Did you know that there are more than 500 hours of videos uploaded on YouTube every single minute worldwide? For every content creator or video marketer, this means one thing: it’s a battle for eyeballs out there. 

Coming up with brilliant video content is one thing, making it visible to your target viewers is another. No matter how original and intriguing your video content is when no one finds it– let alone watches it, then what’s the point?

When we talk about making videos that stand out, we talk about video optimization. Most video marketing checklist includes optimization to make sure that all those efforts you’ve spent in the production are paid off.

SEO is a practice for text-based content, multimedia content like video needs to be optimized for search too. In this case, video SEO is strongly linked with YouTube videos– as the platform is the biggest, most popular video-sharing platform, even the largest search engine worldwide. But, of course, you can make videos on other platforms (social media platforms, landing pages, ads) more SEO friendly.

The essence of video SEO itself is not much different from regular SEO. But, since the content format is pretty much different, there are some SEO best practices that you need to consider doing for the more dynamic content format.

Now, the burning question is, “How’s to make my videos more visible on search engines?” Let’s find out!

Video SEO Tip #1. Choose Keyword-Based Video Titles and Descriptions

Search engine crawlers are smart. They understand the language of your content and try to match the keywords properly. Just like regular SEO practices, keywords matter in video SEO practices. Choosing keyword-based video titles and adding the keyword to the video description help search engines understand what the video is all bout– making it much easier for them to decide your video ranking.

A great video title doesn’t only include a keyword, it also:

• Describes your video accurately.
• Use the words and phrases that users enter in search engines to find content like yours.

The handiest way to find the right keyword for your video is through YouTube suggestions. Type a word or phrase relevant to your industry in the search bar and see the suggestions that YouTube offers. Keyword research tools like vidIQ, Tubics, Tuberanker can also help you find potential keywords for the video.

Video SEO Tip #2. Create Customized Thumbnail Images

Along with your video titles, thumbnails are the first thing that your target viewers will see when they find a video. YouTube will present random 3 screenshots to choose from– it also allows you to select a shot of a different moment in the video or upload your own image.

Coming up with your own image can make your videos more engaging to click. This, in return, will increase click-through rates that can tell the algorithm that your video is valuable and worth watching. You can use image-editing software like Canva or Pixlr to create your customized thumbnail.

Here are some quick tips for creating clickable customized video thumbnails.

• Use high-quality images with contrasting colors to capture attention.
• Use a 16:9 aspect ratio.
• Use a consistent design/layout.
• Include a shorter version of your video title.

Video SEO Tip #3. Insert Video Transcripts

Transcripts are usually found in articles and blog posts. They are basically the words that appear below or next to the images. Since search engine bots cannot watch videos, they rely on accompanying text data to index them properly. 

By adding a video transcript, you make it much easier for search engines crawler to “read” what your video is all about. Not to mention you also make the video more accessible for viewers with hearing problems.

You can add transcripts in your videos using different software like TTNMaker or Rev. All you need to do is add the text inside the video’s description and tags and assign the transcript to that text.

Video SEO Tip #4. Make Videos Mobile-Friendly

According to the statistics, videos are 1.5 times watched on mobile devices. Also, 92% of videos watched via mobile are shared with other users. Not to mention that more than 70% of YouTube watch time comes from mobile devices. These staggering numbers show that making videos mobile-friendly is essential.

Mobile-friendly videos are videos that can be accessed by mobile users without any hassle; they have no problem with visuals, they can understand the audio, and they can see any texts that are included. It’s pretty much about making your videos fit in the smaller screen size of the given device.

Here are two of the most important tips to make your videos more accessible for mobile users:

• Include closed captions (CC) to keep the viewer engaged regardless of their access to audio.
• Use large text so that viewers can clearly read your message. 

Video SEO Tip #5. Pay Attention to the Video File Name

It’s very important that you choose the right file name for your videos. The file name is the name that appears in your computer/device’s directory structure. Some of us are getting so used to naming the video with random titles, like “video 001-edit” or even longer, more “specific” ones like “video_project_35_revised_2.” How does it have something to do with video optimization, though?

A descriptive video file name helps boost the relevance signal that a video is relevant to the user’s query. It helps the search engine to determine that the video is an appropriate match for a given search query. 

Therefore, it’s better to name your videos with words that describe the image. For example, if you create a cryptocurrency video, try to rename your file to something like “best_cryptocurrency_to_invest_in.” You can also use the keyword for the name of the video file.

Video SEO Tip #6. Make the Video Shareable

Remember when you were told that the most important thing for a video is its reach? If a user can’t watch your video on a platform or device that it’s available on, then it’s basically useless for them. 

That’s why you need to make sure that your video is accessible on all major platforms. The more you share the video across different platforms, the higher your chances to expand your reach and boosting click-through rates. 

The most common platforms that your videos are going to be played on are YouTube, Facebook, and Dailymotion.

Wrapping Up

Video SEO might sound like a backbreaking job, but it’s a powerful way to make your video content stand out from the sea of content. Well-optimized videos do not only bring you a good ranking– and your company gains not only visibility but also the authority in your business segment.

The post Video SEO: Maximizing Your Visibility On Search appeared first on noupe.

You might have heard a lot about these two terms- B2B and SaaS. With the SaaS industry already exploding, 80% of businesses plan to switch completely to SaaS by 2025.

While the definition of these two terms may be known individually, less we know is the power of B2B SaaS.

B2B SaaS as evident is a business that offers software like applications, add-ons and plugins to other companies as a service. This form of service has been in existence for more than a decade now and companies like IBM, Microsoft, Google and Adobe are the big players.

But, what do these companies have in common? The short answer is-  Amazing Content!

Irrespective of the company size or the services they provide, these prominent B2B saas providers have a dedicated blog page, tutorials, helpdesks and web content online.

Hence, a B2B SaaS business necessarily needs content marketing to thrive in a competitive space and build its presence online.

In this blog, we will be sharing everything you need to know about B2B SaaS content marketing and its benefits along with the steps to build an effective B2B SaaS content marketing strategy.

What is B2B SaaS Content Marketing?

B2B SaaS content marketing is a form of inbound marketing that the business would need to solve problems, answer the reader’s questions and provide every nitty-gritty detail about its product or services. 

Thus, B2B content marketing would deliver the right content to the right audience at the right time.

Content in any form such as blog posts, ebooks, emails, whitepapers or web content will surely serve your audience but only at the right time.

Throughout your sales funnel, you would need to educate your audience with enticing content that serves the purpose of each stage. 

The thing with SaaS content marketing is that it is highly competitive. It is all about creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to not only gain a new audience but also retain the existing ones for a long time.

That’s what Nectafy did with one of its clients. This content marketing strategy saw a staggering 647% growth for one of its clients by merely using the content marketing efforts.

Hence, a well-devised B2B SaaS content marketing strategy is a lucrative tool in gaining the right audience and achieving better conversions.

Importance of B2B SaaS Content Marketing Strategy

When it comes to B2B, 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing in their strategy.

Content is King and it always will be.

Imagine yourself as a business that is willing to buy a product from a B2B SaaS provider.

What would you rather prefer- a forced selling pitch right from the beginning or educating your client about the benefits and problems it solves?

That’s what a B2B SaaS content marketing strategy guides you into. This strategic approach is of utter importance in targeting the right audience.

Here is how a content marketing strategy can help B2B SaaS providers:

Authority Building

You can’t survive in a competitive industry until you have built trust or authority over your customers.

And when it comes to B2B, the buyers are even more selective about the brands they are working with. This can only be achieved with the help of content marketing.

Building authority for your brand may require some time and most importantly, a well-executed content marketing plan.

Brand Awareness 

Content marketing is key to driving brand awareness. Let’s say, you own a content platform for SaaS with a non-branded domain name.

Now, how would you drive organic traffic to your website?

Using the mindful Google search queries such as ‘SaaS content platform’ or ‘Best Content platform for SaaS businesses’ may drive the right type of audience to your blog.

Plus, you get to recall your brand. The more you get noticed, the more people will remember your brand.

Educate your audience

The Top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) always involves educating your audiences and solving their pain points. Even down the funnel, you would need to consistently educate your audiences about the product features and benefits.

That said, content marketing plays a huge role right from the research stage till the decision stage.

In fact, 49% of buyers consider content as paramount during their purchase decision.

Drive traffic to your website

The more you create content that revolves around your industry, the more you can generate traffic that is trusted and relevant. 

Content marketing is a major contributor to your website traffic. By posting the relevant content along with the mindful SEO techniques, you can attract readers who are readily looking for the answers.

Now that you have seen the importance of a B2B content marketing strategy, a lot of planning and research goes into creating this.

How to build a B2B SaaS Content Marketing Strategy 

To meet your SaaS content marketing goals and to hook your audience, you need a robust content marketing strategy.

Obviously, it may take some time to hit the nail but with a strategy in place, you can be sure that you are going in the right direction.

To keep it short and concise, we have divided the process into five simple steps:

• Decide Your Goals
• Know Your Targeted Audience
• Create Content for Each phase of Buyer Journey
• Develop a Promotional Strategy
• Track and Optimize

The guide below explains each of the above steps in detail and the best practices to achieve exemplary results.

Decide your goals 

The first and foremost thing is goal setting. What do you want to achieve using content marketing?

The problem is that there are a lot of content marketing objectives to achieve and targeting all of them at once can be overwhelming.

From acquiring new customers to email subscribers or a free trial registration to customer retention, content marketing goals may vary for different businesses and at different times.

Goal setting gives your content marketing strategy a kickstart and a direction to plan ahead. Breaking down your end goals into small and achievable goals ensures that the content efforts are in the right direction.

Most content marketers consider the macro-goals as:

• Create brand awareness
• Educate your customers
• Build credibility and trust
• Lead generation

Know your target audience

Everything starts from the audience. Since your purpose is to sell it to the customers, you need content that empathizes with your audience.

The starting point for identifying your target audience is creating a checklist of questions like:

• What problems can you solve for the SaaS provider?
• What industry are they in?
• Which social media platform are they most active on?
• What trade shows do they follow?
• What type of content would they prefer?
• How large is their customer base?

By adding more questions to the checklist, you can come closer to identifying your buyer persona.

While you can use the market research tools for conducting audience research, search engines like Google or social media can be a free resource for identifying the target audience.

In some cases, you might have more than one type of buyer persona. Hence, the best practice is to create a unique profile for each of your ideal buyers.

Create Content for Each Phase of Buyer Journey

To get more qualified leads and better traffic, you need to create different content at different stages of the buyer journey.

Refer to the below infographic by Digital Insights.

While this may not be always imperative, a marketing funnel should necessarily be injected with content at all stages of the buyer journey.

One of the major perks of creating content at each stage of the buyer’s journey is that it helps in identifying qualified leads. If your target audience can relate to what you offer, they can proceed further.

On the other hand, if they find that what you offer isn’t a good fit, they can leave at the early stage. This is actually a good thing as you may only have qualified leads in your basket.

Most marketers divide the buyer’s journey into three phases:

• Awareness Stage: In this stage, the audience needs to be educated more about their pain points and aware of the potential consequences.
• Consideration Stage: In this stage of the buyer’s journey, the prospect might have more than one option to consider. They haven’t made a buying decision yet but are looking for the best possible solutions to solve their problems.
• Decision Stage: This is the buying stage. To turn your prospect into a customer, you need to build more trust and tell them why choosing your brand would be a win. Use social proof, customer testimonials and video reviews to build trust and close the sales.

Develop a Promotional Strategy

While Search Engine Optimization may get you a lot of traffic, you will still miss a large portion of traffic or resultant leads if you are turning a blind eye to other promotional strategies.

Besides the organic traffic, you can leverage social media, email marketing and paid advertising to boost content promotion and attract more qualified leads.

According to Hootsuite, 80% of leads that are generated from social media come from Linkedin. Thus, LinkedIn is a goldmine for grabbing your customer’s eyeballs.

To get even more personal with your customers, you can leverage the power of email marketing. Though traditional, 93% of B2B email marketers still use email to distribute their content.

Thus, a cross-platform publishing strategy can be significant in boosting engagement and driving qualified traffic.

Track and Optimize 

The last step is where you revisit the goals that you have created. Right from the beginning to the end, you need measurable data on what content works best and what are your potential target audiences.

By analyzing the performance of your content marketing efforts, you can evaluate and optimize the buyer journey wherever necessary.

The best way is to set up a report using an analytics platform. By doing this,  you can set up the desired KPIs and review the results of your campaigns.

A web analytics platform can track various metrics like page views, conversions, bounce rate, time on page and others.

Finally, you can also find the best performing content and what distribution channels work best.

Conclusion

Content marketing is undeniably one of the cornerstones for B2B SaaS providers. Use content marketing as a messaging platform to distribute and deliver the content to those that need it the most.

 By following the above-listed B2B SaaS content marketing strategies, you can fill in the potential gap between your audience and your brand. Additionally, content marketing contributes to increased brand loyalty, maximized lead acquisition and higher conversions.

Hope you have liked our actionable step by step guide to build an effective B2B SaaS content marketing strategy.

The post B2B SaaS Content Marketing appeared first on noupe.

Industries have one focus alone- to deliver intuitive user experiences. This is why it becomes crucial to focus on enhancing the visual appearance, bringing the work of the UX designer into prime consideration. They work towards designing the interface in the best way possible.

Here we are not going to discuss the roles and responsibilities of a UX designer though! Despite these being quite important, here the bigger focus would be on understanding if UX design is limited to apps that are digital products?

To understand this read further.

Is UX UI Design Services Limited to Digital Products Only?

The answer is no. Despite the sole focus of UX UI design services being the digital realm itself, they also lay prominence on voice gesture, light, etc.

Hence, as a business finds a designer, they also look at their portfolio. This includes their past projects across multiple domains and industries.

All this helps the business to understand if user experience outside the online is considered during UI UX design and development.

Now we know what the business wishes to understand. It is equally important to understand the thought process of a designer when they embrace UX UI design services for their non-digital products.

Tactics Adopted during UX Development to Build Non-Digital Products

Have a look at this image below:

In the image, you can observe three elements of a product design which include-

• Process Design
• System Design
• Interface Design

It is in fact extremely important to understand these elements before you go on to ideate the strategies. This aids in delivering a unique experience to users, especially while interacting with an app.

System Design

System design refers to creating a balance between the business and customer needs. This supports in gaining an insight into the price to be set for the product.

Process Design

This refers to ideating the steps that would go into fulfilling a particular order or achieving a goal while using your website. This involves considering and placing focus on the customers’ as well as the business needs, side by side.

Interface Design

Last, this process involves creating a usable, and engaging interface. This will help customers remain engaged.

So now that you have understood the basic tactics adopted during product design; understand the steps to help your non-digital product stand out, particularly when implementing UX design services.

The above image gives an insight into what goes behind the creation of a product, especially during the design stage.

To understand this, it is recommended to follow these steps:

Steps to Follow During Product Creation in Design Stage

Conducting End-to-End Assessment

In this stage, the entire customer journey is placed in focus. This will help the designer gain insight into the overall end-to-end experience that users would feel while interacting with the product, so to speak.

This includes gaining clarity around these areas as well-

• Your end product.
• Reason/reasons why you want to build the product/products.
• Identifying the audience for whom you want to build the product/products.
• Understanding how successful your product would be.

These steps would make your solution stand out among competitors in the long run.

Create a Unison between Design and Business Goals

This is the next step. Here, it becomes critical to ensure that the goals you want to achieve through your design are in sync with your business objectives.

Try Understanding Real-World Insights

Understand the areas of concern for users. This will help you to build a solution that can seamlessly address them. Therefore, draw on data. This will provide you with real-world insights and understanding of whether or not you are successful in doing what you want to or not.

Along with these steps, keep these points in mind while performing UX design services for non-digital products. This includes avoiding some mistakes.

Here are the same listed below:

Prevent Feedback Deficit

Remember, feedback counts. It is extremely crucial to the survival of a business, especially if you are a designer. Hence, remember to give prominence to this area. In other words, remember to look at what users have to share about the product and its design. This will help you succeed in the best manner possible.

Keep Check on Errors – Place Focus on Checkout Page

Would you use a product whose design is poor? No, right? I thought so. Hence, make sure to keep the focus on errors as and when they happen. This is particularly within the checkout page. Doing so will ensure that you are aware of what is working, and what is not. Thereafter, it will help you locate the strategies that would make the design more appealing.

CTA – Careful Please

Though you may have multiple CTAs or Call to Action, remember to keep clarity. In other words, keep the hierarchy as transparent as possible. This will help users to take the necessary actions that they want. Therefore, place focus on the color and size of the design so that CTA becomes easy to achieve.

Simultaneously you need to remember some other points as well. This includes-

• Ensure the design can make task performance extremely simple.
• Work towards making the design such that it enhances productivity.
• Make communication transmission simple through your design.

On successful completion of these steps, you will be able to create a product that is in sync with the best UX practices. This will drive value for your non-digital product and streamline success in the best manner possible. Simultaneously, it will build a good customer base too.

Ending Words – Focus on Design in Your Non-Digital Product and See the Magic

Design is everything. This is if you want the user experience to be pleasant. Therefore, it becomes necessary to ensure you keep a minimalist design focusing on adding minimal content. This will help you capture the maximum number of users for your product and maximize ROI.

Hence, while ideating a strategy for your non-digital product, focus on the meaning of product design first, and understand the strategies to help the design stand out and the product gain a wider target audience.
Especially when you embrace mobile app development, if you know the techniques to deliver the best-quality UX design services for non-digital products, you can include the same strategies in your app building strategies to build a high-quality app that is intuitive and visually appealing both at the same time.

The post Implement UX Design Services for Non-Digital Products – How to Do It? appeared first on noupe.

Since the UK left the European Union (EU) on the 31st of January 2020, there have been a number of changes. Most notably, the rights and routes for international workers seeking to live and work in the UK.

After a period of uncertainty for overseas workers, the introduction of the Global Business Mobility Visa in Spring 2022 is set to offer opportunities to a number of professionals, including website designers. This is also great news for businesses in the UK looking for diverse workers with a range of talent coming from abroad.

Let’s look at more detail…

How Brexit Affected Foreign Workers in the UK

As Brexit negotiations dragged on, a lot of overseas workers, particularly those from EU countries, faced great uncertainty. When it came to their permission to live and work in the UK, everything was thrown into the air.  

As a result, many skilled and valuable workers chose to leave the UK, even before the Brexit agreement was signed in January 2020.  A lot of these workers subsequently chose to settle in other countries and have since showed reluctance to return to the UK. 

The Global Business Mobility Visa is designed to solve a number of problems, including making it easier for foreign nationals to return to the UK. This is needed in order to help fill job gaps as well as boosting commerce in the country.  

Skilled and experienced website designers will find that they are extremely well placed to take advantage of these new schemes as the minimum salary requirements for the visas will fall well within what they can expect to earn in a website design role in the UK. So, what does this new scheme entail? 

What is the Global Business Mobility Visa?

The Global Business Mobility Visa, which opened to applicants on the 11th of April 2022, is designed to provide sponsored routes for overseas businesses to operate within the United Kingdom.  

The scheme also offers the opportunity for staff to be transferred to the UK for the purposes of establishing a business. 

Under this one scheme, there are five visa types that allow you to do business in the UK and, these are: 

1. Senior / Specialist Worker Visa

This temporary visa, which closed to new applicants on the 11th of April, allows specialist workers and senior managers to gain permission to complete a professional assignment in the UK.  

Under this visa, workers are required to have a valid sponsorship certificate and, will need to have secured work which pays a minimum of £42,000 per annum. While sponsorship and salary are obligatory terms, there is no English language requirement with this kind of visa. 

2. Graduate Trainee Visa

This kind of visa is open to graduates who are currently working for a company overseas which has links to the United Kingdom and is a work placement scheme. Hopeful applicants will need to have sponsorship with a UK business and will need to have secured employment which pays a salary of £23,100 per annum or above. 

As with the Specialist Worker Visa, applicants will not need to prove that they have English language skills in order to be successful. 

3. UK Expansion Worker Visa

The UK Expansion Worker Visa is created to allow senior and specialist employees to temporarily live and work in the United Kingdom in order to expand an existing overseas business (see, it’s not just a clever name!).  

The criteria for this type of visa involves having current employment with an overseas company which has links to the UK, a certificate of sponsorship and a salary of at least £42,000 per year.  

This visa, which grants a stay of up to two years, does not require applicants to fulfil an English language requirement. 

4. Secondment Worker Visa

Overseas employees who wish to be seconded to the UK on a temporary basis will be granted this visa on presentation of a certificate of sponsorship as well as being able to demonstrate a minimum level of skill.  

Applicants are not, however, subject to any English language requirement. 

5. Service Supplier Visa

This final type of visa is one which offers temporary access to the UK in order to provide contractual services. It can also include self-employed professionals. 

This visa may be granted on the basis that the individual works for an overseas company which does, or will, provide services to a UK company or sponsor.  

Applicants must have a contract with an overseas service provider and a valid sponsorship certificate. Although candidates will need to satisfy a requirement of nationality, no such limits apply on earnings or English language. 

How Do This New Scheme Apply to Web Designers?

Website designers are highly skilled individuals who are tasked with building websites for businesses or individuals. There are different aspects of this that include graphic design, user interface design, coding, user experience and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).  

When the pandemic sent everybody home in 2020, the UK experienced a surge in demand for the services of website developers and designers and the industry struggled to cope due to a lack of skilled professionals.

The Global Business Mobility Visa will present an opportunity for overseas website designers to move to the UK to fill this gap. 

Overseas website designers may take advantage of the new scheme in a couple of ways including: 

Post Study Work Opportunities in the UK 

This route would allow an overseas website designer to work in the UK for a limited time as long as they:

• Are a university graduate
• Are currently working for a company overseas which has links to the UK 
• Has secure UK employment with a salary of £23,100 or above.  

This allows the designer to gain experience of working in the UK for up to five years (though the intra-company route). Web design professionals who choose this route may, if successful, would be able at the end of the five years, to apply for an extension or even permanent residency. 

Eligibility for the Senior or Specialist Worker Visa 

In some instances, foreign web designers may be eligible for a senior or specialist worker visa. However, this will only be possible if they are able to secure a certificate of sponsorship, along with work which pays at least £42,000 per year (the average salary for a website design in the UK is £33,647).  

Anybody looking to enter the UK on a senior or specialist worker visa needs to be aware that they will not be allowed to work in jobs which are lower skilled or carry out supplementary work, as they would have been able to do under the new regime. 

Time to Establish a Business in the UK

While the Global Business Mobility Visa scheme is one which imposes a timeframe (usually up to five years), it opens up opportunities for businesses and individuals.  

Due to the nature of the work, web design work can be performed remotely from anywhere in the world. A short amount of time to complete an expansion or to establish a business in the UK can benefit the company and help create a UK presence without having to stay permanently.  

Availability to Additional New Scale-Up Visa

An additional scheme available to overseas web designers may be that of the New Scale-Up Visa. This option is available to fast growing startup businesses and allows the UK access to top overseas talent.  

UK businesses which have 10 or more employees, and which has seen a growth in employment rate of at least 20% over the last three years as well as being registered with HMRC.  

Visa applicants are subject to a number of conditions including skills and experience, English language skills and a job offer which pays at least £33,000 per annum. This could prove to be a great solution for overseas website designers looking to spend time in the UK. 

Global Business Mobility Visa set to welcome new possibilities…

While it’s important to note that the visa schemes mentioned in this article will not guarantee settlement or permanent residence in the UK, it does open up a number of possibilities.  

For example, an individual who is living and working in the UK under the Graduate Trainee Visa may, at the end of his or her term, apply to switch to a difference visa scheme such as the Senior or Specialist Worker Visa.  

This may allow them to stay in the UK for a further one to five years depending on their eligibility.  

Now that applications for these visa schemes have closed, the Home Office is working hard to process them. If the scheme is successful, the hope is that new applications will be opened for 2023

Please be advised that this article is for general informational purposes only, and should not be used as a substitute for advice from a trained immigration professional. Be sure to consult an immigration professional or solicitor if you’re seeking advice about moving abroad. We are not liable for risks or issues associated with using or acting upon the information on this site.

The post How the Global Business Mobility Visa Can Benefit Web Designers Coming to the UK appeared first on noupe.

QR codes are funny, right? We love them, then hate them, then love them again. Anyways, they’ve lately been popping up again and it got me thinking about how they’re made. There are like a gazillion QR code generators out there, but say it’s something you need to do on your own website. This package can do that. But it’s also weighs in at a hefty 180 KB for everything it needs to generate stuff. You wouldn’t want to serve all that along with the rest of your scripts.

Now, I’m relatively new to the concept of cloud functions, but I hear that’s the bee’s knees for something just like this. That way, the function lives somewhere on a server that can be called when it’s needed. Sorta like a little API to run the function.

Some hosts offer some sort of cloud function feature. DigitalOcean happens to be one of them! And, like Droplets, functions are pretty easy to deploy.

Create a functions folder locally

DigitalOcean has a CLI that with a command that’ll scaffold things for us, so cd wherever you want to set things up and run:

doctl serverless init --language js qr-generator

Notice the language is explicitly declared. DigitalOcean functions also support PHP and Python.

We get a nice clean project called qr-generator with a /packages folder that holds all the project’s functions. There’s a sample function in there, but we can overlook it for now and create a qr folder right next to it:

That folder is where both the qrcode package and our qr.js function are going to live. So, let’s cd into packages/sample/qr and install the package:

npm install --save qrcode

Now we can write the function in a new qr.js file:

const qrcode = require('qrcode')

exports.main = (args) => {
  return qrcode.toDataURL(args.text).then(res => ({
    headers:  { 'content-type': 'text/html; charset=UTF-8' },
    body: args.img == undefined ? res : `<img src="${res}">`
  }))
}

if (process.env.TEST) exports.main({text:"hello"}).then(console.log)

All that’s doing is requiring the the qrcode package and exporting a function that basically generates an tag with the a base64 PNG for the source. We can even test it out in the terminal:

doctl serverless functions invoke sample/qr -p "text:css-tricks.com"

Check the config file

There is one extra step we need here. When the project was scaffolded, we got this little project.yml file and it configures the function with some information about it. This is what’s in there by default:

targetNamespace: ''
parameters: {}
packages:
  - name: sample
    environment: {}
    parameters: {}
    annotations: {}
    actions:
      - name: hello
        binary: false
        main: ''
        runtime: 'nodejs:default'
        web: true
        parameters: {}
        environment: {}
        annotations: {}
        limits: {}

See those highlighted lines? The packages: name property is where in the packages folder the function lives, which is a folder called sample in this case. The actions/ name property is the name of the function itself, which is the name of the file. It’s hello by default when we spin up the project, but we named ours qr.js, so we oughta change that line from hello to qr before moving on.

Deploy the function

We can do it straight from the command line! First, we connect to the DigitalOcean sandbox environment so we have a live URL for testing:

## You will need an DO API key handy
doctl sandbox connect

Now we can deploy the function:

doctl sandbox deploy qr-generator

Once deployed, we can access the function at a URL. What’s the URL? There’s a command for that:

doctl sbx fn get sample/qr --url
https://faas-nyc1-2ef2e6cc.doserverless.co/api/v1/web/fn-10a937cb-1f12-427b-aadd-f43d0b08d64a/sample/qr

Heck yeah! No more need to ship that entire package with the rest of the scripts! We can hit that URL and generate the QR code from there.

Demo

We fetch the API and that’s really all there is to it!

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Let’s Make a QR Code Generator With a Serverless Function! originally published on CSS-Tricks. You should get the newsletter.

Those of us who’ve been web developers more than a few years have probably written code using more than one JavaScript framework. With all the choices out there — React, Svelte, Vue, Angular, Solid — it’s all but inevitable. One of the more frustrating things we have to deal with when working across frameworks is re-creating all those low-level UI components: buttons, tabs, dropdowns, etc. What’s particularly frustrating is that we’ll typically have them defined in one framework, say React, but then need to rewrite them if we want to build something in Svelte. Or Vue. Or Solid. And so on.

Wouldn’t it be better if we could define these low-level UI components once, in a framework-agnostic way, and then re-use them between frameworks? Of course it would! And we can; web components are the way. This post will show you how.

As of now, the SSR story for web components is a bit lacking. Declarative shadow DOM (DSD) is how a web component is server-side rendered, but, as of this writing, it’s not integrated with your favorite application frameworks like Next, Remix or SvelteKit. If that’s a requirement for you, be sure to check the latest status of DSD. But otherwise, if SSR isn’t something you’re using, read on.

First, some context

Web Components are essentially HTML elements that you define yourself, like or whatever, from the ground up. They’re covered all over here at CSS-Tricks (including an extensive series by Caleb Williams and one by John Rhea) but we’ll briefly walk through the process. Essentially, you define a JavaScript class, inherit it from HTMLElement, and then define whatever properties, attributes and styles the web component has and, of course, the markup it will ultimately render to your users.

Being able to define custom HTML elements that aren’t bound to any particular component is exciting. But this freedom is also a limitation. Existing independently of any JavaScript framework means you can’t really interact with those JavaScript frameworks. Think of a React component which fetches some data and then renders some other React component, passing along the data. This wouldn’t really work as a web component, since a web component doesn’t know how to render a React component.

Web components particularly excel as leaf components. Leaf components are the last thing to be rendered in a component tree. These are the components which receive some props, and render some UI. These are not the components sitting in the middle of your component tree, passing data along, setting context, etc. — just pure pieces of UI that will look the same, no matter which JavaScript framework is powering the rest of the app.

The web component we’re building

Rather than build something boring (and common), like a button, let’s build something a little bit different. In my last post we looked at using blurry image previews to prevent content reflow, and provide a decent UI for users while our images load. We looked at base64 encoding a blurry, degraded versions of our images, and showing that in our UI while the real image loaded. We also looked at generating incredibly compact, blurry previews using a tool called Blurhash.

That post showed you how to generate those previews and use them in a React project. This post will show you how to use those previews from a web component so they can be used by any JavaScript framework.

But we need to walk before we can run, so we’ll walk through something trivial and silly first to see exactly how web components work.

Everything in this post will build vanilla web components without any tooling. That means the code will have a bit of boilerplate, but should be relatively easy to follow. Tools like Lit or Stencil are designed for building web components and can be used to remove much of this boilerplate. I urge you to check them out! But for this post, I’ll prefer a little more boilerplate in exchange for not having to introduce and teach another dependency.

A simple counter component

Let’s build the classic “Hello World” of JavaScript components: a counter. We’ll render a value, and a button that increments that value. Simple and boring, but it’ll let us look at the simplest possible web component.

In order to build a web component, the first step is to make a JavaScript class, which inherits from HTMLElement:

class Counter extends HTMLElement {}

The last step is to register the web component, but only if we haven’t registered it already:

if (!customElements.get("counter-wc")) {
  customElements.define("counter-wc", Counter);
}

And, of course, render it:

<counter-wc></counter-wc>

And everything in between is us making the web component do whatever we want it to. One common lifecycle method is connectedCallback, which fires when our web component is added to the DOM. We could use that method to render whatever content we’d like. Remember, this is a JS class inheriting from HTMLElement, which means our this value is the web component element itself, with all the normal DOM manipulation methods you already know and love.

At it’s most simple, we could do this:

class Counter extends HTMLElement {
  connectedCallback() {
    this.innerHTML = "<div style='color: green'>Hey</div>";
  }
}

if (!customElements.get("counter-wc")) {
  customElements.define("counter-wc", Counter);
}

…which will work just fine.

Adding real content

Let’s add some useful, interactive content. We need a to hold the current number value and a to increment the counter. For now, we’ll create this content in our constructor and append it when the web component is actually in the DOM:

constructor() {
  super();
  const container = document.createElement('div');

  this.valSpan = document.createElement('span');

  const increment = document.createElement('button');
  increment.innerText = 'Increment';
  increment.addEventListener('click', () => {
    this.#value = this.#currentValue + 1;
  });

  container.appendChild(this.valSpan);
  container.appendChild(document.createElement('br'));
  container.appendChild(increment);

  this.container = container;
}

connectedCallback() {
  this.appendChild(this.container);
  this.update();
}

If you’re really grossed out by the manual DOM creation, remember you can set innerHTML, or even create a template element once as a static property of your web component class, clone it, and insert the contents for new web component instances. There’s probably some other options I’m not thinking of, or you can always use a web component framework like Lit or Stencil. But for this post, we’ll continue to keep it simple.

Moving on, we need a settable JavaScript class property named value

#currentValue = 0;

set #value(val) {
  this.#currentValue = val;
  this.update();
}

It’s just a standard class property with a setter, along with a second property to hold the value. One fun twist is that I’m using the private JavaScript class property syntax for these values. That means nobody outside our web component can ever touch these values. This is standard JavaScript that’s supported in all modern browsers, so don’t be afraid to use it.

Or feel free to call it _value if you prefer. And, lastly, our update method:

update() {
  this.valSpan.innerText = this.#currentValue;
}

It works!

Obviously this is not code you’d want to maintain at scale. Here’s a full working example if you’d like a closer look. As I’ve said, tools like Lit and Stencil are designed to make this simpler.

Adding some more functionality

This post is not a deep dive into web components. We won’t cover all the APIs and lifecycles; we won’t even cover shadow roots or slots. There’s endless content on those topics. My goal here is to provide a decent enough introduction to spark some interest, along with some useful guidance on actually using web components with the popular JavaScript frameworks you already know and love.

To that end, let’s enhance our counter web component a bit. Let’s have it accept a color attribute, to control the color of the value that’s displayed. And let’s also have it accept an increment property, so consumers of this web component can have it increment by 2, 3, 4 at a time. And to drive these state changes, let’s use our new counter in a Svelte sandbox — we’ll get to React in a bit.

We’ll start with the same web component as before and add a color attribute. To configure our web component to accept and respond to an attribute, we add a static observedAttributes property that returns the attributes that our web component listens for.

static observedAttributes = ["color"];

With that in place, we can add a attributeChangedCallback lifecycle method, which will run whenever any of the attributes listed in observedAttributes are set, or updated.

attributeChangedCallback(name, oldValue, newValue) {
  if (name === "color") {
    this.update();
  }
}

Now we update our update method to actually use it:

update() {
  this.valSpan.innerText = this._currentValue;
  this.valSpan.style.color = this.getAttribute("color") || "black";
}

Lastly, let’s add our increment property:

increment = 1;

Simple and humble.

Using the counter component in Svelte

Let’s use what we just made. We’ll go into our Svelte app component and add something like this:

<script>
  let color = "red";
</script>

<style>
  main {
    text-align: center;
  }
</style>

<main>
  <select bind:value={color}>
    <option value="red">Red</option>
    <option value="green">Green</option>
    <option value="blue">Blue</option>
  </select>

  <counter-wc color={color}></counter-wc>
</main>

And it works! Our counter renders, increments, and the dropdown updates the color. As you can see, we render the color attribute in our Svelte template and, when the value changes, Svelte handles the legwork of calling setAttribute on our underlying web component instance. There’s nothing special here: this is the same thing it already does for the attributes of any HTML element.

Things get a little bit interesting with the increment prop. This is not an attribute on our web component; it’s a prop on the web component’s class. That means it needs to be set on the web component’s instance. Bear with me, as things will wind up much simpler in a bit.

First, we’ll add some variables to our Svelte component:

let increment = 1;
let wcInstance;

Our powerhouse of a counter component will let you increment by 1, or by 2:

<button on:click={() => increment = 1}>Increment 1</button>
<button on:click={() => increment = 2}>Increment 2</button>

But, in theory, we need to get the actual instance of our web component. This is the same thing we always do anytime we add a ref with React. With Svelte, it’s a simple bind:this directive:

<counter-wc bind:this={wcInstance} color={color}></counter-wc>

Now, in our Svelte template, we listen for changes to our component’s increment variable and set the underlying web component property.

$: {
  if (wcInstance) {
    wcInstance.increment = increment;
  }
}

You can test it out over at this live demo.

We obviously don’t want to do this for every web component or prop we need to manage. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just set increment right on our web component, in markup, like we normally do for component props, and have it, you know, just work? In other words, it’d be nice if we could delete all usages of wcInstance and use this simpler code instead:

<counter-wc increment={increment} color={color}></counter-wc>

It turns out we can. This code works; Svelte handles all that legwork for us. Check it out in this demo. This is standard behavior for pretty much all JavaScript frameworks.

So why did I show you the manual way of setting the web component’s prop? Two reasons: it’s useful to understand how these things work and, a moment ago, I said this works for “pretty much” all JavaScript frameworks. But there’s one framework which, maddeningly, does not support web component prop setting like we just saw.

React is a different beast

React. The most popular JavaScript framework on the planet does not support basic interop with web components. This is a well-known problem that’s unique to React. Interestingly, this is actually fixed in React’s experimental branch, but for some reason wasn’t merged into version 18. That said, we can still track the progress of it. And you can try this yourself with a live demo.

The solution, of course, is to use a ref, grab the web component instance, and manually set increment when that value changes. It looks like this:

import React, { useState, useRef, useEffect } from 'react';
import './counter-wc';

export default function App() {
  const [increment, setIncrement] = useState(1);
  const [color, setColor] = useState('red');
  const wcRef = useRef(null);

  useEffect(() => {
    wcRef.current.increment = increment;
  }, [increment]);

  return (
    <div>
      <div className="increment-container">
        <button onClick={() => setIncrement(1)}>Increment by 1</button>
        <button onClick={() => setIncrement(2)}>Increment by 2</button>
      </div>

      <select value={color} onChange={(e) => setColor(e.target.value)}>
        <option value="red">Red</option>
        <option value="green">Green</option>
        <option value="blue">Blue</option>
      </select>

      <counter-wc ref={wcRef} increment={increment} color={color}></counter-wc>
    </div>
  );
}

Live demo

As we discussed, coding this up manually for every web component property is simply not scalable. But all is not lost because we have a couple of options.

Option 1: Use attributes everywhere

We have attributes. If you clicked the React demo above, the increment prop wasn’t working, but the color correctly changed. Can’t we code everything with attributes? Sadly, no. Attribute values can only be strings. That’s good enough here, and we’d be able to get somewhat far with this approach. Numbers like increment can be converted to and from strings. We could even JSON stringify/parse objects. But eventually we’ll need to pass a function into a web component, and at that point we’d be out of options.

Option 2: Wrap it

There’s an old saying that you can solve any problem in computer science by adding a level of indirection (except the problem of too many levels of indirection). The code to set these props is pretty predictable and simple. What if we hide it in a library? The smart folks behind Lit have one solution. This library creates a new React component for you after you give it a web component, and list out the properties it needs. While clever, I’m not a fan of this approach.

Rather than have a one-to-one mapping of web components to manually-created React components, what I prefer is just one React component that we pass our web component tag name to (counter-wc in our case) — along with all the attributes and properties — and for this component to render our web component, add the ref, then figure out what is a prop and what is an attribute. That’s the ideal solution in my opinion. I don’t know of a library that does this, but it should be straightforward to create. Let’s give it a shot!

This is the usage we’re looking for:

<WcWrapper wcTag="counter-wc" increment={increment} color={color} />

wcTag is the web component tag name; the rest are the properties and attributes we want passed along.

Here’s what my implementation looks like:

import React, { createElement, useRef, useLayoutEffect, memo } from 'react';

const _WcWrapper = (props) => {
  const { wcTag, children, ...restProps } = props;
  const wcRef = useRef(null);

  useLayoutEffect(() => {
    const wc = wcRef.current;

    for (const [key, value] of Object.entries(restProps)) {
      if (key in wc) {
        if (wc[key] !== value) {
          wc[key] = value;
        }
      } else {
        if (wc.getAttribute(key) !== value) {
          wc.setAttribute(key, value);
        }
      }
    }
  });

  return createElement(wcTag, { ref: wcRef });
};

export const WcWrapper = memo(_WcWrapper);

The most interesting line is at the end:

return createElement(wcTag, { ref: wcRef });

This is how we create an element in React with a dynamic name. In fact, this is what React normally transpiles JSX into. All our divs are converted to createElement("div") calls. We don’t normally need to call this API directly but it’s there when we need it.

Beyond that, we want to run a layout effect and loop through every prop that we’ve passed to our component. We loop through all of them and check to see if it’s a property with an in check that checks the web component instance object as well as its prototype chain, which will catch any getters/setters that wind up on the class prototype. If no such property exists, it’s assumed to be an attribute. In either case, we only set it if the value has actually changed.

If you’re wondering why we use useLayoutEffect instead of useEffect, it’s because we want to immediately run these updates before our content is rendered. Also, note that we have no dependency array to our useLayoutEffect; this means we want to run this update on every render. This can be risky since React tends to re-render a lot. I ameliorate this by wrapping the whole thing in React.memo. This is essentially the modern version of React.PureComponent, which means the component will only re-render if any of its actual props have changed — and it checks whether that’s happened via a simple equality check.

The only risk here is that if you’re passing an object prop that you’re mutating directly without re-assigning, then you won’t see the updates. But this is highly discouraged, especially in the React community, so I wouldn’t worry about it.

Before moving on, I’d like to call out one last thing. You might not be happy with how the usage looks. Again, this component is used like this:

<WcWrapper wcTag="counter-wc" increment={increment} color={color} />

Specifically, you might not like passing the web component tag name to the component and prefer instead the @lit-labs/react package above, which creates a new individual React component for each web component. That’s totally fair and I’d encourage you to use whatever you’re most comfortable with. But for me, one advantage with this approach is that it’s easy to delete. If by some miracle React merges proper web component handling from their experimental branch into main tomorrow, you’d be able to change the above code from this:

<WcWrapper wcTag="counter-wc" increment={increment} color={color} />

…to this:

<counter-wc ref={wcRef} increment={increment} color={color} />

You could probably even write a single codemod to do that everywhere, and then delete altogether. Actually, scratch that: a global search and replace with a RegEx would probably work.

The implementation

I know, it seems like it took a journey to get here. If you recall, our original goal was to take the image preview code we looked at in my last post, and move it to a web component so it can be used in any JavaScript framework. React’s lack of proper interop added a lot of detail to the mix. But now that we have a decent handle on how to create a web component, and use it, the implementation will almost be anti-climactic.

I’ll drop the entire web component here and call out some of the interesting bits. If you’d like to see it in action, here’s a working demo. It’ll switch between my three favorite books on my three favorite programming languages. The URL for each book will be unique each time, so you can see the preview, though you’ll likely want to throttle things in your DevTools Network tab to really see things taking place.

View entire code

class BookCover extends HTMLElement {
  static observedAttributes = ['url'];

  attributeChangedCallback(name, oldValue, newValue) {
    if (name === 'url') {
      this.createMainImage(newValue);
    }
  }

  set preview(val) {
    this.previewEl = this.createPreview(val);
    this.render();
  }

  createPreview(val) {
    if (typeof val === 'string') {
      return base64Preview(val);
    } else {
      return blurHashPreview(val);
    }
  }

  createMainImage(url) {
    this.loaded = false;
    const img = document.createElement('img');
    img.alt = 'Book cover';
    img.addEventListener('load', () => {
      if (img === this.imageEl) {
        this.loaded = true;
        this.render();
      }
    });
    img.src = url;
    this.imageEl = img;
  }

  connectedCallback() {
    this.render();
  }

  render() {
    const elementMaybe = this.loaded ? this.imageEl : this.previewEl;
    syncSingleChild(this, elementMaybe);
  }
}

First, we register the attribute we’re interested in and react when it changes:

static observedAttributes = ['url'];

attributeChangedCallback(name, oldValue, newValue) {
  if (name === 'url') {
    this.createMainImage(newValue);
  }
}

This causes our image component to be created, which will show only when loaded:

createMainImage(url) {
  this.loaded = false;
  const img = document.createElement('img');
  img.alt = 'Book cover';
  img.addEventListener('load', () => {
    if (img === this.imageEl) {
      this.loaded = true;
      this.render();
    }
  });
  img.src = url;
  this.imageEl = img;
}

Next we have our preview property, which can either be our base64 preview string, or our blurhash packet:

set preview(val) {
  this.previewEl = this.createPreview(val);
  this.render();
}

createPreview(val) {
  if (typeof val === 'string') {
    return base64Preview(val);
  } else {
    return blurHashPreview(val);
  }
}

This defers to whichever helper function we need:

function base64Preview(val) {
  const img = document.createElement('img');
  img.src = val;
  return img;
}

function blurHashPreview(preview) {
  const canvasEl = document.createElement('canvas');
  const { w: width, h: height } = preview;

  canvasEl.width = width;
  canvasEl.height = height;

  const pixels = decode(preview.blurhash, width, height);
  const ctx = canvasEl.getContext('2d');
  const imageData = ctx.createImageData(width, height);
  imageData.data.set(pixels);
  ctx.putImageData(imageData, 0, 0);

  return canvasEl;
}

And, lastly, our render method:

connectedCallback() {
  this.render();
}

render() {
  const elementMaybe = this.loaded ? this.imageEl : this.previewEl;
  syncSingleChild(this, elementMaybe);
}

And a few helpers methods to tie everything together:

export function syncSingleChild(container, child) {
  const currentChild = container.firstElementChild;
  if (currentChild !== child) {
    clearContainer(container);
    if (child) {
      container.appendChild(child);
    }
  }
}

export function clearContainer(el) {
  let child;

  while ((child = el.firstElementChild)) {
    el.removeChild(child);
  }
}

It’s a little bit more boilerplate than we’d need if we build this in a framework, but the upside is that we can re-use this in any framework we’d like — although React will need a wrapper for now, as we discussed.

Odds and ends

I’ve already mentioned Lit’s React wrapper. But if you find yourself using Stencil, it actually supports a separate output pipeline just for React. And the good folks at Microsoft have also created something similar to Lit’s wrapper, attached to the Fast web component library.

As I mentioned, all frameworks not named React will handle setting web component properties for you. Just note that some have some special flavors of syntax. For example, with Solid.js, always assumes that value is a property, which you can override with an attr prefix, like .

Wrapping up

Web components are an interesting, often underused part of the web development landscape. They can help reduce your dependence on any single JavaScript framework by managing your UI, or “leaf” components. While creating these as web components — as opposed to Svelte or React components — won’t be as ergonomic, the upside is that they’ll be widely reusable.

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Building Interoperable Web Components That Even Work With React originally published on CSS-Tricks. You should get the newsletter.

Viral email marketing is just a small but most compelling part of viral marketing. Since viral content is anything people may want to share across their networks, the term is frequently used in social media contexts. 

It generally means the crowd spreads the news for you. As a result, viral marketing is advertising that expands by “word of mouth” or personal endorsement. Viral email marketing initiatives try to increase exposure and engagement by encouraging readers to forward the email/message or take some other comparable action.

In this post, we will talk about what is viral email marketing & show you 5 examples of successful viral email marketing so you get ideas for your own campaigns. 

What is Viral Email Marketing?

Viral email marketing is a type of email marketing that aims to get emails forwarded widely and swiftly — it can be via forwarding, sharing screenshots on social media, or asking friends to sign up for newsletters.

You can execute a viral email campaign by simply sharing an incredibly lucrative offer to your subscribers & incentivizing them to spread the word about it. It could be a sneak peek at a new service/product launch. Whatever it may be, viral marketing has the potential to be a very effective technique to grow awareness and revenue. 

Examples of Viral Email Marketing

Viral Email Marketing Campaign 1: Buzzfeed

According to studies, the hilarious content is more likely to go viral.

Of course, humor isn’t the only feeling that makes people want to share. The popularity of “false news” nowadays is primarily due to anger-fueled spreading.

We enjoy sharing our feelings with others who share our feelings. As a result, content that elicits an emotive response has social value. It reflects highly on you if you were the one who posted the meme that everyone is talking about.

Buzzfeed has taken what makes its web material so attractive and shareable and dispersed it via email in this example. By delivering their favored content straight to their subscriber’s inboxes, it became successful in keeping them engaged and laughing.

Viral Email Marketing Campaign 2: Mejuri

The majority of us enjoy a good deal and the one more thing we enjoy more than a good deal is the sense of being a part of an exclusive club!

Because it provides practical significance, the aforementioned email from jewelry designer Mejuri became viral. Getting a sneak peek at the sale items can allow you to purchase what you want at a lower price before everyone else.

The second reason why it became viral is that it has a social value or social currency. The concept of “social currency” makes people desire to be someone who benefits others. You value early access to sale items, and some of your friends will undoubtedly value it as well.

Furthermore, the email below provides an incentive to act quickly before the special rate is revealed to the general public.

Viral Email Marketing Campaign 3: Poncho

Since there is a lot of information online going head to head for our attention, you’ll have to always be creative to get past the “scroll on” instinct and into the domain of conscious thought.

Advertisers spend more time brainstorming concepts that they hope will pique the public’s curiosity and are encouraged to share them.

Poncho’s fully customized weather forecast is a terrific example of clever content that actually works in the mail setting. It’s amusing and individualized (as evidenced by the graph above…), and it forces you to give heed.

But why not simply post it on Facebook or other social media sites? Why should you use email?

It’s a matter of faith. Most of our Facebook friends, followers on Twitter, and other social media interactions are loose links. Many people have various perspectives about their email messages. We assume that if a friend or acquaintance takes the time to forward a specific email to us, it must be significant to them and useful to us.

As a result, whereas social shares boost exposure, email has a significant role in increasing conversion; as we all know, trust motivates people to take action.

Viral Email Marketing Campaign 4: Think With Google

If you really want your email subscribers to forward your emails, ask them to do so and simplify the procedure by including social sharing buttons in each email.

A post can easily become viral on the internet as well as in inboxes. Making the facts public is one fantastic approach to accomplish this. For example, you can talk about how many people have bought from you or what kind of results they’ve achieved by buying from you. People are more inclined to copy what everyone else is doing!

Have a look at the template below from Think with Google. It can be shared in a variety of ways:

A strong call to action to learn more about the company’s services. The newsletter can be shared online across various social media sites thanks to prominent social media links.

A link that is specifically designed to change your recipients into subscribers or best customers.

Viral Email Marketing Campaign 5: Wix 50% discount 

The email form Wix includes a timer that indicates for how long the discount will be accessible & it is created for a specific niche.

Viral email marketing tactics require personalization. The more niche-specific a message is, there are great chances that it will be forwarded to others with similar interests. The time ticking clock will let the readers know that this offer will soon be out of their hands.

Even if the readers are not  the one interested they will share it with someone in their circle who they think might find this offer helpful. To make it more attractive, they even list the perks buyers will be getting like free custom domain for a year. 

Bottom Line 

To sum up, viral email marketing enables businesses to effectively sell or tell people about their products by reaching out to customers who would otherwise ignore traditional email marketing campaigns. 

Viral email marketing allows companies to access new markets and perhaps extend their existing customers, all thanks to its expanded reach and ways of attracting the audience. So, all you need is a lucrative offer, a targeted audience, the right time, and a good email template to make your email marketing campaign go viral.

The post 5 Examples of Viral Email Marketing To Grow Your Audience appeared first on noupe.

Healthcare services inevitably go online. Therefore, healthcare establishments are looking for a secure and convenient way to deliver medical care to patients. In this light, medical website development is a beneficial option to invest in. This post will guide you through the mainstream medical web design trends, features to implement, and essential regulatory requirements to consider.

Design Trends in Medical Website Development

Web design trends keep renovating by leaps and bounds, battling for users’ attention. From motion UI to AI-powered chatbots and low-code development, the list goes on and on. However, simplicity and understandability are the core principles of medical website UI/UX design. Thus, instead of focusing on animations and yelling banners, pay attention to user-friendliness.

Responsive web design

People love solutions on the go. Responsive websites mean that the content of your medical platform will squish and release consistently as the device size changes. This will allow patients to interact with your site over smartphones or tablets easily.

Flat design

The flat design remains one of the common approaches when designing digital healthcare solutions. It works with elements that are very streamlined with a focus on clear, minimalist, and laconic design. This way, you get a visually appealing medical platform while simplifying the user path to the point. In addition, it gives your message a better chance to be understood clearly and the right way, which is vital for this type of website since it concerns people’s health.

Bright colors

Clean and clutter-free web design doesn’t mean that your medical site lacks vivid colors. Quite the contrary, using a bright and deep palette is another trend to watch out for in medical website design creation. Moreover, it’s vital to select corporate colors patients will associate your brand with. For instance, light blue colors trigger trust, while green ones indicate serenity and hope.

Huge typography

Large font sizes are not typical for healthcare websites since they’re designed in a more conservative way. However, following this course will allow you to stand your brand out and upstage contestants. For example, you can add a considerable tagline text instead of considering a specialist photo as the central site image.

Motion

As I mentioned earlier, conciseness is the heart of medical practice web design development. As a part of this statement line,  motion UI under healthcare site implies using micro animated elements (e.g., hover effects on a link, colorful animated icon) to spark patients’ interest without visual overloading.

Technical Side of Medical Platform Development

Now, let’s see what basic functionality should be integrated to create a patient-centric medical community. It’s highly recommended to start with implementing the MVP (must-have) features. This way, you’ll be able to test the idea validation without investing a tidy sum. Then, after identifying the weak spots of your medical startup (thanks to initial feedback), you can gradually scale up your website by incorporating more engaging and sophisticated functionality.  

Core Features for Medical Platform

Basic information

This feature enables customers to find your clinic location and contact details. Additionally, if your entities are spread geographically, the visitors should be allowed to opt for preferred whereabouts. Moreover, adding a forceful and effective CTA button will significantly contribute to increased leads.

Primary services 

Provide comprehensive information about medical care offered to assist patients in decision-making. If there is some specialized health delivery to focus on, ask your designers to highlight them to stick customers’ attention.

Medical stuff 

Before applying to a particular doctor, people tend to look through multiple sources to retrieve more information. Hence, ensure adding information about healthcare providers, such as specialization, qualification level, experience, education, appointment slots, etc. The more details you include about specialists, the more trustworthy they become for clients. Skipping this point, you risk losing a tidbit of your potential customers.

Appointment scheduling 

The essence of telemedicine website creation is to carry care assistance to patients worldwide at any given time. Hence, the users should be able to calendar the meeting with a specific physician by checking the availability of a required specialist and the appropriate date/time.

Search flow

A well-planned search engine simplifies the “website-patients” interaction and gets customers close to their goal – discovering the desired information. This, in turn, improves clients’ experience resulting in increased business revenue. You can also consider integrating filters that allow patients to quickly retrieve the services according to the parameters entered.

How to Build Medical Website And Succeed

Commonly, to deploy a web project, you need to determine the proper tech stack, including programming languages, frameworks, and 3rd party tools. However, medical app development also implies compliance with different regulatory standards, depending on location and other special conditions. I have outlined the widespread ones.

HIPAA. Applications operating in the US market that deal with managing, recording, and storing PHI data must follow HIPAA legislation. These regulations are made to ensure patients’ EHR protection and confidentiality. For example, to make your platform HIPAA compliant, SSL certificate, encryption, data backup and restore, and other preserves should be considered

PIPEDA. This document is similar to HIPAA with the difference that PIPEDA aims for another market. Healthcare digital solutions designed for the Canadian market must adhere to PIPEDA principles to ensure the privacy of patients’ data stored.

GDPR. It’s another country-specific document. Software solutions performing in the European market must comply with GDPR rules. What matters is that this law encompasses organizations that process clients’ information and the establishments that gather it.

HiTECH. HiTECH principles revolve more around the users’ data security and are justified in the USA. These laws broaden the HIPAA regulations by submitting more contributions to patients. For example, clients can access their medical info, such as lab test results, online or receive prompt notifications concerning unauthorized access to their medical profiles.

CCPA. This regulation guarantees individuals’ data protection in the United States and is akin to GDPR Act. This document is aimed at informing patients about the information gathered, generating reports on the compiled data per clients’ requests, clearing the data requested by patients, and far more.

Summing Up

Medical website development has never been more desirable than nowadays due to the post-pandemic reality and increased demand for quick and convenient medical care. Instead of waiting in long queues to schedule an appointment, people can easily choose the appropriate specialist and book a time slot in a couple of clicks. One of the things you need is to find an experienced web development company that will help you transform your idea into a powerful medical website.

The post Medical Website Development and Design: Things to Consider to Create a Jaw-dropping Platform appeared first on noupe.

Healthcare services inevitably go online. Therefore, healthcare establishments are looking for a secure and convenient way to deliver medical care to patients. In this light, medical website development is a beneficial option to invest in. This post will guide you through the mainstream medical web design trends, features to implement, and essential regulatory requirements to consider.

Design Trends in Medical Website Development

Web design trends keep renovating by leaps and bounds, battling for users’ attention. From motion UI to AI-powered chatbots and low-code development, the list goes on and on. However, simplicity and understandability are the core principles of medical website UI/UX design. Thus, instead of focusing on animations and yelling banners, pay attention to user-friendliness.

Responsive web design

People love solutions on the go. Responsive websites mean that the content of your medical platform will squish and release consistently as the device size changes. This will allow patients to interact with your site over smartphones or tablets easily.

Flat design

The flat design remains one of the common approaches when designing digital healthcare solutions. It works with elements that are very streamlined with a focus on clear, minimalist, and laconic design. This way, you get a visually appealing medical platform while simplifying the user path to the point. In addition, it gives your message a better chance to be understood clearly and the right way, which is vital for this type of website since it concerns people’s health.

Bright colors

Clean and clutter-free web design doesn’t mean that your medical site lacks vivid colors. Quite the contrary, using a bright and deep palette is another trend to watch out for in medical website design creation. Moreover, it’s vital to select corporate colors patients will associate your brand with. For instance, light blue colors trigger trust, while green ones indicate serenity and hope.

Huge typography

Large font sizes are not typical for healthcare websites since they’re designed in a more conservative way. However, following this course will allow you to stand your brand out and upstage contestants. For example, you can add a considerable tagline text instead of considering a specialist photo as the central site image.

Motion

As I mentioned earlier, conciseness is the heart of medical practice web design development. As a part of this statement line,  motion UI under healthcare site implies using micro animated elements (e.g., hover effects on a link, colorful animated icon) to spark patients’ interest without visual overloading.

Technical Side of Medical Platform Development

Now, let’s see what basic functionality should be integrated to create a patient-centric medical community. It’s highly recommended to start with implementing the MVP (must-have) features. This way, you’ll be able to test the idea validation without investing a tidy sum. Then, after identifying the weak spots of your medical startup (thanks to initial feedback), you can gradually scale up your website by incorporating more engaging and sophisticated functionality.  

Core Features for Medical Platform

Basic information

This feature enables customers to find your clinic location and contact details. Additionally, if your entities are spread geographically, the visitors should be allowed to opt for preferred whereabouts. Moreover, adding a forceful and effective CTA button will significantly contribute to increased leads.

Primary services 

Provide comprehensive information about medical care offered to assist patients in decision-making. If there is some specialized health delivery to focus on, ask your designers to highlight them to stick customers’ attention.

Medical stuff 

Before applying to a particular doctor, people tend to look through multiple sources to retrieve more information. Hence, ensure adding information about healthcare providers, such as specialization, qualification level, experience, education, appointment slots, etc. The more details you include about specialists, the more trustworthy they become for clients. Skipping this point, you risk losing a tidbit of your potential customers.

Appointment scheduling 

The essence of telemedicine website creation is to carry care assistance to patients worldwide at any given time. Hence, the users should be able to calendar the meeting with a specific physician by checking the availability of a required specialist and the appropriate date/time.

Search flow

A well-planned search engine simplifies the “website-patients” interaction and gets customers close to their goal – discovering the desired information. This, in turn, improves clients’ experience resulting in increased business revenue. You can also consider integrating filters that allow patients to quickly retrieve the services according to the parameters entered.

How to Build Medical Website And Succeed

Commonly, to deploy a web project, you need to determine the proper tech stack, including programming languages, frameworks, and 3rd party tools. However, medical app development also implies compliance with different regulatory standards, depending on location and other special conditions. I have outlined the widespread ones.

HIPAA. Applications operating in the US market that deal with managing, recording, and storing PHI data must follow HIPAA legislation. These regulations are made to ensure patients’ EHR protection and confidentiality. For example, to make your platform HIPAA compliant, SSL certificate, encryption, data backup and restore, and other preserves should be considered

PIPEDA. This document is similar to HIPAA with the difference that PIPEDA aims for another market. Healthcare digital solutions designed for the Canadian market must adhere to PIPEDA principles to ensure the privacy of patients’ data stored.

GDPR. It’s another country-specific document. Software solutions performing in the European market must comply with GDPR rules. What matters is that this law encompasses organizations that process clients’ information and the establishments that gather it.

HiTECH. HiTECH principles revolve more around the users’ data security and are justified in the USA. These laws broaden the HIPAA regulations by submitting more contributions to patients. For example, clients can access their medical info, such as lab test results, online or receive prompt notifications concerning unauthorized access to their medical profiles.

CCPA. This regulation guarantees individuals’ data protection in the United States and is akin to GDPR Act. This document is aimed at informing patients about the information gathered, generating reports on the compiled data per clients’ requests, clearing the data requested by patients, and far more.

Summing Up

Medical website development has never been more desirable than nowadays due to the post-pandemic reality and increased demand for quick and convenient medical care. Instead of waiting in long queues to schedule an appointment, people can easily choose the appropriate specialist and book a time slot in a couple of clicks. One of the things you need is to find an experienced web development company that will help you transform your idea into a powerful medical website.

The post Medical Website Development and Design: Things to Consider to Create a Jaw-dropping Platform appeared first on noupe.

Are you bored with some of your current design projects? This month’s collection of website design trends can help break you out of that rut with some fun and funky alternatives.

And all of these options are anything but boring. From visual display to technique, these trends present a different set of challenges.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month.

1. Layers on Layers

These website designs have so many layers of information that you almost don’t know where to look or where the design elements start and stop.

This can be a complex technique to make work because of the number of elements competing for the same attention in the design.

What you are likely to see with this design tend includes an image or video background with some motion but not anything that truly demands attention. Then add on a few still images in smaller frames throughout the design. Layer on text as well for a three-deep effect.

If you interact with these designs, you’ll find that they are not flat either. They all include animated elements, hover states, and interactions that help direct you through the layers of what can be a somewhat complex design.

Western National Parks Association uses a background image, middle images with animations, and multiple text layers (some on the pictures and some on the background). There’s also scroll animation to help build the design. A lot is going on, but it does not feel too busy.

WIP Architects is another design with layers that interact with each other and include motion. With a lot of scroll animation and layers that go in front of and behind other elements, engagement helps this site work.

The Shipwreck Survey uses the same basic layer outline with a little more overlap between elements and less overall animation. The primary animated effect on the homepage is the scroll bar.

 

 

2. Directed Click Actions

This interesting website design trend can be incredibly useful or a wasted element – directed click actions. These are buttons, icons, and animations that tell you to click somewhere in the design to move to the next stage of interaction.

The direct approach ensures that users see and have the best possible chance of doing what the design is intended for. On the other hand, if you need this much instruction, is the design too complicated? Or is there a middle ground where this trend looks great and is usable?

In each of the examples below, these directed click actions are a bit different.

HUG Co has a big circle to click in the bottom third of the screen. It’s almost designed like a bullseye, and you can’t miss it. The thing that is interesting here is that most of the video falls below the scroll. The click action also has two emojis to denote action – a smiling face or pointer when you are ready to click. (The click extends the video to full screen.)

ThinkOvery also uses a similar circular click icon. It also takes you to the next screen in a single movement so that you can continue to explore the design.

Living with OCD has a different approach with scroll and back-to-top icons paired in the bottom right corner. The scroll option includes words to help create direction and instruction. It consists of a small animation and an interactive hover state when you get close to the interactive element. The interesting thing here is that it is not actually a button, and you use a traditional scroll to interact.

 

 

3. Word Breaks

If you are a stickler for readability, this design trend might make you cringe.

In each of these designs, words are broken across lines – some with and some without hyphens. For the most part, there’s not much confusion about what the words are, but it does make you pause and think during the page experience.

Why would this be a design trend?

It’s a combination of using large typography, long words, and figuring out a solution to create a common experience between large and small screens. Many of these words would not fit on mobile screens, for example, with the same weight, scale, and impact as the desktop counterparts.

Hence, the word break solution. It creates a consistent user experience across devices.

This technique should be used only if you think your audience is savvy enough to understand what you are trying to communicate with the word break. It can be a tricky proposition!

Plantarium breaks at “plant” with a word that’s made up. But with the imagery and supporting terms, you still know immediately what the design is about.

Michelle Beatty takes a common word and breaks it. Because “photog” and “rapher” are the only letters on the screen, it’s pretty easy to figure out. What’s interesting is that the word break is not on the syllable, but the letters do stack nicely with this break visually.

Wreel Collective breaks a word with a hyphen in giant letters – something we rarely see in website design. Hyphens are not often used in this medium. Because of this, it gets your attention and makes you think about the words and the design.

 

 

Conclusion

There are a lot of rule-breaking trends in this month’s collection. They are interesting, fun, and require a certain level of risk to execute.

Could you see yourself (or your clients) opting for a design that features one of these trends? Time will tell if these visual compositions grow in popularity or begin to fade fast.

Source

The post 3 Essential Design Trends, June 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.