“A change to overflow on replaced elements in CSS”:

From Chrome 108, the following replaced elements respect the overflow property: img, video and canvas. In earlier versions of Chrome, this property was ignored on these elements.

This means that an image which was earlier clipped to its content box can now draw outside those bounds if specified to do so in a style sheet.

So, image, video, and canvas elements that were once clipped might display the overflow when Chrome 108 ships. The noted situations where this might affect your existing work:

• The object-fit property is used to scale the image and fill the box. If the aspect ratio does not match the box, the image will draw outside of the bounds.
• The border-radius property makes a square image look like a circle, but because overflow is visble the clipping no longer occurs.
• Setting inherit: all and causing all properties to inherit, including overflow.

Worth reading the full article for code examples, but the solution for unwanted visible overflow is overriding the UA’s default overflow: visible with overflow: clip:

img {
  overflow: clip;
}

---

“Prepare for viewport resize behavior changes coming to Chrome on Android”:

In November, with the release of Chrome 108, Chrome will make some changes to how the Layout Viewport behaves when the on-screen keyboard (OSK) gets shown. With this change, Chrome on Android will no longer resize the Layout Viewport, and instead resize only the Visual Viewport. This will bring Chrome on Android’s behavior up to par with that of Chrome on iOS and Safari on iOS.

This is a change related to the common headaches of working with viewport units and fixed positioning on mobile touch devices. We’ve covered (and tried solving) it over the years:

• “Some Things You Oughta Know When Working with Viewport Units” (Chris Coyier)
• “The trick to viewport units on mobile” (Louis Hoebregts)
• “The Large, Small, and Dynamic Viewports” (Chris Coyier)
• “CSS fix for 100vh in mobile WebKit” (Chris Coyier)

The change means that Chrome on Android will no longer resize the Layout Viewport when the on-screen keyboard is shown. So, the computed values of viewport units will no longer shrink when a device’s keyboard is displayed. Same goes for elements that are designed to take up the full viewport no longer shrinking to accomodate the keyboard. And no longer will a fixed-position element wind up who knows where when the keyboard pops up.

This brings more consistent cross-browser behavior that is on line with Chrome, Safari, and Edge on iOS and iPadOS. That’s great, even if the updated behavior is less than ideal because the keyboard UI can still cover and obscure elements that get in its way.

If you prefer elements to remain visible when that happens, it’s worth looking at a solution Chris shared a long while back that uses the prefixed webkit-fill-available property:

body {
  min-height: 100vh;
  min-height: -webkit-fill-available;
}
html {
  height: -webkit-fill-available;
}

That uses the available space in the viewport rather than what’s covered by the UI… but Chrome currently ignores the property, and I’d bet the nickel in my pocket that it is unlikely to start respecting it in the 108 release. That may be a moot point, though, as Chrome 108 also introduces support for small, large, and dynamic viewport units, which are already supported in Safari and Firefox.

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A Couple Changes Coming in Chrome 108 originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

Do you know that correctly implemented CRM systems commonly yield a 245% ROI?  

Hence choosing wise, deliberate, resourceful, and the best CRM software is sensible for all organizations. However, choosing the right CRM system for your organization from numerous options may sometimes be challenging. 

In the end, though, your company will have to pick a top-notch CRM service provider and piece of software. Nevertheless, we have worked hard to give you a thorough explanation of CRM and a list of the top 5 CRM software. Along with the list of features, the organization should include while integrating CRM.

The financial planning and investment advisory companies report that CRM was the most valuable software in 2021 globally. Additionally, CRM software market growth is predicted to sour $43.5 billion by the end of the year 2024.

Before we dive into the core of this blog subject let’s have a quick overview of CRM. That includes what is CRM, How CRM improves your business, and the features of CRM software. 

What is CRM?

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is software or technology that manage, organize, and process all your company’s interactions and relationship with your customers. 

The prominent CRM software offers intelligent, smart, and intuitive dashboards that manage and organize your customer’s data, and interaction reports, and store all crucial information within one easy-to-use platform.

CRM aid businesses to react faster, move the business forward, and boost customer engagement across the enterprise by enhancing customer experience. 

How CRM improves your business?

CRM provides a complete overview of customer behavior and needs. Additionally, integrating power BI technology with CRM can equip businesses with analytical views of customers’ requirements and predict the change of customer necessity in upcoming trends.

With the help of CRM, technology businesses streamline their decision-making process, which improves customer relationships, engagement, and connectivity. Moreover, with the use of CRM technology, companies can improve the retention rate of customers and win customers for life.  

What are the features of CRM software?

The core features of CRM software are

• Track customer interaction history.
• Provide a complete report of the customer complaint journey. 
• Analytical view of individual customer behavior and conduct. 
• Manage, record, and organize potential to convert leads into a customer.
• Integrate with your professional email platform for quick access and approval process.
• Manage and collect crucial data and documents of prominent and frequent customers.  

List of Top 5 CRM Software

The right CRM helps the organization to achieve its goal faster and aid organizations with resourceful advantages of lead management, Data management, customer retention, enhancing customer relationships, customer loyalty, and customer engagement.  

Organizations can choose from a wide range of CRM software solutions offered by many companies today, but in this below-mentioned list, we’ll focus on the top 5 CRM tool suppliers to help you go through the possibilities.

CRM Software	Developed by	Operating System	Development type	Type	CRM Software Cost (Approx)	REVENUE
Dynamics 365 CRM	Microsoft	Linux, Windows, Android, iPhone, Mac, Web-Based, etc.	Cloud-based and on-premises	Commercial	US $40 to $170	$ 198.27B
Zoho CRM	Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas.	Linux, Windows, Android, iPhone, Mac, Web-Based, etc.	Cloud-based and SAAS	Commercial and private	Free up to 3 users/ US $52	$ 255.7M
Oracle Netsuite	Oracle	Android, iOS, and Web-based.	Cloud-based	Private	$99 PER MONTH	$ 11.8B
HubSpot CRM	Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah.	Linux, Windows, Android, iPhone, Mac, Web-Based, etc.	Cloud-based	Free/ Commercial	US $2400 FOR Enterprise	$ 375.6M
Monday.com	Roy Mann and Eran Zinman.	Windows, Android, Mac, iPhone/iPad.	Cloud-based and Open API.	Private	US $39 PER Month pro version	$ 120M-$ 150M

We have a complete overview of the top 5 different CRM software available on the market in the table above. All CRM software has different capabilities and features, making the CRM tool unique. 

However, the features, operating system, cost, and development type offered by Dynamics 365 CRM fits perfectly for any small-medium, large, and enterprise-level organization.  

Dynamics CRM development services are offered by a well-known IT company called Microsoft, having headquarters in Washington, USA. You can encounter elements with Microsoft dynamics 365 services: sustainable future, reliable success, and digital imperative across your enterprise.  

Additionally, Dynamics 365 CRM provides tailored, intuitive, and seamless software, making it the greatest option for any organization starting a business. Not only do Dynamics CRM consulting services offer unique features that are crucial, but they also offer various customized and seamless functions that are important to form any business. 

What is the Best Function to Choose While forming a CRM Tool for your Business?

The functions should be included wisely and skillfully that help your organization to grow and empower your client to thrive with your enhancing customer experience. 

• Data Management
• Lead Management
• Email Integration
• Document Management
• Workflow Automation 
• Reports and Analysis 

Data Management – The most crucial and important function of any CRM, data management stores client information such as complete name, age, address, gender, contact information, and social media accounts that helps organizations to fetch customers’ details in one click. 

Lead Management – Managing the lead is much critical subject for many organizations. Leads through emails or from other sources have the possibility of being getting misplaced, however integrating the lead management function in CRM will organize, manage, and record leads accurately. 

Email Integration – Approval and authorization is now easy with integration on email in CRM. Employees can seamlessly integrate different email portals to get approvals or authorization from higher-level executives with a few clicks. 

Document Management – Customer query journey, data of customers, shared files, and many other crucial documents can easily maintain and organized within CRM. Hence including document management in CRM is very much crucial.  

Work-Flow Automation – With the integration of work-flow automation employees will be free of repetitive tasks. Work-flow automation trigger task automatically like notifying to call customers of an appointment time, sending email for approval, and much more. 

Reports and Analysis – With the integration of Power BI technology in CRM, the enterprise will get all analysis and reports of customer query journeys, sales, purchases, needs, and requirements. Such analysis makes an organization’s decision-making easy and enhances customer experience. 

Conclusion

To thrive in today’s environment, you need a complete view of your customer, hence don’t settle for incomplete data set of your customers. You can leverage the advantages of Dynamics 365 CRM to fill the gaps. 

Bring your customers into focus by understanding, identifying, and predicting customer behavior through the sublime and unique features of Dynamics CRM consulting services. 

The post Complete Overview on CRM appeared first on noupe.

It used to be the norm that businesses were opaque, with employees only having access to what they needed to get their work done. Over the past twenty years, though, there has been an increase in transparency in businesses: an article in HBR describes transparency as a leadership imperative, and studies conducted by companies like Slack and Tinypulse highlight the importance of transparency to employees.

“Transparency is the process of being open, honest, and straightforward about various company operations. Transparent companies share information relating to performance, small business revenue, internal processes, sourcing, pricing, and business values.”

— Forbes

Companies can be transparent with their employees only; others take it further and are transparent with the world. In a remote organization, transparency is even more critical. When you rarely see your colleagues, transparency helps people feel connected to one another and to the business. It can also help to reduce timezone bias as it relies on asynchronous communication, which makes it easier for people at any timezone to participate.

In this article, I will share some tactics for improving transparency within your organization. Some of them are tactics I’ve implemented myself through my years as a remote worker and leading a remote company, and others are best practices and guidance shared by companies leading the pack in terms of remote work.

Tactics To Improve Transparency

Default To Open

Imagine signing in to your company’s Slack team, where little of the day-to-day work happens in public channels. Some people say hi in the morning or goodbye in the evening, but all the work happens in private channels and DMs. The #general channel is a dead zone. Work happens in silos, and it’s hard to know what is going on at any one time. Individuals have to ask for information when needed, and sometimes they don’t even know where to look. This can cause bottlenecks and slow down work.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is a remote team where everything is in the open: hundreds of channels cover the whole range of work done in the company, and personal interests are chucked in too. Just by looking at the list of channels in your work’s messaging platform, you’ll see the overall work and identity of the company, and anyone can jump into any channel and connect with what’s going on there. It makes people feel more connected to work across the company rather than restricting people to work silos. It also has the advantage of exposing questions and discussions to more people. You never know who might have the answer to your question, and by posting it in public, someone you wouldn’t expect might be able to help.

Practical Tips

• Onboard new employees on how to work in the open through their onboarding period and gently nudge them to post questions and work discussions in public channels.
• Create naming conventions for your teams’ channels because you will end up with a lot, and it helps with the organization if people can see them grouped together (e.g., #marketing-content, #marketing-design, #dev-qa, and so on).
• Remember that some things that shouldn’t be public. Human Resources matters such as illness or performance and anything that is a special category data under GDPR should not be shared by the company. You can, however, be transparent about what won’t be open.

Lean In To Asynchronous Communication

Synchronous communication happens in real time, whether that’s on a video or voice call, messaging, teams, or in person. Asynchronous communication happens in your own time, and immediate responses are not requested or expected within the exchange.

There are many reasons why asynchronous communication is beneficial in a remote company:

• Reduces roadblocks as employees don’t need to be online at the same time;
• Increases flexibility for employees as they can prioritize when to respond;
• Combats presenteeism;
• Demonstrates trust in employees;
• Reduces timezone bias;
• Increases transparency as it relies on written communication and documentation.

Prioritizing asynchronous communication over synchronous communication doesn’t mean that you will never have a meeting or talk at the same time. Instead, it means that your first preference is tools such as documentation and shared issue trackers/task managers instead of having a call. Documentation is kept up to date so people can find what they need for themselves, and issue trackers capture what someone is doing and where they are at and provide spaces for collaboration that don’t require everyone to be online at the same time. By preferring these practices over synchronous practices, work carried out within the organization is always transparent and available.

Practical Tips

• Choose a tool that people love to use that they can use to keep track of their work. There are so many project management tools that you should be able to find one that suits your way of working.
• Keep your issue tracker updated with all of the most up-to-date information about where a task or project is, including links to works in progress, such as Google Docs, Slides, and spreadsheets.
• Create guidelines and onboard people to this way of working. Don’t just assume that people know how to work asynchronously. If they are from a traditional office, it’s unlikely that they will.
• Encourage everyone to ask, “do I need a meeting for this?” and make working in other spaces the default. This ensures full transparency of what’s happening, and people can engage in their own time.
• Make sure that decisions are documented so that everyone knows what action to take and why.

Document Processes And Continuously Improve

Effective remote companies need to have great documentation. This is especially true as companies grow. When you’re a small number of people, with just a handful of people in each role, it can feel easier just to get on and do the work and not worry about documentation.

Without embedded, documented practices, different approaches to the same task will proliferate, and it will become difficult to know what is the }}best approach for the organization as a whole}}. The growth that is not managed leads to inefficiencies within the business because things spin up in new ways all the time. When new employees join, they are unclear about whose approach is the right approach, and interpersonal issues may surface just because people disagree about the best way to do things.

Good documentation creates a shared expectation about how things should be done. A well-documented process should be a ladder rather than a cage. It should provide you with the steps to get to where you want to go, which you might need to adapt to your specific circumstance rather than being something fixed that you have to stick to rigidly.

For documentation to be useful, it has to be kept up-to-date. Out-of-date documentation is worse than no documentation at all, as it tells you the wrong way to go about doing something. Therefore, I advocate keeping documentation as straightforward and to the point as possible — only enough information so that a reader can achieve their goals. Anything else is just maintenance overhead that you don’t need.

Once you have good documentation in place, it means that all employees can find what they need by looking at the documentation.

Employees shouldn’t need to jump on a call for a walkthrough, ping lots of different people to find out what they need, or be confused by the different ways that they are told to do something. This is essential to enable everyone to work autonomously and reduce time wasted on calls because something isn’t written down.

Practical Tips

• Ensure that your documentation tool has everything you need to ensure that people can navigate and update it easily. We find built-in version control essential to see what has changed (spoiler: we use WordPress for documentation).
• Add dates to your documentation, so people know when it was written. If you want to embed practices of continuous improvement, you can add expiry dates to your documents, and process owners are expected to review and complete any updates.
• Provide clear expectations around documentation. If a process exists, it must be documented.
• Gitlab sets the standard with their “handbook-first” approach. It’s worth reading how they approach documentation and adapting what is useful to your own context.

Manage The Noise

An advantage of transparency is that information is there to be found. However, there needs to be the correct systems and processes in place so that people can find them. As someone from a company that has been remote for 10+ years, I’m amazed at the amount of documentation and communication that has built up over the years, not to mention the proliferation of tools. If you’re early in your remote journey, I highly recommend creating structures now that will enable you to keep on top of all the comms as you grow.

You need to proactively manage your docs and tools. It’s like a garden: you plant flowers in the flower beds, maybe a few trees and shrubs, and get your lawn looking lovely. But over time, the weeds start to appear, the shrubs become overgrown, and the flowers need to be dead-headed.

Transparency can have a positive impact on your company, but if you don’t tend to your documentation and information, it can end up being like an overgrown garden, where you have to clamber through weeds to get what you want or find a path through it.

Practical Tips

• Create onboarding pathways for different roles so that when new people join the company, they know where to find what they need and are taken through it step by step.
• Stay on top of your information architecture and make sure it remains intuitive for employees. Ideally, keep your IA the same or similar across your different tools (e.g., GDrive for docs, handbooks, and so on).
• Often, people will just search for what they need to make sure that you have a working search tool.
• Set expectations about what people need to stay on top of. It’s important that people are up-to-date on what’s happening in their areas, but do they need to read every piece of communication?
• Create an announcements channel or blog, with the expectation that the only items posted are things that everyone has to read. This makes sure that nothing important gets missed.

Record Meetings And Provide Useful Notes

Preferencing asynchronous communication doesn’t mean ever communicating synchronously. There are times when meetings are inevitable and valuable. However, that doesn’t mean that what happens in the meeting needs to stay within the black box of that meeting. We have tools at our disposal to make these transparent, but as with all things, we want these to be as frictionless as possible.

Recording a meeting so that anyone who is not present can catch up on it can be helpful. Also, this reduces the need for detailed minutes as anyone who wants specific details can watch the recording or catch up on the transcript (zoom has built-in transcription features, which provide a good enough transcript to scan what’s going on). This may not be suitable for all meetings as it can have a knock-on effect on people’s behavior, making them more guarded.

Alongside that, there are the meeting notes. There are as many different ways of producing notes as there are people writing them. You need to determine the purpose of your notes to put them in the best format for your organization. When thinking about it, ask yourself what someone who hasn’t attended the meeting needs to know. If a video is available, do they need full minutes or just notes about decisions, actions, and deadlines? Who is going to take the notes? Are they always taken by a specific person, or is it a role that rotates?

Practical Tips

• Always have an agenda for a meeting and ensure that anyone who adds an item to the agenda also writes a summary with links to supporting documentation. This provides the basis for the notes and means the note taker doesn’t have to re-summarise.
• Make sure everyone knows what the expectations are around meeting notes. A standard meeting template means that everyone knows what they need to provide before and during the meeting and that everyone reading notes knows what to look for.
• Ask yourself if you need notes every time. Maybe a video suffices for a discussion, especially if all of your actions are captured in your issue tracker. Maybe it’s enough just to keep an activity log, so everyone stays on top of what’s next.

Onboard New Team Members To Transparency

Something I have been guilty of is assuming that people will just be able to join the company and instantly normalize how transparent we are. Actually, it’s quite challenging for someone to go from an organization that is not transparent or doesn’t really think about it to one in which everything is out in the open.

It requires some empathy and imagination to recognize the experience of someone who has just joined the company. As there is a lot of noise, communication, and notifications, there is a mountain of information to climb and years of asynchronous communication stacked up. On top of that is the feeling of vulnerability that comes with being a new employee. When the expectation is that everything is discussed in public channels, it can make people feel reticent about putting themselves out there, asking the “stupid” questions that are so important to navigating your way around somewhere new.

That makes it essential to familiarise people with the concepts and tactics of transparency through the onboarding process and for managers and peers to support new starters with that. You can’t just assume someone will get it, so you need to support them to succeed.

Practical Tips

• Have clear expectations about what people should read and what they can let pass them by. Otherwise, some people will try to read everything. For most people, the work of their immediate team and essential company announcements suffice to begin with.
• Talk about transparency through the onboarding process, why it is important, and how you practice it within your company.
• Adjust to your new employee’s level of comfort. Some people will jump straight into public channels, but others will want to take their time. Work with them in DMs or private channels to begin, with the expectation that you’ll move to the public once they are onboarded.
• Create specific pathways or tables of contents for different roles to take them through the documentation and training they need to read.
• Provide guides and documentation on how to practice transparency, especially best practices for documentation and for using your issue tracker.

Make Use Of Integrations, APIs And Bots

Integrations, APIs, and Bots let us automate work and prevent information from getting stuck in silos. One of the first things I look for when I’m sourcing a new tool is what integrations it has and whether it will integrate with my stack. If it doesn’t have a native integration, does it have an API so we can have a developer build an integration for us? Or, for simple integration, you can use a tool like Zapier to connect your tools together.

If you’ve been remote for a long time, you can have a proliferation of tools, and manually moving data between them leaves room for human error and creates a huge administrative burden.

However, if you don’t transfer your data, it can lead to information remaining in silos and not getting to where it needs to be. If you are building out a stack for your remote team, I highly recommend working with tools and apps that integrate with one another.

As well as integrations, bots can be massively helpful in automating tasks and removing the need for people to manually run different processes. Some tools that I have found to be useful are geekbot, which we use for standups, and donut, which we use for social connections like pairing people up for a coffee. You can use integrations to pipe posts from other tools, such as GitHub or Hubspot, into your Slack Channel or MS Teams. Geekbot fatigue is real, though, so beware of having too many standups and bots running simultaneously because if they’re not used well, they can become a bureaucratic task that no one loves.

Practical Tips

• Figure out the bots which are right for your organization. Both Slack and Teams have a lot of bots available.
• When you are signing up for a new tool, look at the integrations that it currently has and think about how you might want to use the tool in the future.
• Connect your issue tracker and any other asynchronous tools to your messaging app so that any activity is piped into relevant channels.
• If bots are causing too much noise, consider creating firehose channels, which are just for piping in information from a specific tool or project.

Equip Everyone To Give And Receive Feedback

When your company is transparent, everything is out in the open all of the time. This means that a culture of transparency must go hand in hand with a culture of feedback. Drive-by feedback from people who don’t have context on a specific project is rarely helpful, nor are cryptic one-liners that say something isn’t great but don’t provide anything constructive about why.

This type of feedback can make people reticent about working in the open, and they can hold things back until they feel it is totally ready. Equally unhelpful are feedback requests that are just “what do you think?” or “can I have feedback?” These requests rarely elicit high-quality feedback.

When you equip your team to give feedback, you create a space where people are okay putting their half-finished projects out there because they know any feedback will be provided in good faith and will help them to achieve their goals. You also need to ensure that people are open to feedback, listen, and receive it in a non-defensive manner. Ultimately, it is up to the person who receives the feedback whether they should implement it or not, but you should always listen and try to understand the other person’s perspective.

Practical Tips

• Set company-wide expectations around feedback. Some companies might prefer a free-for-all where anyone can provide feedback all the time; others prefer to set the expectation that feedback should come only when it is asked for.
• Be very specific on what you are asking for feedback for: is it on the design, the content, the tone of voice, the structure, or the message? This will help you to get high-quality feedback.
• Research different feedback methodologies and adopt a few that are right for your company. Radical Candor is a very popular technique; I like Situation, Behaviour, Impact because of its simplicity, but there are lots of options out there. Whatever you use should be straightforward enough for anyone to use.

Build A Culture Of Transparency

You can build transparency into your practices, but you also need to build it into your culture. A common way to do this is to write transparency into your values, which is great but rarely enough. You’ve got to embed transparency into everything you do, which I hope some of the practices above will help with.

One of the most powerful ways to become more transparent as a company is for people to role-model transparency, especially leaders. If a leader behaves in a particular way, others follow. It follows that if someone at the top does something, then it is acceptable behavior.

If a leader does everything in Direct Messages, brings people into meetings all the time, and works in silos, then others will do the same. If your leaders default to open communications, asynchronous practices, collaboration, and information sharing, then they create an environment where others will follow.

It’s not enough for a CEO or founder to say they want to be transparent — they have to practice it like everyone else.

And remember, full transparency isn’t for everyone or for every company. You can set limits on what you are transparent about: some organizations share salaries, others don’t, some share financial info, others don’t, some share everything publicly, and others don’t. Being transparent isn’t necessarily sharing everything; it’s being upfront about what you are going to share, what you aren’t, and why. But remember that some level of transparency in a remote organization will go a long way to helping you be successful.

Practical Tips

• Role-modelling transparent behaviors should be built into the expectations of every leader. This could be written into role descriptions or behavior frameworks.
• It’s easy to find yourself working on something in a DM or private space; when you do, gently suggest to others that a discussion is moved into a public channel.
• Acknowledge behavior and actions that are transparent. We have a kudos bot in our HRS which we can use to credit positive behavior, and transparency is a consideration within our career progression framework.

The Transparency Trap?

Generally, I am a big advocate of transparency, but it’s not without its pitfalls. If you want your organization to be more transparent, then you need to be aware of what these are so that you can work against them. Some examples are:

• Decision-making can take a lot longer because so many people can provide input.
• Information overload can be a burden on employees, and they can feel fatigued by the amount of communication.
• Employees can feel that they are constantly being observed, which can leave them feeling exposed and vulnerable.
• Some employees will hide what they are doing just to get it right, even if there is nothing to hide.
• People experiment less because they are afraid to take risks or be vulnerable in front of others.
• There is an additional administrative burden as people have to produce meeting notes, update documentation and issue trackers, and generally perform what they are doing.
• Access to a company’s financial information can cause anxiety when times are rocky.
• Creative work may not always benefit from transparency as people can self-censor during the development process.
• Sharing all meetings can lead to self-censorship, which can stifle debate.

The researcher Ethan Bernstein talks about the “transparency trap” and explains how some organizations have “found the sweet spot between privacy and transparency, getting the benefits of both.” This means employing different types of boundaries to ensure that **privacy is maintained

in some areas without losing the benefits of transparency. However transparent you plan to be, it’s important to keep these challenges in mind so that you can work and don’t overwhelm or undermine your employees while still getting all of the benefits of transparency.

Web Sockets, Web Workers, Service Workers… these are terms you may have read or overheard. Maybe not all of them, but likely at least one of them. And even if you have a good handle on front-end development, there’s a good chance you need to look up what they mean. Or maybe you’re like me and mix them up from time to time. The terms all look and sound awful similar and it’s really easy to get them confused.

So, let’s break them down together and distinguish Web Sockets, Web Workers, and Service Workers. Not in the nitty-gritty sense where we do a deep dive and get hands-on experience with each one — more like a little helper to bookmark the next time I you need a refresher.

Quick reference

We’ll start with a high-level overview for a quick compare and contrast.

Feature	What it is
Web Socket	Establishes an open and persistent two-way connection between the browser and server to send and receive messages over a single connection triggered by events.
Web Worker	Allows scripts to run in the background in separate threads to prevent scripts from blocking one another on the main thread.
Service Worker	A type of Web Worker that creates a background service that acts middleware for handling network requests between the browser and server, even in offline situations.

Web Sockets

A Web Socket is a two-way communication protocol. Think of this like an ongoing call between you and your friend that won’t end unless one of you decides to hang up. The only difference is that you are the browser and your friend is the server. The client sends a request to the server and the server responds by processing the client’s request and vice-versa.

The communication is based on events. A WebSocket object is established and connects to a server, and messages between the server trigger events that send and receive them.

This means that when the initial connection is made, we have a client-server communication where a connection is initiated and kept alive until either the client or server chooses to terminate it by sending a CloseEvent. That makes Web Sockets ideal for applications that require continuous and direct communication between a client and a server. Most definitions I’ve seen call out chat apps as a common use case — you type a message, send it to the server, trigger an event, and the server responds with data without having to ping the server over and again.

Consider this scenario: You’re on your way out and you decide to switch on Google Maps. You probably already know how Google Maps works, but if you don’t, it finds your location automatically after you connect to the app and keeps track of it wherever you go. It uses real-time data transmission to keep track of your location as long as this connection is alive. That’s a Web Socket establishing a persistent two-way conversation between the browser and server to keep that data up to date. A sports app with real-time scores might also make use of Web Sockets this way.

The big difference between Web Sockets and Web Workers (and, by extension as we’ll see, Service Workers) is that they have direct access to the DOM. Whereas Web Workers (and Service Workers) run on separate threads, Web Sockets are part of the main thread which gives them the ability to manipulate the DOM.

There are tools and services to help establish and maintain Web Socket connections, including: SocketCluster, AsyncAPI, cowboy, WebSocket King, Channels, and Gorilla WebSocket. MDN has a running list that includes other services.

More Web Sockets information

• Introducing WebSockets – Bringing Sockets to the Web (web.dev)
• Thinking About Power Usage and Websites (Chris Coyier)
• The WebSocket API (MDN Docs)
• Latest browser support (Caniuse)

Web Workers

Consider a scenario where you need to perform a bunch of complex calculations while at the same time making changes to the DOM. JavaScript is a single-threaded application and running more than one script might disrupt the user interface you are trying to make changes to as well as the complex calculation being performed.

This is where the Web Workers come into play.

Web Workers allow scripts to run in the background in separate threads to prevent scripts from blocking one another on the main thread. That makes them great for enhancing the performance of applications that require intensive operations since those operations can be performed in the background on separate threads without affecting the user interface from rendering. But they’re not so great at accessing the DOM because, unlike Web Sockets, a web worker runs outside the main thread in its own thread.

A Web Worker is an object that executes a script file by using a Worker object to carry out the tasks. And when we talk about workers, they tend to fall into one of three types:

• Dedicated Workers: A dedicated worker is only within reach by the script that calls it. It still executes the tasks of a typical web worker, such as its multi-threading scripts.
• Shared Workers: A shared worker is the opposite of a dedicated worker. It can be accessed by multiple scripts and can practically perform any task that a web worker executes as long as they exist in the same domain as the worker.
• Service Workers: A service worker acts as a network proxy between an app, the browser, and the server, allowing scripts to run even in the event when the network goes offline. We’re going to get to this in the next section.

More Web Workers information

• “Off the Main Thread” (Chris Coyier)
• The State Of Web Workers In 2021 (Chris Coyier)
• Intro to Web Workers (Zapier)
• Web Workers API (MDN Docs)
• Latest browser support (Caniuse)

Service Workers

There are some things we have no control over as developers, and one of those things is a user’s network connection. Whatever network a user connects to is what it is. We can only do our best to optimize our apps so they perform the best they can on any connection that happens to be used.

Service Workers are one of the things we can do to progressively enhance an app’s performance. A service worker sits between the app, the browser, and the server, providing a secure connection that runs in the background on a separate thread, thanks to — you guessed it — Web Workers. As we learned in the last section, Service Workers are one of three types of Web Workers.

So, why would you ever need a service worker sitting between your app and the user’s browser? Again, we have no control over the user’s network connection. Say the connection gives out for some unknown reason. That would break communication between the browser and the server, preventing data from being passed back and forth. A service worker maintains the connection, acting as an async proxy that is capable of intercepting requests and executing tasks — even after the network connection is lost.

This is the main driver of what’s often referred to as “offline-first” development. We can store assets in the local cache instead of the network, provide critical information if the user goes offline, prefetch things so they’re ready when the user needs them, and provide fallbacks in response to network errors. They’re fully asynchronous but, unlike Web Sockets, they have no access to the DOM since they run on their own threads.

The other big thing to know about Service Workers is that they intercept every single request and response from your app. As such, they have some security implications, most notably that they follow a same-origin policy. So, that means no running a service worker from a CDN or third-party service. They also require a secure HTTPS connection, which means you’ll need a SSL certificate for them to run.

More Service Workers information

• Add a Service Worker to Your Site (Chris Ferdinadi)
• Service worker overview (Chrome Developers)
• Smaller HTML Payloads with Service Workers (Philip Walton)
• Service Worker Cookbook (Mozilla)
• Service Worker API (MDN Docs)
• Latest browser support (Caniuse)

Wrapping up

That’s a super high-level explanation of the differences (and similarities) between Web Sockets, Web Workers, and Service Workers. Again, the terminology and concepts are similar enough to mix one up with another, but hopefully, this gives you a better idea of how to distinguish them.

We kicked things off with a quick reference table. Here’s the same thing, but slightly expanded to draw thicker comparisons.

Feature	What it is	Multithreaded?	HTTPS?	DOM access?
Web Socket	Establishes an open and persistent two-way connection between the browser and server to send and receive messages over a single connection triggered by events.	Runs on the main thread	Not required	Yes
Web Worker	Allows scripts to run in the background in separate threads to prevent scripts from blocking one another on the main thread.	Runs on a separate thread	Required	No
Service Worker	A type of Web Worker that creates a background service that acts middleware for handling network requests between the browser and server, even in offline situations.	Runs on a separate thread	Required	No

---

The Difference Between Web Sockets, Web Workers, and Service Workers originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

In a survey of over 10,000 workers in various knowledge-based jobs, Asana’s “Anatomy of Work” study found that busy employees weren’t always busy doing work that would have an impact.

On the contrary, the study found that 257 hours could have been saved over the past year if companies had stronger processes in places.

This is where SOP (Standard operating procedures) come in!

This blog post will provide 5 HR SOP examples for your HR department. By following these guidelines, you can ensure that your HR operations run smoothly and efficiently. Stay tuned for more great tips!

Why is it important to have SOPs in any department?

Standard operating procedures (SOPs) provide a framework for conducting tasks and achieving desired outcomes in any department or organization. They ensure consistency in actions and decision-making, assist with onboarding and training new employees, and support compliance with regulatory standards.

“Standard Operating Procedures are the lifeblood of any efficiently run organization”

John Elder – The Business Blocks

SOPs also improve efficiency and productivity by streamlining processes and minimizing errors. In the event of unexpected disruptions or challenges, SOPs can serve as a reference to continue operations as smoothly as possible.

• SOPs provide a framework for employees to follow, ensuring that tasks are completed consistently and standardized. This can help to improve efficiency and minimize errors.
• SOPs can help to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
• They can help to improve communication between employees and departments.
• They can help ensure everyone knows the company’s policies and procedures.
• SOPs can be used as training tools, helping employees learn the tasks they will be responsible for completing.

Overall, having clear and effective SOPs in place allows departments to operate effectively and achieve their goals consistently.

How important is it to have HR SOPs?

HR teams are responsible for a variety of tasks that are essential to every business’ success.

They perform duties like:

• Recruiting new employees
• Promote company values,
• Keep existing employees satisfied
• Ensure legal compliance with security and payroll procedures

Overall, HR team members regularly handle duties that directly contribute to a company’s bottom line.

This is why, in any organization, it’s important to have SOPs in place for all aspects of the business, including human resources. SOPs provide a framework for HR processes such as onboarding, performance review, and disciplinary actions.

They ensure that these tasks are carried out consistently and fairly, allowing all employees to be treated equally. SOPs can also help save time and prevent miscommunication by providing clear guidelines for HR staff and managers to follow.

And in the event of a legal dispute or audit, well-documented SOPs can serve as valuable evidence for compliance with regulations and company policies. Strong HR SOPs are essential for creating a successful and fair workplace environment.

5 HR SOP examples

Here are some HR SOP examples to help you understand how important it is to have this process in place:

1. Recruitment

One example of a standard operating procedure (SOP) in recruitment is gathering resumes and selecting candidates through pre-screening interviews. This process can be further streamlined with applicant tracking systems, which allow recruiters to search for and organize candidate information.

Consistently following this SOP can help ensure that only qualified individuals are invited for in-person interviews, thus saving time and resources in the hiring process. It also helps to lower the cost per hire, as recruiters are able to efficiently identify the best potential hires without excessive spending on an advertisement or interviewing unnecessary candidates.

Overall, having a well-defined SOP in recruitment helps streamline the hiring process and save valuable resources.

2. Onboarding

When it comes to the onboarding process, having an SOP in place can help streamline the process and ensure that all necessary steps and tasks are completed.

For example, an SOP may outline steps such as:

• Completing applicable paperwork.
• Scheduling onboarding meetings with HR and relevant department heads.
• Providing job training.
• Setting up computer/email access.
• Assigning a mentor for the new employee.

A well-developed SOP can also provide a clear timeline for completing these tasks, ensuring a smooth transition for the new hire. Having an SOP in place for onboarding can make the process more efficient and give new employees a positive first impression of the company’s organization and attention to detail.

3. Training

A solid training program is not just about imparting knowledge and skills- it also requires clear communication and organization. One way to ensure that your training program is effective is by using an SOP for each training session.

There are many different methods for bringing training and development into the digital age.

This can help outline the objectives, materials, procedures, and evaluations for each training session and serve as a reference for trainers and trainees. SOPs can also ensure consistency in training materials and delivery across various departments or locations.

While developing an SOP may require some initial effort, the result will be a streamlined and successful training program for your employees.

4. Performance Mapping & Annual Appraisals

When it comes to performance mapping and annual appraisals, having a standard operating procedure in place can be extremely helpful.

For example, the SOP might outline the specific steps for setting goals, conducting continual check-ins, and determining overall performance ratings. It could also provide guidelines for handling any challenges or disputes that may arise during the appraisal process.

Additionally, an SOP can ensure consistency and fairness in evaluating employee performance.

5. Exit Process

Having an established SOP for the exit process can ensure that all necessary steps are completed promptly and efficiently. For example, the SOP may outline tasks such as returning company property, completing exit interviews, and providing notice of resignation to superiors.

This helps to streamline the departure process for both the departing employee and the organization. It also ensures that no important steps are overlooked, ensuring a smooth transition and fostering a positive overall experience for all parties involved. In short, having a documented SOP for the exit process benefits both employees and the organization as a whole.

The Bottom Line

SOPs are an important part of any Human Resources department. Having SOPs in place ensures that your HR team is efficient and compliant with company policy. This blog post provided five examples of SOPs that your HR department can use as a starting point. Do you have any other tips for creating effective SOPs?

The post 5 SOP Examples for your HR department appeared first on noupe.

Believe it or not – social media is one of the most powerful tools for affiliate marketing. Almost 68% of affiliate marketers use social media to connect with their target audience.

A great reason to use social media is its ability to target specific niches. Every social media platform has its own key demographics. For instance, you will find more women, millennials, and Gen Z audiences on platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok compared to channels like LinkedIn and Twitter.

But, carrying out affiliate marketing on social media is not everyone’s game. It requires careful implementation of smart strategies, so you don’t sound salesly. Learning from those who are already doing well will help you jump on the bandwagon without losing your dim. 

We have put together this easily-digestible guide on how top affiliate marketers use social media to boost sales, so affiliates like you can have convenient access to key information. Let’s get started. 

By Focusing On Content

Successful affiliate marketers always focus on their content first when using social media to boost sales. Their social content is attention-grabbing, provides value to their audience, and has the ability to stand on its own regardless of the affiliate link.

Using the right education and finesse in their content, affiliate marketers know how to really rope in their audience on social media and capture their attention with high-quality, interesting content.

Affiliate marketers often repurpose their old content or simply repost it to gain traction from content that has already performed well in the past. This trend is usually seen on platforms like Twitter when the life of a tweet is very small. Hence, it makes sense to find and view old tweets to make the most of them.

By Staying Active To Build Connections

Successful social media profiles thrive on connections. Affiliate marketers foster social media connections through hashtags and interactions with existing followers.

Affiliates even use social media to find the best brands to collaborate with. Affiliates check reviews of a brand on Google and other review sites to find the best brands for collaboration. Hence, it becomes essential for brands to manage their Google reviews.

Any affiliate marketer who is not actively engaging with their community will lose out on engagement and exposure. They may undermine their affiliate marketing efforts if they are not posting consistently.

Leaving sizable gaps between different posts prevents them from making it to the top of their follower’s feeds. A consistent and successful post-scheduling is all about balance. They are active enough on the platform so that people don’t forget them but not so active that they start to overwhelm or annoy their audience. 

An enterprise social media management tool helps affiliate marketers to keep consistency in posting while also managing the engagements and analyzing their performance.

While affiliate marketers post content consistently on social media, they also ensure they post at the right time. This helps them to maximize their engagement and conversion rate. For instance, successful affiliate marketers will take care of the best time to post on Instagram if they are using Instagram to promote products. 

By Promoting Affiliate Products To Niche-Specific Groups

No doubt, social media platforms have a vast user base. But, not all users will be interested in affiliate products. Hence, affiliate marketers identify the people who are more likely to show interest in what you have to offer before they even start affiliate marketing on social media.

Social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn provide the feature to create groups of like-minded people. By targeting the right group, affiliate marketers drive huge sales. This is because though they are targeting a small group of people, they are showing their offerings to the right kind of people. Users can also embed social media feeds like Instagram to website.

For example, an affiliate marketer for a web-based business like cloud hosting uses keywords like web hosting, web designing, and web development to find groups related to their business.

They use local search keywords to find groups relevant to their niche if they are affiliated with a local business.

By Tracking Affiliate Performance

Like any marketing effort, tracking affiliate marketing performance on social media is important. Different social channels come with built-in analytics to track posting efforts and engagement performance. 

Affiliate marketers use this data to analyze how successful their affiliate marketing campaigns are on the social platform. Some key metrics they look out for are:

• Brand Awareness: Knowing about brand awareness helps affiliate marketers to discover how people find their content. It can be from your Story, their feed, or directly through your profile.
• Engagement Rate: Affiliate marketers evaluate their engagement rate by analyzing their affiliate products with the type of content and format. For instance, if they find that tutorial-based carousel posts have a higher engagement rate than standard text posts, they prioritize it going forward. 

By Connecting With Other Affiliate Marketers

There exists an entire community of affiliate marketers on different social channels. Connecting with other affiliate marketers and supporting one another in their efforts and success can help them better use social media for affiliate marketing. 

The first word in the term “social media” is social. Collaborating with other affiliate marketers to share posts and links and bring each other up provides top affiliate markets with the team mentality that is needed to improve their followers and get their links out. 

They don’t view other affiliate marketers simply as competition on social media. They understand that cooperation can benefit all affiliate marketers in a really powerful and successful way.

Final Thoughts

All in all, affiliate marketing on social media has helped others to increase conversion rates. You can earn more commissions with your vendors by following tips and techniques from this article. Remember that most affiliate revenue builds up over time. Sobe patience and keep integrating these tactics into your strategies.

The post How Affiliate Marketers use Social Media to Boost Sales appeared first on noupe.

Podcasts are on the rise. In 2020 consumption of podcasts reached 332.2 million internet users, and this number grew to 383.7 in 2021. And it is increasing steadily – with the number of listeners slated to reach about 509.4 in 2024.

Podcasts have moved from a niche market of discussants in their parent’s basements to being spread across the globe into everyone’s earsets. 

However, it’s more complex than just creating a decent show and uploading it. First, your website needs to be able to handle the traffic, lest you want your listeners attempting to sign up for your newsletter on a frisbee. But where does one start?

And that’s where podcast hosting sites come into the picture! 

You need a podcast hosting service to publish your podcast episodes online and make them available to your audience. Podcasts are called interactive audio content for a reason. Your podcast listeners can get in touch with you through the comments section, emailing you their feedback, sharing your episodes on social media, and more.

It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to become a mega-star or want to solidify your brand; knowing which podcast hosting platform to use is essential to the podcasting process.

In today’s article, we have covered the 15 best podcasting sites. So whether you are looking for free or paid podcast hosting sites, we have covered everything in detail.

1. Podbean

Podbean is a podcast hosting and monetizing platform that lets you publish your podcasts in minutes. Just set up some basic information about your podcast – and you are set to publish your first episode on Podbean. With Podbean’s intuitive user interface, getting started with the service is as easy as pie!

In the above image, you can see how Podbean will ask you to set up your podcast. Podbean makes it easy to create a professional-looking site from title and description to category and podcast logo. Once you upload your episode, you can also pick a theme for your site. 

As you see in the below image, you can customize its fonts and colors and test the audio and appearance before it launches. 

Podcasts can also be listened to on Apple, Google, Shopify, and other podcast apps. If you want to embed your podcast on your website or blogs, Podbeans Embeddable Players will make that easy for you. The Embeddable player is also customizable and lets you add branded elements, making the design professional. 

You can even connect your social media handle with your Podbean account to directly share podcasts on your social pages.

It doesn’t skimp on statistics, either. Podbean statistics will give you all the insights you need to know about your podcast’s audience, including the top 10 episodes, how many downloads there are at a particular time, where your customers come from, and user retention data.

All in all, it’s a great option to get started with your podcasting journey. However, one downside is that the podcast website isn’t as polished as some podcasters might prefer.

Other key features include

• You can host audio and video files without limits on storage and bandwidth.
• You can personalize your podcast with your own domain.
• You can also schedule your podcast episode in advance.
• Once you publish your podcast, users can access it on Alexa devices.
• Its Mailchimp integration will help you collect emails for future distribution.
• You can monetize your podcast using ads.
• Live stream your podcast with a remote co-host or guest.

Pros

• They offer a free plan, which provides iPhone and Android app players with 100GB of monthly bandwidth and their own podcast site.
• Even though the interface is very intuitive, the resources in their knowledge base will be helpful to beginners.

Cons

• You can’t host video podcasts unless you are on their Plus & Business plans.
• The podcasting website should be more professional. 

Pricing

It starts at $9/month for unlimited storage space, unmetered bandwidth, distribution on significant podcast apps, customizable themes, and more.

2. Buzzsprout

Buzzsprout is a podcasting platform that provides hosting, promotion, and analytics solutions. You can directly distribute your podcast on Google, Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Alexa, Overcast, and more through Buzzsprout.

You can start with easy and free learning material provided by Buzzsprout, including podcasting guides, courses, video tutorials, industry podcasts, and community.

It’s also worth noting that Professional-sounding podcasts don’t come easy. That’s why Buzzsprout’s MagicMastering tool is available for you to use. It’s an audio filter that sweetens your podcast and optimizes it for the best industry standards.

That said, the Magic Mastering feature is only available with the pricier plans, so you’ll have to shell out more money for it. 

You don’t have to worry about optimizing your episodes yourself either because Buzzsprout optimizes all episodes in terms of file type, bitrates, ID3 tags, etc.

The best part is that it has dynamic content flexibility, letting you decide whether audio should go at the beginning or end of an episode. It does everything to make your podcast search engine friendly, including transcribing each episode for people with hearing disabilities.

Buzzsprout’s users also usually have good things to say about the platform. 

For example, Neil Thacker, founder of Casual Car Guide, who uses Buzzsprout himself, is a big fan of the platform.

Thacker says, 

“I have been lucky enough to host a few different podcasts in various industries. Every time, my hosting platform of choice is Buzzsprout. They just get it. Buzzsprout makes it super easy to publish and syndicate your podcast episodes across various mainstream streaming platforms and directories. 

If you need a website for your podcast, Buzzsprout gives you the tools to create one. Simply pick a domain and host your podcast there for the world to see. It’s quick and easy to set up and won’t cost you the earth. Go, Buzzsprout!” 

Other key features include

• It offers a customizable podcast player that lets you skip to the next track or move backward. You can also share your episode on social media and make the player match your website’s branding.
• One account can hold multiple podcasts and team members.
• You can find all the necessary help through its YouTube channel and Facebook community.
• It integrates with tools such as Chartable, Podtrac, Hindenburg, and more.
• It also offers Visual Soundbites to match your brand colors.

Pros

• It offers competitive pricing and features.
• Clean & easy-to-use UI.
• Plenty of learning resources.
• Free version for 90 days.

Cons

• Limited upload time, even with paid plans.
• Your episodes will be hosted only for 90 days with the basic plan.
• The basic plan does not include Magic Mastering.

Pricing

Starts at $12/month for 3 hours of upload, advanced statistics, unlimited storage, and more.

3. Simplecast

Simplecast is the all-in-one solution for your podcasting needs – including podcast publishing, distribution, analytics, and sharing. Whether you’re a large or small business, it also has similar tool access for all sizes of companies.

Your podcast can be set up anywhere, including Shopify, Google Podcast, Apple Podcast, and other podcast directories. Simplecast gets your podcast on these directories and apps as soon as you publish any episode and then automatically sends it to your listeners.

Then it will provide you with advanced analytics to show how many listeners you have, how many downloads you get, your listeners’ locations, and more. See below for a visual representation of how this works:

It also has a website. That’s right; you’ll get your own website. 

This website automatically updates as you publish new episodes and is customizable, mobile-friendly, search engine optimized, and Google Podcast optimized. You can even use your own domain names.

In addition, it allows the user to manage multiple shows in a single account. The image below will show you what the Podcast Dashboard looks like. It displays the number of episodes for each show and other information, such as role and owner.

Other key features include

• Its audio analytics come in easy-to-understand visuals and show you different trends – for example, which device listeners use to listen to your podcasts.
• Simplecast’s framework is a rock-solid, no-nonsense platform that keeps your stream playing 24/7.
• You can import your existing podcast from any platform with just a few clicks.
• You can use its players to embed your podcasts on your web.

Pros

• All of its plans offer unlimited uploads and storage.

Cons

• It does not offer a free version.
• I see users getting frustrated with the limited customization options for website themes.

Pricing

It starts at $15/month for two seats, unlimited storage and uploads, basic analytics, a custom domain, a customizable website, and more.

4. Anchor.fm

Anchor is one of the – if not the best free podcast hosting services by Spotify that takes care of creation, distribution, monetization, analytics, and more.

Creating Music+talk episodes on Anchor is as easy as pie. Choose any song from Spotify’s library, place it in your episode builder, add an audio file that you wish to go with the music file, and then submit your episode for review.

Some of the best ways to make money from your podcast are by building an audience and monetizing that audience. And with Anchor, you can monetize in various ways, including by adding paid advertisements to your podcast or asking for donations from listeners.

In addition, the IAB 2.0-certified metrics from Spotify let you measure your podcast’s performance in detail. For example, you can see where listeners are abandoning you on the track and adjust accordingly by adding content that really matters to them. You can also see what type of listeners interact with your podcasts – how old they are, what gender they identify with, and more.

Luciano Colos, founder and CEO of PitchGrade, who uses Anchor for his own podcast, talks about his experience with the platform.

He believes that the end-to-end control of the whole process is what makes Anchor.fm unique. 

Colos further shares, 

“Even if you’re not a technical person, the interface is so simple that you’ll be able to learn it in minutes. I’ve been using it since the day I started my podcast, and I’m so glad I found it. It’s also worth mentioning that the support on the platform is great. If you ever have a question, you can contact the staff on their Discord channel and will get an answer within minutes.”

Other key features include

• All the content rights are yours.
• You can distribute your podcast to Google, Apple, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and more.
• You can directly record from your phone, tablet, or computer and sync them to all devices.
• You can create both audio and video podcasts.
• The episode builder has easy-to-visualize building blocks.

Pros

• Anchor offers free and unlimited hosting in all plans.
• Easy monetization options, that too with ads in your own voice.
• You can distribute your podcast to all major podcasting platforms.

Cons

• You can host only one podcast per account.
• Interview features on phone hosting are limited.
• Customer support is limited to online resources.

Pricing

It’s a free platform. 

5. SoundCloud

SoundCloud is a platform for both streaming audio and hosting podcasts. Majorly, it’s a popular music-sharing platform, but it also offers a robust podcast-hosting platform used by over 75 million people worldwide.

Creating a SoundCloud profile is also as simple as pie. You can personalize your profile with your own username, profile URL, custom profile image, and header.

SoundCloud is also one of the few podcast-hosting platforms that allow you to create a community around your podcasts. This is handy if you want to grow awareness about your podcast among other users.

Users can comment on specific moments of the track, and other users can see those comments when they reach that moment on the track.

The podcast hosting platform is available for Android and iOS, and you can sign up for free. Of course, there’s an affordable fee for upgrading your account to a creator account. 

In addition, SoundCloud lets you distribute your tracks on various channels, including Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, and more.

Then you have the SoundCloud Analytics dashboard that gives you a quick overview of the number of streams, revenue, and top tracks — but it’s not as detailed as you can get with other podcasting sites. After all, it’s a music streaming platform primarily rather than one specifically for podcasts.

There is little to no knowledge on their website for beginners, which is another disadvantage. That said, it’s pretty easy to use, so anyone without experience in podcasting can easily use the platform.

Other key features include

• SoundCloud allows you to share your music on Apple Music, TikTok, Spotify, and more.
• Except for the free version, SoundCloud offers unlimited upload time.
• If you have collaborators in your profile, you can split the payments with them.
• You can also schedule your podcast releases in advance. 

Pros

• It offers a free plan with 3 hours of upload time.
• The hosting fee is affordable.
• Listeners can comment on specific moments from your track.

Cons

• Many users report that it takes a long time to load the track.

Pricing

It starts at $2.50/month for monetization, distribution, promotion, and split payment features.

6. Transistor.fm 

Transistor’s like other podcasting platforms – you can create a podcast from scratch or import it from another platform. Just follow the instructions, and you’re good to go.

Once your podcast is recorded and ready to go, you can invite multiple members to contribute. Its analytics software provides clean visuals and robust insights into listener trends. 

For instance, the below image is an overview of the podcast performance: 

 

Now observe that the amount of data and clear visuals make this less overwhelming. As you can see, it gives you insights into average downloads per episode for the specific period, estimated subscribers, and total downloads (month-wise visual presentation).

In addition to providing one-click submissions to significant podcast platforms such as Spotify, Google, Apple Podcasts, Podcast Addict, and more, Transistor also offers one-click submissions to search engines like Listen Notes and The Podcast Index. Transistor is one of the few podcasting hosting platforms to provide a service like this. 

Corey Haines, Founder of SwipeWell, shares his experience with the platform, 

“I’ve been super happy with Transistor.fm for hosting all my podcasts. Instead of paying for each one individually, Transistor allows me to host all the podcasts I want for a single price. This made me feel free to experiment and start as many podcasts as I wanted. They also have great integrations, analytics, and sharing capabilities to embed on a website or newsletter.”

Other key features include

• You can create, import, and host multiple podcasts in a single Transistor account.
• You get a unique RSS feed, advanced analytics, a basic webpage, and collaborator invites for each podcast you create.
• The analytics tool gives you insights like the number of plays, total plays per episode, average download, devices, and more. 
• It offers a podcast player that you can embed on your website, landing page, or tweet.

Pros

• Multiple podcast hosting options allow you to test different podcast formats for varied groups of listeners.
• You can host unlimited podcasts in one account.
• It offers a free trial.

Cons

• The starter plan, which is a paid one, does not include dynamic ads. It also does not allow you to automate YouTube posting.
• There are plenty of resources in their knowledge base, but finding what you’re looking for is confusing.
• Only the Business plan allows you to remove Transistor branding from the player.

Pricing

It starts at $19/month for unlimited podcasts, private podcasts, live customer support, a built-in podcast website, and more.

7. Libsyn

Libsyn has the tools to help you get started regardless of your level of podcasting expertise. It assists you in recording, publishing, distributing, and monetizing your podcasts. 

The best part? You can host both audio and video podcasts on Libsyn.

To get started with Libsyn, you’ll have to provide a few details, including podcast title, subtitle, description, category, owner’s name & email, author, website URL, and more.

The below image shows what the Libsyn podcast settings look like: 

You can also add your own artwork to your podcast. Click “Add artwork” or drag and drop the images in the upload area. Suppose you don’t have your artwork ready. In that case, you can design one on Canva – Libsyn’s integration with Canva makes creating a professional-looking podcast cover simple without any graphic design experience. 

Once you are ready with everything, publish your podcast and distribute it to the platforms where your listeners could be, such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Play Music.

Libsyn gives you more ways to make money with your podcast, including advertising and subscriptions. For example, you can pitch to the big advertisers on Libsyn’s AdvertiseCast Marketplace or build a community of members who get exclusive access to your content.

Antreas Koutis, Administrative Manager at Financer, shares his experience with Libsyn, 

“When I started podcasting on the side, I wasn’t sure which hosting platform to use. There are a lot of options out there, and it can be overwhelming to try to figure out which one is the best. After trying out a few different platforms, I found that I liked Libsyn the best. 

It was easy to use and had all the features that I was looking for. I also liked the fact that they offered unlimited storage and bandwidth, which was important to me since I wanted to be able to grow my podcast without having to worry about running out of space. The only downside is that it can be a bit expensive, but overall I thought it was the best option for me.” 

Other key features include

• Its podcast players allow you to drag and drop your uploads, and you can create an episode from any page.
• You can also publish your episodes in batches or pre-schedule them.
• With Snippets, you can create a description for your podcasts just once and reuse it with every post.
• It provides IAB Tech Lab Verified Stats, which means you can trust the accuracy of the data.
• Get access to advanced analytics, including an interactive worldwide map, listener app analytics, demographics, and more.

Pros

• Podcasting can be a cinch for anyone who starts with Libsyn’s in-depth, step-by-step guides and other valuable resources.
• Its integration with Canva helps you design your artwork with ease.

Cons

• The basic plan does not offer unlimited storage or uploading hours. 
• For advanced features, the price is quite high.

Pricing

Starts at $5/month for 3 hours of uploading, 162MB storage, stats snapshot, basic social promotion, unlimited bandwidth, ad-free website, and more.

8. Podcastics

Podcastics is a complete suite of tools for hosting, sharing, and monetizing your podcasts. The prime reason to give Podcastics a try is its 1-month free trial – no credit card required! And you don’t even need the training to use this platform. But if you need assistance, there’s plenty of help in the help section.

It takes just a few clicks to get Podcastincs up and running. The editor is clean and self-explanatory, as shown in the image below. Just follow the steps, and your podcast will be ready in minutes.

Moreover, if you already have your podcasts on the Apple Podcasts platform, you can easily import all of them into your Podcastics account in just two clicks. Simply type your podcast name in the search box and select yours from the list that appears. This will collect and save all your data, such as titles, descriptions, episodes, etc.

Podcastics is also one of the few podcast hosting platforms that allow you to host multiple podcasts with unlimited episodes under one roof.

Once your podcast is up and ready to be distributed, you can share it with the world on major listening platforms such as Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and more. Podcastics makes distribution so much easier by automatically creating an RSS feed for you. 

Its magic link never misses redirecting your listeners to the correct platform. You can also add QR codes to your magazines or print flyers to get user subscriptions.

Other key features include

• You can host multiple podcasts in one account.
• It also records heat maps for you with the most and least active time during the week. 
• The text editor lets you insert links and lists and style your fonts in episode descriptions.
• If you are using a free version, you can use your own server to upload your podcasts. Paid plans offer to host by Amazon Servers.
• You can also monetize your episodes using Patreon and affiliate programs.
• You can segment your podcasts into sessions and assign episode numbers.
• You can schedule your podcasts for specific dates & times.

Pros

• It saves your time with the duplicate episodes feature; then, you can edit a few details and post another episode in minutes.
• Its description snippets eliminate the redundant task of adding a few same elements for each episode.

Cons

• Although it contains so many advanced features, newbies can quickly become confused by the program for the same reason.
• For the free plan, you have to use your own server.

Pricing

Starts at $8/month for worldwide distribution, easy import, unlimited episodes, private/unlisted episodes, and more.

9. Spreaker

Spreaker comes with a bundle of tools for you to create, distribute, monetize, grow an audience, and track the progress of your podcasts. You can host and monetize your podcasts with programmatic ads from big brands, such as Green Chef, Lego, Swag.com, CareerBuilder, and more.

Spreaker’s how-to guide for podcasting will get you started in no time. Once you have your podcast’s name, length, and format ready, Spreaker Studio will help you record it, add sound effects, and crop or trim your audio. Finally, add the cover art, and you are ready to publish your first podcast on Spreaker.

Martyna Inkielman, Community Manager at PhotoAiD, shares her experience with Spreaker, 

“I find Spreaker the best and most reliable platform. My favorite thing about it is that it provides most of the essential features in one place  – pretty much everything related to your podcast can be done on Spreaker. It’s also very intuitive, so it’s effortless to use, even for beginner podcasters.”

Martyna mostly has good things to say about Spreaker, but one thing that bothers her – it doesn’t support video podcasting, so she can’t post on YouTube with it.

Other key features include

• With Spreaker, you can share your podcasts on Google Podcasts, Amazon, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and iHeartRadio.
• For monetizing, Spreaker inserts relevant ads in your podcasts no matter how new your episode is.
• For analytics, you can choose the plan for the level of detail you need about your podcast interactions. From downloads to listeners’ geolocation, Spreaker shows you every statistic vital to you.
• Spreaker Enterprise offers full-stack audio publishing, single-click distribution to various podcast channels, ad campaign manager, and more.

Pros

• You can monetize your podcasts regardless of the size of your audience, the number of downloads, or your account age.
• You can see real-time analytics of your podcasts because of their IAB Tech Lab certification.

Cons

• Users have reported limited options for customer service.

Pricing

It starts at $8/month for 6-months statistics, 100-hours storage, auto-upload to Spotify, iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, and more.

10. Podomatic

Podomatic allows you to build your podcasting career in four easy steps: create a free account, record and publish, submit your podcast to big podcast platforms such as Spotify, and keep repeating.

To upload media, you must first add it to Podomatic’s library of supported file formats. It supports file formats including m4a, mp3, mp4,  BMP, jpg, png, mp4, m4v, and more. 

Podomatic will store your audio and video files in an unpublishable section if they are larger than 350MB, lack an extension, or has an unsupported extension. 

To upload a podcast, you only need to determine the title, tagline, cover art, description, category, tags, and language. Then, once published, you can start monetizing it using Patreon, Popcorn, and What For Apparel ads.

You can also get stats on your podcast, including total plays, mobile plays, embeds, downloads, visits, and more. The service goes further into analytics to show your performance over a selected period of time, the performance of individual episodes, and listeners’ graphs.

Other key features include

• You can store up to 6 hours of recording (free) or 500MB of files.
• It gives you 15GB of bandwidth for a month.
• It also offers free tracking of your podcasts daily.

Pros

• You don’t pay for your first 20 episodes.
• Its premium plans are affordable.
• Premium plans offer unlimited bandwidth and storage.
• Be it a computer or mobile – you can record and publish high-quality episodes.

Cons

• It doesn’t allow the scheduling of episodes.

Pricing

Starts at $2.49/month for 100GB bandwidth, 2GB storage, and more.

11. Blubrry

Blubrry is a podcast hosting platform where you find easy podcast migration from other platforms, live customer support, and in-depth statistics. Blurry is also ready to host your single podcast or a whole slew of them.

With Blubrry, you can get more than just a podcast hosting service. You can grow your audience and connect with listeners by using Podcast Audience Surveys. These surveys give you valuable information about your audience, allowing you to develop a more robust publishing strategy.

For instance, you can see who completed your surveys and see their entire profile with information like identification, age, employment, education, demographics, audience’s listening habits, feedback, and more.

Once you’ve got all these metrics in place, you can then use them to compare and contrast with one another to come up with a more robust publishing strategy. This is something that no other podcast hosting platform does.

Blubrry also offers a free and optional managed WordPress website – designed with all the necessary modules a podcast website needs. In addition, this site automates podcast publishing on your website by using PowerPress Plugin. 

And if you’re not looking to host an entire website, Blubrry offers a podcast landing page with a quick display of the show and listen and subscription module. 

Want to further know where your listeners are coming from and which device they’re using? Blubrry Stats can help you analyze all of that!

However, it’s worth noting that Blubrry’s Standard plan is so basic that you can’t even use your own domain with it. It doesn’t come with advanced statistics or additional themes and plugins either – so be prepared to buy a pricier plan if you want all of those features. 

Other key features include

• It allows private podcasting for secured delivery of audio and video to any device.
• It comes with a podcast media kit – which gives you an overview of your podcast performance.
• It also lets you choose your own logo, branding, and theme.
• You can also use your own domain with its advanced plan.

Pros

• Additional storage is available for an extra charge.
• Listeners’ survey helps build a closer connection with the audience.
• Its visual reports are detailed and easy to understand.

Cons

• Both paid plans offer minimal storage. The maximum is as little as 400MB.

Pricing

It starts at $10/month for 125MB storage, standard statistics, monetization, email and phone support, unlimited downloads, a custom embedded player, and more.

12. Captivate.fm

Captivate takes pride in its simple, easy-to-use dashboard that covers all the necessary functions and metrics to create, distribute, monetize, and promote your podcast.

Although it does not come for free, the range of hosting features and storage and upload capacities makes the price worth it. Captivate is designed by podcasters for podcasters, so it knows about their needs.

Creating a podcast in Captivate is a 5-step process. First, you’ll need the podcast name, author name, podcast cover art, description, category, directory setting, and more. Once you have all the necessary details, you can start importing your podcast into the Captivate Dashboard.

Then copy your current RSS feed into the current feed URL box and choose the current host—and voila! You are ready to go.

As soon as you publish your first episode, your podcast can be listed on one of the directories that Captivate integrates with.

With Captivate Analytics, you can see total downloads, total listeners, unique listeners, website traffic, listener demographic, and more.

It also offers responsive podcast websites where you can select from 3 templates, add bios, sign-up forms, lead generation modules, and more.

Nina Paczka, Community Manager at Resume Now, shares her experience with Captivate.fm, 

“What I like the most is their dashboard – minimalistic yet providing everything you need. If you’re experiencing some trouble, Captivate’s team is there to support you. Considering the above, there’s nothing to dislike there. The platform offers a seven-day free trial. All paid plans cover unlimited podcasts and team members, with access to analytics and marketing tools.”

Other key features include

• Each plan offers unlimited podcasts and unlimited storage.
• You can import, add, and edit podcast transcriptions within Captivate thanks to its support of podcasting 2.0.
• It offers an international support team of 11 that covers four time zones, which means no matter where you are, their customer support will always be available.
• It offers Advanced IAB Tech Lab-certified podcast analytics to all podcasters.

Pros

• Their blog section is the source for every little question you could have while you are using this platform.
• Analytics goes deeper with each metric giving you a complete picture of your podcast performance.
• It offers a 7-day trial with all the features.

Cons

• It does not offer a free version.

Pricing

Starts at $17/month for 12K downloads, unlimited podcasts, unlimited uploads & storage, podcasting 2.0 support, and more.

13. Sounder

Sounder is another podcast platform on this list that offers tools to monetize, analyze, and promote your podcast across global directories. It follows IAB & GARM industry standards to generate accurate episode ratings, transcripts, keywords, summaries, and more within seconds. 

You can create your podcast on Sounder either from scratch or by importing it from an existing platform. Once you sign-up for a free account, you can start with the podcast by entering details such as title, description, category, and artwork.

You can tinker with many more details, including your podcast’s name and description, author name, language, timezone, and more. While setting up these details, you can enable monetization by simply clicking on the relevant option. And that’s it! 

Now you can create an episode by uploading an audio file and adding its title and description. Here you can set episode numbers, types, and artwork. You can also pre-schedule them. 

If you’ve enabled monetization, you can select whether pre or post-rolls ads should go to your show.

Once you publish your podcast, Sounder will help you distribute it to popular listening apps such as Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, and more.

With Sounder Analytics Dashboard, you can get insights into streams, listeners, revenue, listeners’ demographics, keywords, referrals, and more.

Other key features include

• You can have up to four collaborators on your podcast.
• You can publish your podcasts under custom domains.
• It comes with a podcast player with audio search functionality.
• You can host unlimited podcasts in one account.
• If you have 50K+ streams per month, you can get early access to host-read DAI opportunities.

Pros

• Unlimited podcasts.
• Offers a free version for limited features.
• UI is clean and intuitive.

Cons

• Only offers audio podcasting.
• You cannot create membership programs.

Pricing

Available on request.

14. Fusebox

If you’re looking for an affordable podcast hosting platform, then Fusebox is the tool for you! It’s also pretty easy to use and provides a step-by-step guide through the entire process.

To start a podcast using Fusebox, you need to choose whether you’re starting a new podcast or importing from an existing one. In the below image, you can see that the UI is straightforward and easy to follow, even for newbies to podcasting.

If you’re creating your podcast from scratch, you must be ready with the details, such as the podcast title, description, and cover artwork. 

Here’s what the form will look like: 

You can also import data from your existing podcast by simply entering your feed RSS URL. It will lead you to the subscription page, where you can select a free or pro plan.

If you’re a new user of Fusebox or creating a podcast for the first time, you should enable Easy Hosting from your dashboard. It comes in every paid subscription. 

Here, Fusebox will find your podcast and import all the files and data into your Fusebox account – you can just sit back and relax.

Once you’ve set up podcast information, you can start customizing your podcast player. The Branding page lets you select the brand colors that match your podcast or website branding.

You can also add a call to action – a button that prompts listeners to buy your music or sign up for your mailing list. 

You can further: 

• Control the speed of the player
• Add a download button and subscribe button
• Include a custom URL that sends listeners directly to your online store when they click on the cover art in their iTunes library.

Other key features include

• Customizable podcast players will help you stay aligned with your branding.
• Fusebox focuses on the metrics that count, such as downloads, referral sources, and top-performing podcasts and episodes.
• The easy hosting feature comes with step-by-step instructions to create podcasts.
• The built-in mobile player allows you to target listeners on the go.
• The podcast player comes with a download, subscribe, and social sharing buttons.
• It offers three types of podcast players – including sticky player, full player, and single player.

Pros

• Its podcast players are customizable.
• Easy, self-guided UI.

Cons

• The free version forces you to use your own host and gives you a single-track player with limited customization features.
• The starter plan includes only single-track players. To offer the rest of the players to your listeners, you’ll have to upgrade to the Pro plan.

Pricing

Starts at $7.50/month for a single track player, essential analysis, easy hosting, and more.

15. RSS.com

Rss.com is a podcasting app for people on the go. It’s like a Swiss army knife for busy podcasters, with features such as cross-platform analytics, automatic podcast distribution, and unlimited audio storage. 

You can start by creating your podcast from scratch or importing it from an existing podcast platform. Both are super easy. To create from scratch, you will need to enter its title, description, language, and more. 

Check out the image below to see what you will need:

As you can see, the UI is clean, easy to use, and self-explanatory. Every field is explained as you fill it out, and tips appear onscreen if you need more information. Once you create your podcast, you’re ready to upload your first episode. 

The good thing about episodes is that they can be assigned season numbers, episode numbers, and types – giving you the flexibility to publish your episodes in the form of different series or trailers.

If you want to monetize your podcast, you’re in luck – RSS has in-built tools for that. The activation process is also easy and just takes one click. 

Rss.com offers you three ways to monetize your podcasts: donations, bitcoin payments, and sponsor ads.

You can also distribute your podcast to listening platforms such as Google, Amazon, Spotify, Samsung, Amazon Music, and more.

Other key features include

• Its all-in-one dashboard shows you a complete picture of your podcasts. You can see scheduled episodes and navigate to your podcasts, analytics, distribution, or settings. You can also create a new episode from the dashboard.
• Its cross-platform analytics enables you to compare the metrics from different sources. For example, you can determine which podcast channel gives you more listeners or downloads.
• It uses podcasting 2.0 – which means you can transcribe your audio and use them for SEO purposes. 
• From analytics, you can determine the best time to publish your episode and schedule it for the right time.
• With its embedded episode player, you can easily embed your podcast to any third-party website.
• You can get more reach using social share buttons on your podcast players.

Pros

• You can add chapters and soundbites to your episodes.
• You can schedule episodes in advance.
• Your podcasts are automatically distributed to popular podcast platforms.
• It offers a free podcast website.
• Each plan includes a free trial with no credit card.
• Affordable plans.

Cons

• Does not support mobile apps.
• No forever-free plan.
• Does not support any WP plugin.

Pricing

It starts at $4.99/month for unlimited episodes & audio, cross-platform analysis, RSS feed, free website, custom embedded player, and more.

Frequently Asked Questions about Podcast Hosting Platforms 

1. What is a podcast hosting platform?

Podcast hosting platforms are the middleman between you and your audience. They’re a necessary part of the podcast ecosystem — they provide the basic infrastructure that makes it possible for you to create and publish your show.

2. How do I choose a podcast hosting platform?

There are many factors to consider when choosing a podcast hosting platform, including:

• Cost – How much does it cost to use the platform? Paid services don’t always offer better features than free ones, but they may come with more support options or other perks.

• Features – What does the platform offer in terms of features? Does it have things like automated episode creation, automatic distribution, social media integration, and more?

• Support – How good is their support team? Can you reach them if you need help?

• Bandwidth – The amount of data that can be transferred from one location to another in a certain amount of time (usually measured in bits per second). The more bandwidth available on your account, the more listeners will be able to download your episodes without having their connection interrupted or experiencing any buffering issues.
• A built-in audio player – This allows listeners to listen to your episodes without having to download an external app or visit another website. You can even add social sharing buttons so people can easily share your episode on Facebook or Twitter. 

3. Do I need to use a podcast hosting platform?

If you’re just starting out, then it might be easier for you to use a podcast hosting platform because there are so many options available. However, if you have some experience with WordPress, then you can host your own podcast to avoid paying monthly fees and have more control over your content and website design.

4. How does podcast hosting work?

Podcast hosting services provide a platform to upload your audio files as well as convert them into an MP3 format. After uploading your content, it will be available on their servers so that anyone can access them online. 

Most of these services also offer some basic analytics and statistics that help you track how many people have listened to your podcast and where they live. 

Some even offer more advanced analytics like ranking charts, number of downloads per episode, etc., which helps you understand what people like about your show and how they listen to it (e.g., through mobile devices).

5. What do you mean by “Hosting?”

Hosting refers to storing your files on the Internet. It’s like storing your files on an external hard drive, except that they’re stored online rather than on a physical device. When you upload an episode to a podcast hosting platform, it will be saved there so that listeners can access it easily.

6. How do I upload my podcast? 

You need to sign up for an account with a podcast hosting platform (like Libsyn). Once you have your account set up, there is usually an upload tool that allows you to select the files from your computer and add them to your account. 

7. What are the best podcast hosting platforms? 

Libsyn, Buzzsprout, Blubrry, and PodBean are all popular options for podcasters. It really comes down to personal preference and what type of features you’re looking for. You can also check out our post on how to choose a podcast host if you need more information on making this decision. 

8. Can I use iTunes or Stitcher? 

No, those aren’t podcast hosting platforms — they’re directories that people use to find podcasts. You’ll need to host your own MP3 files off-site so that they can be accessed by these directories (and other apps/devices).

9. Do I need a website? 

No! Your podcast will be hosted on a website provided by the platform you choose, so you don’t need your own domain name or web hosting account. You may want to create an email address for your show so listeners can contact you directly with questions or feedback, though.

10. What are the different types of podcast hosting?

There are two main types of podcast hosting: free and paid. Free hosts do not give you full control over your episodes, while paid hosts usually offer more features and flexibility.

Ready to start podcasting with a suitable podcast host?

Hopefully, we’ve answered a few of your questions and given you the information you need to help you pick the right podcast host for your needs. Whether you’re looking for the best professional podcast host, the cheapest option for monetizing your podcasts, or something in between, there are podcast hosting sites out there that will help you meet your specific requirements.

We think the best way to choose whichever podcast hosting service is right for you is to check out how they handle certain features and what level of support they offer.

Note that free podcast hosting services are a great way to get your podcast started. The free option is perfect for a hobbyist or someone who is interested in the process of making a podcast. From there, you can upgrade to paid accounts for a more dedicated podcast hosting service with some of these platforms or go with a self-hosted option. 

Whichever you choose, make sure you read the fine print, so your podcast isn’t censored for inappropriate content or hurt yourself by not having the proper legal disclaimers in place.

 

Featured image by Freepik.

Source

The post 15 Best Podcast Hosting Platforms first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Every once in a while, the blogging zeitgiest seems to coalesce around a certain topic and it’s like the saved articles in my bookmarks folder are having a conversation. The conversation sitting in there now is all about CSS Gradients and I thought I’d link some of the more interesting pieces.

• Day 22: conic gradients — Manuel Matuzovic looked at conic gradients on Day 21 of his 100-day series about modern CSS, providing a nice high-level look at colors, angles, placement, and color stops. Then, on Day 22, he puts it use on the ::backdrop pseudo-element. (By the way, Twitter unexpectedly suspended his account — let’s help right that ship if we can.)
• Do you really understand CSS radial-gradients? — Patrick Brosset has done guide-worthy work here and I’m honestly still working my way through it. But I apready appreciate his clear explanations and demos of things that I still muff up, like keywords for the size and shape of a radial gradient. I’m already linking this up in our own CSS Gradients Guide!
• Highly Customizable Background Gradients — Hey, speaking of radial gradient, Scott Vandehey‘s recipe for one with multiple color stops made the rounds last week. His challenge was to create a gradient pattern that could support different color variations, which would normally be a hot mess of CSS classes and color values for each variation if not for using custom properties. This way, he can assign a custom property for the different colors and placement values for each color stop, then simply update the values depending on the context. And what’s more is that the way custom properties can be updated with JavaScript allowed Scott to build a tool for customizing his gradient pattern, which is generously shared at the end of the post.
• CSS Halftone Patterns — Michelle Barker with a detailed breakdown of Ana Tudor’s “halftone” patterns. The effect is sorta like the dotted ink print of old school newspapers. While Ana uses Houdini under the hood for animation and hover effects, Michelle looks specifically at the halftone effect itself and how it’s constructed with a radial gradient. I especially love the way Michelle shows how to get from a straightforward grid of dots to one where the pattern is staggered a bit. And stick around to the end to see how she punctuates the effect with a mask-image that uses a linear gradient to create a fading effect. I riffed with this pattern a bit, too, and wound up with something neat that looks like a runny ink blot filter.
• A Dashing Navbar Solution — Eric Meyer was given an interesting design challenge for a menu where a dotted line comes out of the “current page” link and becomes part of a larger dotted border along the left edge of the content container. Eric is always a great example of how to think like a front-end developer, and he does it here as he describes the alternate route he took using a linear gradient when he hit a snag with the standard approach of setting border-style: dotted on the element.
• Masked Gradient Dashed Lines — Eric with a follow-up to that last link showing not only how he connected the dashes of a left border to the dashes of a raster image, but how his persnickety design eye convinced him to change his solution to mimic the lower resolution of the image’s dashes using two repeating linear background gradients as a mask-image on the background gradient. So nerdy and great!

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Some Links About CSS Gradients originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

Gifting your loved ones something of their choice can be the best thing you can do for them. But, for most customers, it is quite challenging to choose such gifts. The e-gift cards come to rescue the shoppers in such circumstances.

If we look at the research done by Businesswire, the Global Gift Card Market is estimated to be $845.39 billion in 2022 and is forecasted to reach $2021.64 billion by the end of 2027, growing at a CAGR of 19.05%. So you can see the Global Gift Card Market will continue to grow in the future.

Suppose you have an online store on any popular eCommerce platform such as Magento 2, you should definitely try Magento Extension to Boost sales in Holiday Season.

In this short post, I will discuss everything from the nuts & bolts of e-gift cards to their benefits for your business. 

What is An e-Gift Card & How Does it Work?

An e-gift card, also known as a digital or virtual gift card, is a predefined value-containing card that can be used to make a purchase in a brick-and-mortar store or an online store.

The process from purchasing to redeeming e-gift cards should be effortless to give your customers the best user experience.

The process goes like this:

• The first thing you should do is create various e-gift cards that customers can choose from. Manage them in a proper way so customers can explore and filter gift cards as per requirements. You should use a gift card extension to manage your gift cards easily. 
• After choosing the gift card, provide your customers with an easy, convenient, and fast method to pay for a Gift Card.
• When customers successfully complete the payment process, a unique gift code should be generated that carries the value of the gift card as per the customer’s selected plan.
• After the unique gift code is generated, you should provide a convenient way to send that code to customers’ loved ones. An easy and secure way to send code is via email and SMS.
• Now finally when an e-gift card is received by your loved ones, you should provide convenient methods to redeem that gift card at an online or physical store.

You should also set user-friendly terms and conditions for the usage of e-gift cards. Like, if recipients have not used all the balance of the gift card in single use, they can use the same card for a second time to purchase any product. This will make recipients return to your store and make their purchase more than the remaining gift card balance.

Purpose of e-Gift Cards in Ecommerce Business

If you want to level up your eCommerce business, visibility and customer loyalty can play a vital role in that, and e-gift cards can provide you with both. An e-gift card holder will surely visit your online store at least once, and grant you the opportunity to make your store more visible. The recipient will come to visit your store and explore your products till he/she gets all the benefits of the e-gift card.

Whatsmore, you can offer some more benefits over these e-gift cards and earn your customer’s trust and make them loyal to your brand.

Benefits of Offering e-Gift Cards in eCommerce

Facilitating your customers with e-gift cards can benefit your business in more than one way, such as:

Grow Sales and Revenue

The most crucial benefit of digital gift cards is that they can increase sales on your online store. People often find it challenging to choose the right gift for their family and friends. Moreover, when time is running out, and last-minute gift purchasing is needed, e-gift cards can save the day!

E-Gift cards can also direct more revenue to your online store. Recipients will probably spend more than the predefined amount of e-gift cards while buying any product. People often use e-gift cards as discount money while purchasing a product with a larger value to prevent paying more significant amounts.

Increase Brand Awareness

Another benefit of the e-gift card is increasing your brand awareness. It might be possible that the recipient has never heard of your brand before. In that case, an e-gift card will make that recipient come and explore your store. There is a high chance that the e-gift card recipient will also consider your brand for future purchases.

You can put your brand’s logo on an e-gift card to make it noticeable. Whatsmore, e-gift cards are not bound to any physical form so they can be sent and shared globally. In other words, it can increase your brand awareness globally.

Get New Customers

When customers purchase e-gift cards and send them to their family members and friends, the e-gift card holders are bound to visit your store at least one time. That gives you a fair chance to make a first impression of your online store. Valuable products with the best offers may catch recipients’ attention, and you will get new customers. This also reduces the customer acquisition cost!

Assured Profit of Unused Cards

Many recipients forget about their e-gift cards, and the cards expire without spending a penny. Whatever the reason, the entire amount the e-gift card holds becomes profit for your business. As per the Creditcards, 52% of Millennials, 51% of Generation Z, 43% of Generation X, and 42% of Boomers of the total US adult population are unlikely to have this kind of unused gift card hanging around with them, and eating dust. The total amount of unused cash is roughly $21 billion.

Right Time to Sell e-Gift Cards

The right time to sell e-gift cards will depend on the customers. People are always looking for e-gift cards with the best offers on various occasions, such as birthdays, promotions, anniversaries, and special days like mother’s day & father’s day.

However, e-gift cards have become more demanding at festivals like Christmas and Halloween. You can see a massive jump in e-gift card searches in December for the past several years on Google Trends. Hence, it can significantly boost your business’s sales and revenue if you sell e-gift cards with the best offers in these months.

Wrapping Up

E-gift cards are the perfect and practical gifts you can offer for loved ones! E-gift cards can be a lifesaver when people can’t decide what gift to give to their special one. It can also save a day of last-minute shoppers. Nowadays, almost all brands are providing a range of e-gift cards with various predefined amounts. Offering e-gift cards in your store will surely improve customer experience and grow your business. I hope the above-mentioned benefits are good enough for you to get an e-gift card plugin for your online store.

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With over 2 billion users, YouTube is the place to be when trying to reach a large audience with video content.

But after you’ve uploaded those fantastic videos to your channel, how will you gauge what’s working well and what could use some improvement and optimization? 

That’s where YouTube metrics come in. After all, it doesn’t make sense to spend hours upon hours creating a beautiful video to have it seen by only a handful of people.

This article outlines why you need to keep track of YouTube metrics, which ones are most valuable, and how to get the most from this ongoing exercise.

Let’s get into it!

Why You Need to Track YouTube Metrics

Yes, YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine, which is why video is becoming an increasingly important part of the modern marketing mix. But putting all that effort into content creation doesn’t make sense if you ignore how it’s performing.

And while it may seem like a hassle to keep track of numbers, it’s the only way to get ahead of the competition. Think about it– identifying any data trends helps you to uncover a winning formula for sustainable YouTube success.

By monitoring YouTube metrics and setting KPIs, you’ll understand the following:

• Who’s watching your videos
• The average amount of time viewers look at your videos
• How often actions are taken (e.g., whether a viewer clicks the website link you included,
• or navigate to other videos on your channel)
• What type of video content resonates most
• Areas for improvement (e.g., having a better-designed thumbnail to increase clicks)

Once you get into the habit of monitoring the right YouTube metrics, you’ll quickly see how they help you in the long run–so don’t neglect the importance of it.

The Top 7 YouTube Metrics You Should Know About

Wondering where to begin with YouTube analytics? Have no fear–we’ll break down the most important metrics to keep an eye on. 

1. Average Watch Time

Watch time is one of the core YouTube metrics because it lets you know the average amount of time a viewer looks at your videos, which also provides insight into the exact time (or window) you may be losing viewers.

A short watch time typically means that your video failed to capture–and keep–the viewer’s attention. On the flip side, a significant watch time may mean that viewers find your content intriguing, which is what every YouTuber wants to see.

While watch time is a good metric to keep on your radar, it doesn’t necessarily paint the entire picture. You must consider and contextualize what’s happening with other YouTube metrics. 

This metric also ties to the average percentage viewed, which takes the average watch time and divides it by the length of the video. As with the Google helpful content update, the algorithm rewards content that is deemed “helpful” to the audience. And watch time, alongside the average percentage viewed, helps give the algorithm a sense of whether or not the content was relevant to the search query. 

2. Engagement Rate

This consolidated metric summarizes how a viewer interacts with your video by adding likes, shares, comments, and other user actions. 

Keeping tabs on engagement helps you to identify what resonates most with your YouTube audience and how to leverage video content effectively (e.g., expanding on a well-performing YouTube series).

Like watch time, it isn’t a tell-all of your channel’s overall performance, but it’ll give you some level of insight into what’s going on. 

Engagement rate joins watch time and average percentage viewed as one of the top metrics that YouTube uses inside its super-secret algorithm to decide which videos get those coveted results at the top of the search pages. 

3. Unique Views

Video views in isolation are one thing, but the unique views metric lets you know how many individual users have looked at your content (without counting duplicate user views). That way, you’ll have a better understanding of your content’s exposure to new pairs of eyes.

A climb in unique views indicates that your YouTube videos garner traction and possibly reach a broad subset of viewers. 

Not that a bump in video views, without a corresponding bump in unique views is always a bad thing. That is usually an indication that people are watching the same video multiple times. 

Pro-tip: To maximize your YouTube content reach, be sure to optimize for mobile placement also. In fact, 70% of YouTube viewers are using a mobile device, so you make sure that text and other graphic elements are large enough that they can clearly be seen on a mobile device.  

4. Subscriber Growth Rate

As you put effort into disseminating great YouTube video content, you’ll want to see an uptick in subscribers (especially if you’re aiming to build brand awareness, drive conversions, or increase revenue).

A stall in subscriber growth (or even a decline) should be looked into further and may mean your content needs re-evaluation or improvement in some way (if, of course, you’re looking to grow your YouTube channel). 

It’s also important to tie the subscriber growth rate to the other viewer metrics. For example, keep an eye out if your videos are getting a lot of watches, comments, and engagement, but you’re not getting very many new subscribers. This could be something as simple as adding a “Please Subscribe” request near the beginning and at the end of your videos.

Plus, you can use YouTube Analytics to dig in and figure out exactly where your subscribers are coming from, including whether they subscribed from a particular video, your YouTube channel, or more. If most of your subscribers are coming from a specific video or a topic where you provide expertise, consider making more content like that. 

Pro-Tip: As an ongoing exercise, look at your channel’s demographics (such as age, gender, and geographic location. That way, you’ll know your YouTube audience’s characteristics, allowing you to create relevant content that speaks directly to them. It may even uncover insights into new target audiences. 

5. Impressions Click-Through Rate

When your YouTube video shows up on ‘Recommended’ lists or encourages users to follow through on a specific action (such as visiting your website), it’s important to understand how many people follow through.

That’s where impressions click-through rate comes in. It gives you insight into user intent and how compelled a viewer was to take a prompted action. In turn, it lets you know just how impactful your video content is. 

YouTube thumbnails are one of the most significant drivers of clickthrough rate on YouTube but are often overlooked or undervalued by YouTube creators. Your YouTube thumbnails should clearly align with the topic of the video, catch the eye, and–ideally–highlight the keywords you’ve identified as part of your YouTube SEO processes. 

6. Traffic Sources

To capitalize on the most high-traction traffic sources, you’ll need to know what’s working best and generating a significant number of views.

If you’ve embedded your YouTube content on your website or perhaps reference it regularly on your social media channels, monitoring traffic sources will help you to optimize your YouTube content further and focus on the most promising outlets. This metric also shows you internal traffic sources, which also gives you an idea of where it’s showing up on YouTube (e.g., Suggested Videos, search results, etc.). 

Pro-Tip: See which keywords YouTube users typically use when they click on your video(s). That way, you’ll better understand user search intent and which topics are most applicable. 

7. Most Popular Videos

If you’ve got a YouTube channel with a significant bank of content, ‘Most Popular Videos’ will provide insight into what resonates most with your target audience and what type of content viewers typically gravitate towards.

After learning which videos have performed best, dig a little deeper to figure out why. Did you provide insight into a complex topic? Was it your delivery or offering a unique perspective, perhaps? Whatever the case, use this information to narrow down what works best and how to guide future video content accordingly.

Keep Your YouTube Game Strong by Tracking Metrics

And there you have it! Posting videos to your channel is just one part of the equation.

Metrics and setting appropriate KPIs will help you to meet your YouTube goals, tie them into your big-picture strategy, and keep you on top of your game.

It doesn’t have to be a complex, painstaking activity. By getting in the habit of regularly monitoring YouTube data, you’ll position your YouTube channel for long-term success.

Pro-Tip: Not every metric needs to be a KPI. When deciding on your YouTube goals, determine which metrics affect your brand’s strategic goals (e.g., does watch time directly affect the number of online transactions you want to achieve? Probably not. But it is a good measurement of engagement if that’s the focus of your YouTube channel). So while YouTube metrics are helpful to understand, there’s no need to get lost in a sea of data. Distinguish what’s most important and what should be secondary to keep a clear eye on the growth of your channel. 

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