%) and the shape is 70px wide and 100px tall.

url() is a CSS function to specify the clip-path element’s ID value to render an SVG shape. Please take a look at the image below. We have defined a SVG shape using clipPath and path elements. You can use the ID value of the clipPath element as an argument to the url() function to render this shape.

Additionally, we can use the path values directly in the path() function to draw the shape.

Alright. I hope you have got an understanding of different clip-path property values. With this understanding, let’s take a loot at some implementations and play around with them. Here is a Pen for you. Please use it to try adding, modifying values to create a new shape.

CodePen Embed Fallback

Let’s talk about TryShape

It’s time to talk about TryShape and its background story. TryShape is an open-source application that helps create, export, share, and use any shapes of your choice. You can create banners, circles, arts, polygons and export them as SVG, PNG, and JPEG files. You can also create a CSS code snippet to copy and use in your application.

TryShape is built using the following framework and libraries (and clip-path, of course):

• CSS clip-path: We’ve already discussed the power of this awesome CSS property.

I love shapes, especially colorful ones! Shapes on websites are in the same category of helpfulness as background colors, images, banners, section separators, artwork, and many more: they can help us understand context and inform our actions through affordances.

A few months back, I built an application to engage my 7-year old daughter with mathematics. Apart from basic addition and subtraction, my aim was to present questions using shapes. That’s when I got familiar with the CSS clip-path property, a reliable way to make shapes on the web. Then, I ended up building another app called, TryShape using the power of clip-path.

I’ll walk you through the story behind TryShape and how it helps create, manage, share, and export shapes. We’ll cover a lot about CSS clip-path along the way and how it helped me quickly build the app.

Here are a few important links:

• TryShape site
• GitHub repo
• Video demo
• npm package to wrap clip-path for React

First, the CSS clip-path property and shapes

Imagine you have a plain piece of paper and a pencil to draw a shape (say, a square) on it. How will you proceed? Most likely, you will start from a point, then draw a line to reach another point, then repeat it exact three more times to come back to the initial point. You also have to make sure you have opposite lines parallel and of the same length.

So, the essential ingredients for a shape are points, lines, directions, curves, angles, and lengths, among many others. The CSS clip-path helps specify many of these properties to clip a region of an HTML element to show a specific region. The part that is inside the clipped region is shown, and the rest is hidden. It gives an ocean of opportunities to developers to create various shapes using clip-path property.

Learn more about clipping and how it is different from masking.

The clip-path values for shape creation

The clip-path property accepts the following values for creating shapes:

• circle()
• ellipse()
• inset()
• polygon()
• A clip source using url() function
• path()

We need to understand the basic coordinate system a bit to use these values. When applying the clip-path property on an element to create shapes, we must consider the x-axis, y-axis, and the initial coordinates (0,0) at the element’s top-left corner.

Here is a div element with its x-axis, y-axis, and initial coordinates (0,0).

Now let’s use the circle() value to create a circular shape. We can specify the position and radius of the circle using this value. For example, to clip a circular shape at the coordinate position (70, 70) with a radius of 70px, we can specify the clip-path property value as:

clip-path: circle(70px at 70px 70px)

So, the center of the circle is placed at the coordinate (70, 70) with a 70px radius. Now, only this circular region is clipped and shown on the element. The rest of the portion of the element is hidden to create the impression of a circle shape.

Next, what if we want to specify the position at (0,0)? In this case, the circle’s center is placed at the (0,0) position with a radius of 70px. That makes only a portion of the circle visible inside the element.

Let’s move on to use the other two essential values, inset() and polygon(). We use an inset to define a rectangular shape. We can specify the gap that each of the four edges may have to clip a region from an element. For example:

clip-path: inset(30px)

The above clip-path value clips a region by leaving out the 30px values from element’s edges. We can see that in the image below. We can also specify a different inset value for each of the edges.

Next is the polygon() value. We can create a polygonal shape using a set of vertices. Take this example:

clip-path: polygon(10% 10%, 90% 10%, 90% 90%, 10% 80%)

Here we are specifying a set of vertices to create a region for clipping. The image below shows the position of each vertex to create a polygonal shape. We can specify as many vertices as we want.

Next, let’s take a look at the ellipse() and the url() values. The ellipse() value helps create shapes by specifying two radii values and a position. In the image below, we see an ellipse at the position where the radii is at (50%,50%) and the shape is 70px wide and 100px tall.

url() is a CSS function to specify the clip-path element’s ID value to render an SVG shape. Please take a look at the image below. We have defined a SVG shape using clipPath and path elements. You can use the ID value of the clipPath element as an argument to the url() function to render this shape.

Additionally, we can use the path values directly in the path() function to draw the shape.

Alright. I hope you have got an understanding of different clip-path property values. With this understanding, let’s take a loot at some implementations and play around with them. Here is a Pen for you. Please use it to try adding, modifying values to create a new shape.

Let’s talk about TryShape

It’s time to talk about TryShape and its background story. TryShape is an open-source application that helps create, export, share, and use any shapes of your choice. You can create banners, circles, arts, polygons and export them as SVG, PNG, and JPEG files. You can also create a CSS code snippet to copy and use in your application.

TryShape is built using the following framework and libraries (and clip-path, of course):

• CSS clip-path: We’ve already discussed the power of this awesome CSS property.
• Next.js: The coolest React-based framework around. It helped me create pages, components, interactions, and APIs to connect to the back-end database.
• HarperDB: A flexible database to store data and query them using both SQL and No-SQL interactions. TryShape has its schema and tables created in the HarperDB cloud. The Next.js APIs interact with the schema and tables to perform required CRUD operations from the user interface.
• Firebase: Authentication services from Google. TryShape uses it to get the social login working using Google, GitHub, Twitter, and other accounts.
• react-icons: One shop for all the icons for a React-based application
• date-fns: The modern, lightweight library for date formatting
• axios: Making the API calls easy from the React components
• styled-components: A structured way to create CSS rules from react components
• react-clip-path: A homegrown module to handle clip-path property in a React app
• react-draggable: Make an HTML element draggable in a React app. TryShape uses it to adjust the position of shape vertices.
• downloadjs: Trigger a download from JavaScript
• html-to-image: Converts an HTML element to image (including SVG, JPEG, and PNG)
• Vercel: Best for hosting a Next.js app

Creating shapes in TryShape using CSS clip-path

Let me highlight the source code that helps create a shape using the CSS clip-path property. The code snippet below defines the user interface structure for a container element (Box) that’s 300px square. The Box element has two child elements, Shadow and Component.

<Box 
  height="300px" 
  width="300px" 
  onClick={(e) => props.handleChange(e)}>
  { 
    props.shapeInformation.showShadow && 
    <Shadow 
      backgroundColor={props.shapeInformation.backgroundColor} 
      id="shapeShadow" /> 
  }
  <Component 
    formula={props.shapeInformation.formula} 
    backgroundColor={props.shapeInformation.backgroundColor} 
    id="clippedShape" />
</Box>

The Shadow component defines the area that is hidden by the clip-path clipping. We create it to show a light color background to make this area partially visible to the end user. The Component is to assign the clip-path value to show the clipped area.

See the styled-component definitions of Box, Shadow, and Component below:

// The styled-components code to create the UI components using CSS properties

// The container div
const Box = styled.div`
  width: ${props => props.width || '100px'};
  height: ${props => props.height || '100px'};
  margin: 0 auto;
  position: relative;
`;

// Shadow defines the area that is hidden by the `clip-path` clipping
// We show a light color background to make this area partially visible.
const Shadow = styled.div`
  background-color: ${props => props.backgroundColor || '#00c4ff'};
  opacity: 0.25;
  position: absolute;
  top: 10px;
  left: 10px;
  right: 10px;
  bottom: 10px;
`;

// The actual component that takes the `clip-path` value (formula) and set
// to the `clip-path` property.
const Component = styled.div`
  clip-path: ${props => props.formula}; // the formula is the clip-path value
  background-color: ${props => props.backgroundColor || '#00c4ff'};
  position: absolute;
  top: 10px;
  left: 10px;
  right: 10px;
  bottom: 10px;
`;

Please feel free to look into the entire codebase in the GitHub repo.

The future scope of TryShape

TryShape works well with the creation and management of basic shapes using CSS clip-path in the background. It is helpful to export the shapes and the CSS code snippets to use in your web applications. It has the potential to grow with many more valuable features. The primary one will be the ability to create shapes with curvy edges.

To support the curvy shapes, we need the support of the following values in TryShape:

• a clip source using url() and
• path().

With the help of these values, we can create shapes using SVG and then use one of the above values. Here is an example of the url() CSS function to create a shape using the SVG support.

<div class="heart">Heart</div>
<svg>
  <clipPath id="heart-path" clipPathUnits="objectBoundingBox">
    <path d="M0.5,1
      C 0.5,1,0,0.7,0,0.3
      A 0.25,0.25,1,1,1,0.5,0.3
      A 0.25,0.25,1,1,1,1,0.3
      C 1,0.7,0.5,1,0.5,1 Z" />
  </clipPath>
</svg>

Then, the CSS::

.heart {
  clip-path: url(#heart-path);
}

Now, let’s create a shape using the path() value. The HTML should have an element like a div:

<div class="curve">Curve</div>

In CSS:

.curve {
  clip-path: path("M 10 80 C 40 10, 65 10, 95 80 S 150 150, 180 80");
}

Before we end…

I hope you enjoyed meeting my TryShape app and learning about the idea that leads to it, the strategies I considered, the technology under the hood, and its future potential. Please consider trying it and looking through the source code. And, of course, feel free to contribute to it with issues, feature requests, and code.

Before we end, I want to leave you with this short video prepared for the Hashnode hackathon where TryShape was an entry and finally in the list of winners. I hope you enjoy it.

Let’s connect. You can @ me on Twitter (@tapasadhikary) with comments, or feel free to follow.

The post The Story Behind TryShape, a Showcase for the CSS clip-path property appeared first on CSS-Tricks. You can support CSS-Tricks by being an MVP Supporter.

When requirements read “when visible” your brain should go straight to IntersectionObserver. That’s exactly what Zach is doing here to kick off an animation when it scrolls into view.

Except this animation is an SVG SMIL animation: an situation. SMIL animations have some kinda cool things they can do, like begin when another animation ends, which is something CSS doesn’t help with that much. Turns out SMIL has a JavaScript API as well, so it’s possible to kick off the animation on demand that way, while also respecting prefers-reduced-motion.

Also check this out:

.querySelectorAll(`:scope [begin="indefinite"]`);

That :scope thing is new to me.

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As a small business owner, you’re always looking for ways to raise brand awareness and increase your sales. But scaling a business is hard in today’s competitive market.

If you’re the sole owner, it means you’re doing everything yourself, from updating your website to managing your social media campaigns.

But what if you could have publishers in your industry promote your business? How much of an impact would that have on your bottom line?

This is where affiliate marketing comes in — a type of performance-based strategy that you can leverage to generate more sales.

This article will take an in-depth look at what affiliate marketing is and how you can use this strategy to grow your small business.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Let’s cover the basics before we dive into specifics.

Affiliate marketing is when other people (or affiliates) promote your products or services. They earn commissions for sales they bring in, which gives them a strong incentive to continue promoting your company.

Affiliates are typically publishers and content creators — bloggers, social media influencers, YouTubers, etc. Anyone with an audience or community can become an affiliate for your small business.

Let’s look at an example to illustrate this further.

SimpleMoneyLyfe is a publisher that provides personal financial advice. The company regularly posts articles on topics like investing, making money, and credit repair.

In addition, it also helps its audience make informed decisions by writing in-depth reviews of various financial services.

Similarly, affiliate marketing allows you to develop relationships with publishers who can promote your products or services. Because you’re paying based on performance, it’s a cost-effective way to spread the word about your business.

Given these benefits, it’s not surprising that more companies are pouring money into their affiliate programs. 

In fact, affiliate marketing spending is projected to reach $8.2 billion by 2022.

That figure will only continue to grow as more companies use this marketing strategy to increase sales.

Now let’s look at how you can use affiliate marketing to grow your business.

1. Decide Whether to Create an Affiliate Program

First, you’ll need an affiliate program to manage and pay your affiliate. There are two options to get started:

• Host your own affiliate program
• Join an affiliate network

Each has its advantages and disadvantages.

With a little technical know-how, you can create your own affiliate program. This allows you to manage your affiliates directly without having to pay any middleman fees. But unless you have a strong brand, you may have trouble attracting publishers.

You can also join an affiliate network. These are companies that act as intermediates between merchants and affiliates. These networks can drive more publishers to your program but have higher initial costs.

Which option you choose will depend on your budget and goals. You can always join an affiliate network and move your program in-house later (something that Amazon did with its Associate’s Program).

2. Build a Strong Commission Structure

Affiliates earn commissions on sales they bring to your company. But you’ll have a hard time getting publishers to promote your company with a weak commission structure.

How much should you offer affiliates? That depends on factors like your industry, profit margins, and the products you sell. 

However, commission rates for physical products are typically between 5% and 15%. They also tend to be much higher for software products. 

Here’s the commission structure that Amazon offers for its affiliate program:

Offering a high commission rate can help you attract quality publishers. Of course, you still want to generate a profit for your efforts. 

Think about your customer lifetime value (CLV) and factor in your cost of goods sold (COGS) to develop a solid commission structure.

3. Provide Marketing Creatives

Publishers can add affiliate links to their content to track clicks and earnings. But to drive more traffic to your product pages and raise brand awareness, you’ll want to provide creatives.

Creatives are promotional materials that affiliates can add to their site (or online platform) to promote your business. 

Examples include:

• Product images
• Banner ads
• Videos
• Pre-written copy
• Email templates
• Landing pages
• Widgets
• Reports

Create different kinds of marketing assets and make sure they have clear branding. Add them to your affiliate resource center, so publishers can quickly download the ones they need.

4. Increase Your Conversion Rates

Publishers are already doing a lot of the heavy lifting by driving traffic to your site. It’s your job to make sure your product pages are optimized for conversions.

For example, if your affiliate program pays for new leads, make sure to include signup forms on your landing pages. This will help you bring in more leads (and make your affiliates happy).

This page promoting the best PEO companies adds a form to its landing page to get visitors to fill in their contact details.

The form also has contrasting colors, which helps it stand out from other elements on the page. Experiment with your product pages and consider running A/B tests to improve your conversion rates.

5. Reach Out to Publishers

Attracting affiliates can be challenging in the beginning. To gain more traction, take a more proactive approach and reach out directly to publishers.

Here are a few places to start:

• Bloggers: Reach out to bloggers in your industry. If they’re promoting products similar to yours, there’s a good chance they’ll promote your products or services too.
• Influencers: Partnering with social media influencers is an effective strategy to attract quality publishers. You can pay per post or offer commissions on sales they make.
• YouTubers: More people are watching videos to inform their purchases. Working with a popular YouTuber can help you drive more sales.

6. Work With Coupon Sites

Leveraging coupon sites can be a great way to attract new customers. These types of sites help consumers find deals online by organizing coupons from different brands.

You provide a promo code, and a coupon site adds it under a relevant category. Anyone searching for a deal can save on their purchase, and the coupon site earns a commission.

Even offering a small discount like 10% off for a limited time can be incredibly effective at bringing in more first-time purchases. Just be sure that you’re not undercutting yourself and losing money.

Final Thoughts

There’s no shortage of marketing strategies you can use to grow your small business. 

But one of the most effective is affiliate marketing. Partnering with publishers in your industry can drive targeted traffic to your site and generate more sales for your small business.

Follow the tips as detailed here to get started. These include creating an affiliate program or joining an affiliate network, providing marketing creatives, and reaching out directly to publishers for partnerships.

Shipping is one of the most important aspects of an eCommerce business. Customers are directly influenced by the shipping services you provide in your store, based on which they will make decisions on future purchases. 

Some issues customers encounter on shipping may not be in your control as it also depends upon the carrier service you have chosen and other logistic processes. As a store owner, it is your responsibility to minimize these issues and provide your customers a hassle-free shipping experience by delivering the products as per the estimated delivery date.

Fortunately, WooCommerce allows you to make all your shipments properly and systematically with the help of additional plugins and extensions. You can choose a plugin or extension as per your shipping requirements. Since there are so many plugins available in the WooCommerce market, you can choose the essential ones by analyzing their features and efficiency.

In order to make your task easier, I have come up with 10 WooCommerce advanced shipping plugins you can install on your WooCommerce store. They are:

1. ELEX WooCommerce Shipping Calculator, Purchase Shipping Label & Tracking for Customers
2. ELEX EasyPost (FedEx, UPS, Canada Post & USPS) Shipping & Label Printing Plugin for WooCommerce
3. WooCommerce Advanced Shipping
4. WooCommerce ShipStation Gateway
5. Table Rate for WooCommerce by Flexible Shipping – Pro
6. Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce
7. WooCommerce Conditional Shipping Pro
8. WooCommerce Weight Based Shipping
9. Order Delivery Date Pro for WooCommerce
10. WooCommerce Print Invoices & Packing lists
11. AfterShip Order Tracking and Shipment Notifications for WooCommerce

ELEX WooCommerce Shipping Calculator, Purchase Shipping Label & Tracking for Customers

This advanced premium plugin will help you to feature a shipping calculator on a dedicated page in your WooCommerce store, which will be very helpful for your customers to calculate shipping rates and choose a feasible shipping rate based on the cost and delivery days. In addition to that, they can print the labels and get the tracking information in a couple of clicks. 

You can provide the shipping services of FedEx, UPS, USPS, and Canada Post using your EasyPost API. Customers can enter the sender and receiver’s address and contact details, and create packages by entering their weight and dimensions. Using these data, this advanced plugin will calculate all available shipping services of selected carriers, from which they can choose one. Admin can set a handling charge and can add a percentage or fixed price adjustment on shipping carrier services for adding them on the cart total price that must be paid by the customers.

Price: Single site subscription plan starts at $79.

ELEX EasyPost (FedEx, UPS, Canada Post & USPS) Shipping & Label Printing Plugin for WooCommerce

This all-inclusive shipping plugin is the most efficient method of integrating the shipping rates of FedEx, USPS, Canada Post, and UPS into your WooCommerce Store. The ELEX EasyPost Shipping Method Plugin allows you to automate shipping using EasyPost APIs by displaying shipping rates on the cart/checkout page, paying postage, and printing labels all from within your WooCommerce Store.

With the help of this plugin, you can show real-time shipping rates and estimated delivery dates to your customers when they add products to their cart and on the checkout page. The plugin fetches UPS, USPS, Canada Post, or FedEx postage prices from your EasyPost account based on product weight, box dimensions, shipment location, and other factors. It also enables you to generate and print shipping labels and track orders from the WooCommerce Order Admin page. 

Price: Single site subscription plan starts at $69

Note: EasyPost offers limited free services, exceeding which they charge a membership fee. To know more: EasyPost pricing

WooCommerce Advanced Shipping

With this premium shipping plugin, you can set multiple shipping rates by configuring different conditions based on the total amount on the shopping cart, weight and dimensions of packages, shipping country, state, and so on. You can create unlimited shipping methods and assign shipping prices that must be only applicable for specific user roles.

Instead of using third-party shipping rates, you can create your own table rate shipping based on the conditions you have created. The main advantage of using this plugin is its user-friendly interface. Even though you do not have much experience in handling the technical side, you can configure the conditions and set shipping rates with its simple dashboard.

Price: Starts at $18.

WooCommerce ShipStation Gateway

This free shipping plugin will definitely help you save time by importing and exporting orders. You can also use this plugin for batch label creations and even to communicate with the customers!

An advantage of this plugin is its high flexibility to work well for small to large scale businesses. You can print the labels wirelessly and connect with your printer remotely using the ShipStation Connect option. You can access all these features using its mobile app (available for both Android and iOS), which is totally free.

Table Rate for WooCommerce by Flexible Shipping – Pro

This WooCommerce shipping plugin allows you to create shipping rules based on different parameters like quantity, weight, and so on. You can also create shipping methods with unique names in this plugin. Also, you can use its hide shipping method option, if you require to hide specific shipping methods based on certain conditions.

Additionally, you will be able to import or export all your shipping methods and can edit them from a spreadsheet as per requirements. Admin can set a handling fee, which will be charged along with the shipping rate from customers.

Price: Single site subscription starts at $79.

Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce

This free WooCommerce shipment tracking plugin helps you configure an option for your customers to easily track their shipments. This plugin supports 250+ default shipping carriers by providing their tracking information. If you could not find a shipment carrier you are using in your store in the default list, you can add it seamlessly. 

The tracking information will be passed to the customers along with the order completion email, which will also include details such as the shipping carrier name and the date. You can sync your shipping carriers to this plugin, which will automatically update the tracking status for the customers. In addition to these, you can customize the template, layout, font, etc., of the order emails.

WooCommerce Conditional Shipping Pro

This advanced plugin is used to restrict all available shipping methods in your store using various conditions for setting shipping costs. Rather than adding custom shipping methods, it works on the existing default shipping methods like free, flat rate, and local pickup along with the other shipping methods from third-party plugins.

So, it will work smoothly on your store as it focuses only on the available shipping methods rather than creating new shipping methods which may lead to compatibility issues with the shipping zones in your store. You can configure the conditions based on package volume, product volume, cart subtotal, etc., for increasing, decreasing, or setting a new value to the shipping cost. You can also set a ‘no shipping methods available’ message for certain conditions.

Price: Starts at $49 for the single-site subscription.

WooCommerce Weight Based Shipping

As the name suggests, this plugin allows you to set shipping rates based on product weights by setting conditions. You can set these conditions based on weight, order destinations, and subtotal ranges. It supports all shipping zones in WooCommerce which will not cause any compatibility issues.

You can also set shipping costs based on specific shipping classes with this plugin. Also, you can even set free shipping for orders reaching a minimum threshold price.

Price: Starts at $19.

Order Delivery Date Pro for WooCommerce

This advanced WooCommerce shipping plugin will help you to manage the delivery and local pickup of your products. You can create delivery schedules by shipping methods, classes, locations, and specific products, etc. Admin can set a delivery date and time slot which will be visible for the customers in the front end. 

You can set the delivery days, working days, and holidays seamlessly for the accurate configuration of delivery date and time. And, with this plugin, the admin or customers can seamlessly reschedule the delivery date and time slot. In addition to these, you can send reminders to your customers before delivery.

Price: Starts at $99.

WooCommerce Print Invoices & Packing lists

This plugin allows you to seamlessly manage the order invoices in your store. You can individually or print order documents in bulk directly from the WooCommerce Orders page. The customers can access the invoices from the ‘My Accounts’ page of your store.

You can customize the format of your invoice template and format with this plugin. You can print or email the invoices of multiple orders at a time for seamlessly processing bulk orders together. You can also configure it to automatically email packing lists to store admin.

Price: Starts at $79.

AfterShip Order Tracking and Shipment Notifications for WooCommerce

This free WooCommerce shipping plugin will help you get tracking details of multiple orders in your store with a couple of clicks. It supports 800+ shipping carriers including DHL, UPS, USPS, etc. This plugin mainly focuses on customer’s post-purchase experience which will help you to increase the additional purchases in the future.

It will automatically import all tracking numbers, so you can access them all in one place. Admin can filter the shipments based on the date, destinations, statuses, etc. Furthermore, you can generate a tracking page for each individual order, which will be redirected to your store’s page rather than third-party carriers’ pages. There is also an option to customize the look and feel of the tracking page on your store.

Conclusion

I hope this article helped you to get an idea of essential WooCommerce shipping plugins, which will make your shipping and fulfillment experience smooth and efficient. Go through their product pages and get a quick demo, if available to get a detailed understanding of a plugin before choosing it for your store.