CareerBuilder found that nearly half of American workers check email after they leave work, and 45% say they do work during non-business hours. Additionally, this phenomenon crosses global borders, prompting new laws in France and a campaign in Japan to limit working hours. Of course, we'd all love a little more balance in our lives. But it's more than that. We need it. Today's "always on" mentality has serious consequences. Stanford professors Joel Goh, Jeffrey Pfeffer, and Stefanos Zenios found that more than 120,000 deaths per year and approximately 5%–8% of annual healthcare costs may be attributable to workplace stress from long working hours, job insecurity, work-family conflict, high job demands, and low social support at work. But achieving work-life balance is hard. Obviously, reducing workplace stress is essential. But, despite finding that those who take vacation and travel are happier in their personal and professional lives, Project Time Off also found that more than half of American workers don't take all of the vacation days they've earned. By contrast, many other countries offer or mandate additional vacation days. For example, The Center for Economic and Policy Research found that the United States is the only country surveyed that doesn't have a law requiring paid leave. Compare that to Germany (20 days), the United Kingdom (28 days), and Australia (20 days). With the exception of the United States, laws in other countries mandate a minimum of 10-30 days of paid leave per year. The Work-Life Balance MatrixWork life balance can (and should) look different for everyone, based on what's most important to you. There may be times in life when you're focused on career and personal development, and other times when your focus turns to family or a favorite hobby. In other words, work-life balance examples run the gamut. But we've got some tips to help you find the work-life balance that's just right for you. Before addressing areas that might be out of balance, it's a good idea to first understand what you value and how satisfied you are with the time you're allocating to those areas of your life. When I was touring colleges, I used a weighted decision matrix to score each campus on the things I cared about. Ever since, I've used this handy tool to evaluate everything from jobs, to apartments, to vacation spots. Here's a sample of a completed matrix, with steps to complete your own, below: Step 1: Create a list of 4-6 categories that most contribute to your satisfaction in life. I recommend using categories that are broad enough to encompass changing life phases, but narrow enough to act upon. You can use anything that contributes to your satisfaction, from hobbies, to career, to family, to spirituality, and volunteer work. I also recommend that these categories have a significant effect on how you make life choices, how you spend your time, and have actionable and measurable steps associated with them. For example, while it may significantly increase your satisfaction to "be a successful person," a better category might be career. Or, if your satisfaction is impacted by "helping people," a more actionable category might be "volunteer work." Step 2: Assign each of the chosen categories a percentage for the amount that the category impacts your satisfaction. For example, if your categories include family, career, hobbies, charity work, and education, you might say that family is 30%, career is 25%, hobbies are 10%, charity work is 20%, and education is 15%. Be honest with yourself when choosing and rating each category. If you honestly don't receive much satisfaction from hobbies, don't give it more weight than career. Step 3: Assign a percentage for your current satisfaction in each category. Are you 100% satisfied in your career? Are you only 50% satisfied with your family life? Go through each category and give an honest percentage with how satisfied you are with that area of your life. Step 4: Multiply the satisfaction percentage with the weight of each category. Now add the categories up. The end percentage is how satisfied you are with your life. What's your total? It's rare than anyone will be 100% satisfied, but maybe 90%? What if your percentage is low, say, 30% satisfied? Step 5: Analyze the results, and determine which areas of your life are causing the most dissatisfaction. What steps can you take to change that? How much of your satisfaction is built on choices and situations within your control, and how much is not in your control? 7 Work-Smart StrategiesOnce you've quantified your life satisfaction, it's time to start tackling areas with lower scores. Most people struggle with finding enough hours in the day to fit it all in, especially for personal time. Working smarter and savvy time management help you free up mental capacity, physical hours, and emotional space to accommodate more of the activities you love. 1. Just say no to low-impact work.We all want to play as a team, but helping out on too many projects sucks up your time, leaving too little for the work that really matters. Setting quality OKRs (objectives and key results) is the key to knowing which activities are high-value, and which will distract you from accomplishing your goals. And this doesn't stop with office tasks. If the committee you've chaired for three years no longer brings you joy, step down and get back to participating in a way that feeds your soul. Are too many hobbies making you feel stressed and frenetic? Pare them down to the activities that bring the most pleasure. If an activity is not bringing you joy and helping you progress towards your goals, give it up! When going through these steps last year, I recognized that I was feeling stressed and guilty about my role as a board member for a local community theater. I kept skipping meetings because of other commitments and I felt like I wasn't contributing. I still wanted to volunteer on an ad-hoc basis, so I sent a note to the board president explaining that while I didn't have time to make the required commitment to board duties for the coming year, I'd still love to participate by helping staff auditions, contributing time and money to opening night festivities, and acting as the house manager for productions. This allowed me to keep the things that brought me joy, and provided much needed support on a more reliable cadence for the theater. 2. Stop multi-tasking.Seriously. How many browser tabs do you have open right now? Multitasking makes you think you're getting more done, but research from the American Psychological Association has shown it reduces productivity by as much as 40%. Instead, break each project into time-bound tasks, and spend focused amounts of time completing each element. Prioritize the tasks that require input from others for completion so that you can finish your portion of the project and hand it off to the next worker. Parallelizing work (where multiple work streams happen at the same time by different people) is an efficient use of time, but trying to do it all yourself is a recipe for disaster. 3. Break work down into achievable tasks.Create a project plan that includes all the tasks you need to accomplish for the quarter. Then, divide the tasks in monthly and weekly to-dos. These can be kept on a team whiteboard, personal notepad, or shared Trello board. Whatever method you choose, make sure that you can check things off the list when complete, and move activities to the next phase of the project when ready. 4. Make your meetings matter.Many people assume a weekly check-in meeting is needed for their projects … but is it? Do you really need to get in a room for 30 minutes to talk about the status of the checklist, instead of looking at the shared board or exchanging comments in writing? Useless meetings waste tons of valuable time, so get 'em off the calendar if they aren't adding value! If you want to take a bold step, delete all the recurring meetings off your calendar for the next quarter. Ask organizers to re-send the invites to meetings you should attend, and confirm why they feel your presence is valuable. You might find that check-ins for old projects never re-appear, and the meetings that remain actually do help you move work forward each quarter. 5. Create checklists.Don't procrastinate on checking things off your list. Sometimes we waste more energy worrying about doing the thing than actually doing the thing itself . David Allen, who wrote the book "Getting Things Done" and offers training on how to be more productive, says that the mind is for having ideas, not holding them. He advocates for making a series of lists to capture and process all the things that you need to accomplish in a day. Once captured, do. Sometimes we get so mired down in the need to make the list perfect, make the steps perfect, make our desk perfect, that we forget that the act of starting means we're one step closing to finishing our task. Once you've got a plan in place, take action. 6. Evaluate your daily schedule.A long commute is another area that eats up time and contributes stress to most peoples' lives. Want to reduce these effects? Try negotiating for a work-from-home day once or twice a week. Gallup found that in 2017, 43% of Americans said they worked remotely at least some of the time, and with collaboration tools like video, chat, and email, you can stay just as connected to your team. If a long commute is non-negotiable, use that time for something that you've deemed important to your work life balance. For instance, if you have a goal to advance your knowledge or learn a new skill, you can listen to podcasts or audiobooks, or if you want to focus on well-being you can use apps like Headspace that offer guided meditations for relaxation. 7. Make time for self-care.As you're thinking about your daily plans, revisit your routines for physical health. You can gain time and nutrition benefits by meal planning and cooking in bulk on the weekends. Freeze meals in pre-portioned containers for easy reheating in the evenings. The time and stress you save each evening allows you to spend more time unwinding with your family, and getting to bed at a reasonable hour. Speaking of which … how's your sleep schedule? Are you going to bed at a reasonable time, getting a solid night's rest, and waking with energy? If not, commit to a bedtime routine for 30 days, and see how you feel at the end. Keep the elements that improve your rest, and experiment with changes to ensure you get a good night's sleep. Of course, all of these new habits take time to build and practice to maintain. Some tactics, like deleting all your meetings and negotiating a regular WFH day, can be done right away. Others, like declining low-impact work and focusing on tasks individually, require diligent attention throughout the year. This article was originally published on Atlassian.com and republished with permission. via Marketing https://ift.tt/36nx4Jv tin tran https://tintran.org/mmo 0919992336 tin tran #tintran #trantantin #trantin
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Want to be sure your next marketing plan is optimized for the future? Looking for a framework to follow? In this article, you’ll discover a four-step process to audit and adjust your next marketing plan. #1: Evaluate Your Branding and Online Footprint to Ensure Consistency First, you need to address brand health. Does your brand […] The post How to Optimize Your Online Marketing Plan: A 4-Step Process appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner. via Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/2QaKPp6 tin tran https://tintran.org 0919992336 tin tran #tintran #trantantin #trantin Review Summary Review Summary 9Support8Functionality9Ease-Of-Use8User-Friendly9Reliable8Integration9Pricing8SEO Tool Pros There are 150K users with at least 3 sites on average8% conversion rate of Free to PaidMore than 50K active UsersMore than 50K active Email subscribersSEO Newsletter, Marketing & Promotions.39K active Email subscribers The post (Updated) Squirrly Review 2019 Should You Buy This ? (Pros & Cons) appeared first on Bloggers Ideas. via Bloggers Ideas https://ift.tt/39sAUTg tin tran https://tintran.org 0919992336 tin tran #tintran #trantantin #trantin Although Cyber Monday is described as the biggest online shopping event of the year, more than $7.4 billion in online purchases were made on Black Friday in 2019. While a majority of Black Friday purchases happened online, a Fiserv study found that brick-and-mortar store purchases rose by 4.2% compared to 2018. The same study found that a quarter of people traveled 25 miles or more to stores with Black Friday discounts. By now, you may know that this was one of the biggest Black Fridays ever. But, as a marketer, you might be wondering what drove people to overcrowded stores and ecommerce websites during the national shopping event. You also might want to learn more about consumer shopping behaviors to strengthen your overall strategy in 2020. To help you discover more about the consumer behaviors behind Black Friday's 2019 results, I surveyed a pool of more than 300 people using Lucid Software to learn what led them to engage with or purchase products in Black Friday ads. In this post, I'll fill you in on what I learned from these consumers, arm you with other helpful stats and facts about Black Friday, and offer takeaways that you can use in 2020. Black Friday's Online Ad EngagementWith crazy Black Friday deals comes an inundation of Black Friday ads throughout all forms of media. It's no surprise that millions of people shopped on Black Friday -- but which ad strategies actually led to purchases? With more brick and mortar stores than ever, and the bombardment of ads that comes with them, do these Black Friday promotions actually influence purchases? To learn more about the Black Friday ad behaviors, I asked consumers about how they interacted with ads for the shopping holiday. While you might think that people would get annoyed with the constant stream of ads, or try to completely disregard them, you'll be slightly surprised by the results. When I asked participants, "Did you engage with any online ads or promotions for Black Friday?", 61% said they engaged with one or more ads in some way, while only 39% said they disregarded them. Data Source: Lucid Software Of that 61% of people who engaged with one or more ads, 38% clicked on the promotions without making a purchase, while 23% converted to a customer after clicking the ad. When it comes to where people saw the ads they clicked on, 62% found promotions on social media. Data Source: Lucid Software "Non-social media sites" were also a fairly successful place for promotion, with 38% of people saying they clicked on ads in these locations. These sites could include websites owned by other brands where a native ad is located, search engine platforms, or other areas of the web that aren't considered social media. Although only 32% of people said they clicked on ads shown in marketing emails, recent research still shows that this tactic is still a vital part of digital marketing. In fact, CampaignMonitor recently published research showing that email marketing was responsible for 20% of holiday-related traffic. Aside from the ad's location, the product or service advertised could have played a role in an audience's level of engagement. To get an idea of which products were most popular, I asked survey participants, "Which best describes the products or services that were featured in the Black Friday ads you clicked on." Of those who said they clicked on or purchased something from an ad in the first question of the survey, roughly 36% said the ads they engaged with featured products in the "Gadgets and Technology" category. Meanwhile, two other popular categories were "Fashion and Beauty" and "Home Goods, Furniture, and Decor" which both received votes from more than 18% of participants. Ads and Black Friday Foot TrafficIn 2019, in-store Black Friday foot traffic dropped 6% lower than in 2018. However, this shopping event was still significant for brick-and-mortar stores as earnings from in-store purchases still rose by 4.2%. Much of the in-store foot traffic and purchases could have also been because of ads. When I asked consumers if they "entered a store on Black Friday after seeing an ad or promotion for its sales," more than half said, "Yes." Data Source: Lucid Software To determine how much impact online ads made on Black Friday foot traffic as compared to physical ads, I asked the same consumers, "Where did you see the Black Friday ads for the store you visited on Black Friday?" Those surveyed could choose from a long list of ad style options from more digital social media promotions to traditional TV commercials or newspaper advertisements. Although these participants decided to brave crowded physical stores on Black Friday, the survey found that they weren't pulled into them by physical or more traditional ads like billboards, newspaper promotions, or commercials. Again, social media was the front-runner, as 38% of people who entered stores on Black Friday found ads on these types of platforms first. Aside from social media, 15% of those who visited a store due to a Black Friday ad said they saw it on the store's own website. Only small portions of those surveyed said they went to a store after seeing television commercials (7%), email marketing ads (7%), newspaper promotions (8%), or physical signage (1%). However, keep in mind that this was still a rather small sample and that it should not completely rearrange your marketing strategy in 2020. While only 7% of those surveyed found ads that led them to visit a physical store in marketing newsletters, data shows that including ads and offers in emails is still a vital strategy for gaining web visits, leads, and even in-store foot traffic. We don't encourage pulling email marketing from your strategy just because of one pool of shoppers' Black Friday behaviors. What Black Friday Means for 2020 MarketingIf you're running a brick-and-mortar or ecommerce operation, these results, as well as mounting research show the importance of developing or constantly improving on a web presence, whether that means purchasing online ad space or taking on free strategies like building a social media profile or creating a Google My Business for your store. Due to social media's popularity and track record for ROI, you'll definitely want to consider advertising or at least posting for free about your products on platforms that align well with your audience if you aren't doing so already. If you're trying to build your social presence, or determine which platforms you should be promoting your products or deals on, check out this research-based blog post where I reveal which social media platforms people use to learn about products. You should also consider experimenting with or expanding on other online tactics to expand on or create a highly digital promotional strategy. For example, continue marketing products your own website, placing native ads on other websites, and embracing email marketing within your strategy. Boosting your web presence will not only help you promote sales and events, such as Black Friday. But this strategy could also boost brand awareness and conversions throughout the rest of the year. via Marketing https://ift.tt/39pq4xt tin tran https://tintran.org/mmo 0919992336 tin tran #tintran #trantantin #trantin Although Cyber Monday is described as the biggest online shopping event of the year, more than $7.4 billion in online purchases were made on Black Friday in 2019. While a majority of Black Friday purchases happened online, a Fiserv study found that brick-and-mortar store purchases rose by 4.2% compared to 2018. The same study found that a quarter of people traveled 25 miles or more to stores with Black Friday discounts. By now, you may know that this was one of the biggest Black Fridays ever. But, as a marketer, you might be wondering what drove people to overcrowded stores and ecommerce websites during the national shopping event. You also might want to learn more about consumer shopping behaviors to strengthen your overall strategy in 2020. To help you discover more about the consumer behaviors behind Black Friday's 2019 results, I surveyed a pool of more than 300 people using Lucid Software to learn what led them to engage with or purchase products in Black Friday ads. In this post, I'll fill you in on what I learned from these consumers, arm you with other helpful stats and facts about Black Friday, and offer takeaways that you can use in 2020. Black Friday's Online Ad EngagementWith crazy Black Friday deals comes an inundation of Black Friday ads throughout all forms of media. It's no surprise that millions of people shopped on Black Friday -- but which ad strategies actually led to purchases? With more brick and mortar stores than ever, and the bombardment of ads that comes with them, do these Black Friday promotions actually influence purchases? To learn more about the Black Friday ad behaviors, I asked consumers about how they interacted with ads for the shopping holiday. While you might think that people would get annoyed with the constant stream of ads, or try to completely disregard them, you'll be slightly surprised by the results. When I asked participants, "Did you engage with any online ads or promotions for Black Friday?", 61% said they engaged with one or more ads in some way, while only 39% said they disregarded them. Data Source: Lucid Software Of that 61% of people who engaged with one or more ads, 38% clicked on the promotions without making a purchase, while 23% converted to a customer after clicking the ad. When it comes to where people saw the ads they clicked on, 62% found promotions on social media. Data Source: Lucid Software "Non-social media sites" were also a fairly successful place for promotion, with 38% of people saying they clicked on ads in these locations. These sites could include websites owned by other brands where a native ad is located, search engine platforms, or other areas of the web that aren't considered social media. Although only 32% of people said they clicked on ads shown in marketing emails, recent research still shows that this tactic is still a vital part of digital marketing. In fact, CampaignMonitor recently published research showing that email marketing was responsible for 20% of holiday-related traffic. Aside from the ad's location, the product or service advertised could have played a role in an audience's level of engagement. To get an idea of which products were most popular, I asked survey participants, "Which best describes the products or services that were featured in the Black Friday ads you clicked on." Of those who said they clicked on or purchased something from an ad in the first question of the survey, roughly 36% said the ads they engaged with featured products in the "Gadgets and Technology" category. Meanwhile, two other popular categories were "Fashion and Beauty" and "Home Goods, Furniture, and Decor" which both received votes from more than 18% of participants. Ads and Black Friday Foot TrafficIn 2019, in-store Black Friday foot traffic dropped 6% lower than in 2018. However, this shopping event was still significant for brick-and-mortar stores as earnings from in-store purchases still rose by 4.2%. Much of the in-store foot traffic and purchases could have also been because of ads. When I asked consumers if they "entered a store on Black Friday after seeing an ad or promotion for its sales," more than half said, "Yes." Data Source: Lucid Software To determine how much impact online ads made on Black Friday foot traffic as compared to physical ads, I asked the same consumers, "Where did you see the Black Friday ads for the store you visited on Black Friday?" Those surveyed could choose from a long list of ad style options from more digital social media promotions to traditional TV commercials or newspaper advertisements. Although these participants decided to brave crowded physical stores on Black Friday, the survey found that they weren't pulled into them by physical or more traditional ads like billboards, newspaper promotions, or commercials. Again, social media was the front-runner, as 38% of people who entered stores on Black Friday found ads on these types of platforms first. Aside from social media, 15% of those who visited a store due to a Black Friday ad said they saw it on the store's own website. Only small portions of those surveyed said they went to a store after seeing television commercials (7%), email marketing ads (7%), newspaper promotions (8%), or physical signage (1%). However, keep in mind that this was still a rather small sample and that it should not completely rearrange your marketing strategy in 2020. While only 7% of those surveyed found ads that led them to visit a physical store in marketing newsletters, data shows that including ads and offers in emails is still a vital strategy for gaining web visits, leads, and even in-store foot traffic. We don't encourage pulling email marketing from your strategy just because of one pool of shoppers' Black Friday behaviors. What Black Friday Means for 2020 MarketingIf you're running a brick-and-mortar or ecommerce operation, these results, as well as mounting research show the importance of developing or constantly improving on a web presence, whether that means purchasing online ad space or taking on free strategies like building a social media profile or creating a Google My Business for your store. Due to social media's popularity and track record for ROI, you'll definitely want to consider advertising or at least posting for free about your products on platforms that align well with your audience if you aren't doing so already. If you're trying to build your social presence, or determine which platforms you should be promoting your products or deals on, check out this research-based blog post where I reveal which social media platforms people use to learn about products. You should also consider experimenting with or expanding on other online tactics to expand on or create a highly digital promotional strategy. For example, continue marketing products your own website, placing native ads on other websites, and embracing email marketing within your strategy. Boosting your web presence will not only help you promote sales and events, such as Black Friday. But this strategy could also boost brand awareness and conversions throughout the rest of the year. via Marketing https://ift.tt/2Q8muQx tin tran https://tintran.org/mmo 0919992336 tin tran #tintran #trantantin #trantin My coworkers and I love personality tests. We share them with each other to have fun and get to know each other — an important task since half of our team is remote and sprinkled across the country. Personality tests have allowed us to gain insight into our lives outside of work. They’ve also helped us better understand our communication and collaboration styles, which has made projects, meetings, and feedback sessions much easier to navigate. Personality tests can be major assets for teams of any size, location, and skill set. They unlock professional preferences such as how each coworker likes to receive criticism and feedback, and they can boost camaraderie and communication between even the most polar opposite team members. Let’s dive into the accuracy of personality tests and how to navigate results in the workplace. How accurate are personality tests?Personality tests are like going to the gym — you only get out what you put in. If you don’t take personality testing seriously, you shouldn’t expect accurate results. This is true for any questionnaire you take, but it especially applies to the handful of scientifically-designed personality tests that are often taken within, and applied to, professional settings. Certain tests — such as the DiSC Assessment, Myers-Briggs, and Holland Code Career Test — were developed by psychologists with a background in mental health and scientific experimentation. Professional opinions about each test vary, but companies around the world still use them, if only just to learn more about their employees and coworkers. In my opinion (which is not that of a trained psychologist or test-maker), personality tests do have some merit. I’ve taken quite a few professionally-designed tests — and a healthy serving of the fun ones on Buzzfeed, but we won’t count those — and have seen a lot of accuracy in my results. I’ve also seen some crazy, out-of-character results. The fact of the matter is, while there are some truths in the Myers-Briggs, DiSC, and Enneagram, our personalities, preferences, and day-to-day dispositions vary too much to take those results as concrete truth. I think the question here isn’t as much about the accuracy of personality tests (because that question is directly proportional to how seriously your employees take the test, and you can’t count on everyone to do so). I think the more important ask is this — what should you do with the results? Personality tests are fantastic conversation-starters. They’re good at helping us articulate those intangible preferences, aversions, habits, and weaknesses we otherwise don’t know how to name. They’re also fun for making connections and bridging gaps at work. As insightful as personality tests are, however, they shouldn’t be the guiding light in how you treat and collaborate with your team — nor should they be the defining factor for hiring and firing decisions. Now, let’s unpack the pros and cons of personality tests. Pros and Cons of Personality TestsPersonality tests are fun, insightful activities — unless they’re used for major employment and business decisions. If this is the case, it’s wise to scrutinize the benefits and drawbacks of such tools to avoid blindly relying on nuanced results.
When it comes to using personality tests as management tools, don’t allow the results to speak for your employees. Let them complement each person, not replace them — and be careful not to judge a person by their personality test results. via Marketing https://ift.tt/2Qv8W0K tin tran https://tintran.org/mmo 0919992336 tin tran #tintran #trantantin #trantin Does your business host events, workshops, or training experiences? Looking for an effective way to promote these events on Instagram? In this article, you’ll learn how to document live events in Instagram Stories to increase awareness and sales for the next live event. Why Document Live Events With Instagram Stories? A live event can be […] The post How to Use Instagram Stories to Promote a Live Event appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner. via Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/3567LtW tin tran https://tintran.org 0919992336 tin tran #tintran #trantantin #trantin Posted by Tom-Anthony Most of us have done site speed audits, or seen audits done by others. These can be really helpful for businesses, but I often find they're quite narrow in focus. Typically we use well-known tools that throw up a bunch of things to look at, and then we dive into things from there. However, if we dig deeper, there are often other ideas on how site speed can be improved. I often see plenty of opportunities that are never covered in site speed audits. Most site speed improvements are the result of a bunch of small changes, and so in this post I’m going to cover a few ideas that I’ve never seen in any site speed audit, all of which can make a difference. A different angle on image optimizationConsider optimized SVGs over PNGsI was recently looking to book some tickets to see Frozen 2 (because of, erm, my kids...) and so landed on this page. It makes use of three SVG images for transport icons: SVG images are vector images, so they're well-suited for things like icons; if you have images displayed as PNGs you may want to ask your designers for the original SVGs, as there can be considerable savings. Though not always better, using an SVG can save 60% of the filesize. In this case, these icons come in at about 1.2k each, so they are quite small. They would probably fly under the radar of site speed audits (and neither Page Speed Insights or GTMetrix mention these images at all for this page). So you may be thinking, “They're less than 5k combined — you should look for bigger issues!”, but let's take a look. Firstly, we can run them all through Jake Archibald’s SVG compression tool; this is a great free tool and on larger SVGs it can make a big difference. In this case the files are small, so you may still be thinking "Why bother?" The tool compresses them without any loss in quality from ~1240 bytes to ~630 bytes — a good ratio but not much of an overall saving. However… now that we've compressed them, we can think differently about delivering them… Inline imagesGTMetrix makes recommendations around inlining small bits of CSS or JS, but doesn’t mention inlining images. Images can also be inlined, and sometimes this can be the right approach. If you consider that even a very small image file requires a complete round trip (which can have a very real impact on speed), even for small files this can take a long time. In the case of the Cineworld transport images above, I simulated a "Fast 3G" connection and saw: The site is not using HTTP2 so there is a long wait period, and then the image (which is 1.2kb) takes almost 600ms to load (no HTTP2 also means this is blocking other requests). There are three of these images, so between them they can be having a real impact on page speed. However, we've now compressed them to only a few hundred bytes each, and SVG images are actually made up of markup in a similar fashion to HTML: You can actually put SVG markup directly into an HTML document! If we do this with all three of the transport images, the compressed HTML for this page that is sent from the server to our browser increases from 31,182 bytes to 31,532 bytes — an increase of only 350 bytes for all 3 images! So to recap:
Some of you may have realized that if the images were not inline they could be cached separately, so future page requests wouldn’t need to refetch them. But if we consider:
Takeaway: Consider where there are opportunities to use SVGs instead of PNGs. Takeaway: Make sure you optimize the SVG images, use the free tool I linked to. Takeaway: Inlining small images can make sense and bring outsized performance gains. Note: You can also inline PNGs — see this guide. Note: For optimized PNG/JPG images, try Kraken. Back off, JavaScript! HTML can handle this...So often nowadays, thanks to the prevalence of JavaScript libraries that offer an off-the-shelf solution, I find JavaScript being used for functionality that could be achieved without it. More JS libraries means more to download, maybe more round trips for additional files from the server, and then the JavaScript execution time and costs themselves. I have a lot of sympathy for how you get to this point. Developers are often given poor briefs/specs that fail to specify anything about performance, only function. They are often time-poor and so it's easy to end up just dropping something in. However, a lot of progress has been made in terms of the functionality that can be achieved with HTML and or CSS. Let's look at some examples. Combo box with searchDropdown boxes that have a text search option are a fairly common interface element nowadays. One recent article I came across described how to use the Select2 Javascript library to make such a list: It is a useful UI element, and can help your users. However, in the Select2 library is a JavaScript library, which in turn relies on some CSS and the JQuery library. This means three round trips to collect a bunch of files of varying sizes:
This is not ideal for site speed, but we could certainly make the case it is worth it in order to have a streamlined interface for users. However, it is actually possible to have this functionality out of the box with the HTML datalist element: This allows the user to search through the list or to free type their own response, so provides the same functionality. Furthermore, it has a native interface on smartphones! You can see this in action in this codepen. Details/SummaryLonelyPlanet has a beautiful website, and I was looking at this page about Spain, which has a ‘Read More’ link that most web users will be familiar with: Like almost every implementation of this that I see, they have used a JavaScript library to implement this, and once again this comes with a bunch of overheads. However, HTML has a pair of built-in tags called details and summary, which are designed to implement this functionality exactly. For free and natively in HTML. No overheads, and more accessible for users needing a screen reader, while also conveying semantic meaning to Google. These tags can be styled in various flexible ways with CSS and recreate most of the JS versions I have seen out there. Check out a simple demo here: https://codepen.io/TomAnthony/pen/GRRLrmm ...and moreFor more examples of functionality that you can achieve with HTML instead of JS, check out these links:
Takeaway: Examine the functionality of your sites and see where there may be opportunities to reduce your reliance on large Javascript libraries where there are native HTML/CSS options. Takeaway: Remember that it isn’t only the size of the JS files that is problematic, but the number of round trips that are required. Note: There are cases where you should use the JS solution, but it is important to weigh up the pros and cons. Networking tune-upsEvery time the browser has to collect resources from a server, it has to send a message across the internet and back; the speed of this is limited by the speed of light. This may sound like a ridiculous thing to concern ourselves with, but it means that even small requests add time to the page load. If you didn’t catch the link above, my post explaining HTTP2 discusses this issue in more detail. There are some things we can do to help either reduce the distance of these requests or to reduce the number of round trips needed. These are a little bit more technical, but can achieve some real wins. TLS 1.3TLS (or SSL) is the encryption technology used to secure HTTPS connections. Historically it has taken two round trips between the browser and the server to setup that encryption — if the user is 50ms away from the server, then this means 200ms per connection. Keep in mind that Google historically recommends aiming for 200ms to deliver the HTML (this seems slightly relaxed in more recent updates); you're losing a lot of that time here. The recently defined TLS 1.3 standard reduces this from two round trips to just one, which can shave some precious time off the users initial connection to your website. Speak to your tech team about migrating to TLS 1.3; browsers that don’t support it will fallback to TLS 1.2 without issue. All of this is behind the scenes and is not a migration of any sort. There is no reason not to do this. If you are using a CDN, then it can be as simple as just turning it on. You can use this tool to check which versions of TLS you have enabled. QUIC / HTTP 3Over the last 2-3 years we have seen a number of sites move from HTTP 1.1 to HTTP 2, which is a behind-the-scenes upgrade which can make a real improvement to speed (see my link above if you want to read more). Right off the back of that, there is an emerging pair of standards known as QUIC + HTTP/3, which further optimize the connection between the browser and the server, further reducing the round trips required. Support for these is only just beginning to become viable, but if you are a CloudFlare customer you can enable that today and over the coming 6 months as Chrome and Firefox roll support out, your users will get a speed boost. Read more here: https://blog.cloudflare.com/http3-the-past-present-and-future/ Super routingWhen users connect to your website, they have to open network connections from wherever they are to your servers (or your CDN). If you imagine the internet as a series of roads, then you could imagine they need to ‘drive’ to your server across these roads. However, that means congestion and traffic jams. As it turns out, some of the large cloud companies have their own private roads which have fewer potholes, less traffic, and improved speed limits. If only your website visitors could get access to these roads, they could ‘drive’ to you faster! Well, guess what? They can! For CloudFlare, they provide this access via their Argo product, whereas if you are on AWS at all then you can use their Global Accelerator. This allows requests to your website to make use of their private networks and get a potential speed boost. Both are very cheap if you are already customers. Takeaway: A lot of these sorts of benefits are considerably easier to get if you're using a CDN. If you're not already using a CDN, then you probably should be. CloudFlare is a great choice, as is CloudFront if you are using AWS. Fastly is the most configurable of them if you're more of a pro. Takeaway: TLS 1.3 is now very widely supported and offers a significant speed improvement for new connections. Takeaway: QUIC / HTTP3 are only just starting to get support, but over the coming months this will roll out more widely. QUIC includes the benefits of TLS 1.3 as well as more. A typical HTTP2 connection nowadays needs 3 round trips to open; QUIC needs just one! Takeaway: If you're on CloudFlare or AWS, then there is potential to get speed ups just from flipping a switch to turn on smart routing features. Let CSS do moreAbove I talked about how HTML has built-in functionality that you can leverage to save relying on solutions that are ‘home-rolled’ and thus require more code (and processing on the browsers side) to implement. Here I'll talk about some examples where CSS can do the same for you. Reuse imagesOften you find pages that are using similar images throughout the page in several places. For example, variations on a logo in different colors, or arrows that point in both directions. As unique assets (however similar they may be), each of these needs to be downloaded separately. Returning to my hunt for cinema tickets above, where I was looking at this page, we can see a carousel that has left and right arrows: Similarly to the logic used above, while these image files are small, they still require a round trip to fetch from the server. However, the arrows are identical — just pointing in opposite directions! It's easy for us to use CSS’s transform functionality to use one image for both directions: You can check out this codepen for an example. Another example is when the same logo appears in different styles on different parts of the page; often they will load multiple variations, which is not necessary. CSS can re-color logos for you in a variety of ways: There is a codepen here showing this technique in action. If you want to calculate the CSS filter value required to reach an arbitrary color, then check out this amazing color calculator. Interactions (e.g. menus & tabs)Often navigation elements such as menus and tabs are implemented in JavaScript, but these too can be done in pure CSS. Check out this codepen for an example: AnimationsCSS3 introduced a lot of powerful animation capability into CSS. Often these are not only faster than JavaScript versions, but can also be smoother too as they can run in the native code of the operating system rather than having to execute relatively slower Javascript. Check out Dozing Bird as one example: You can find plenty more in this article. CSS animations can add a lot of character to pages at a relatively small performance cost. ...and moreFor more examples of functionality that you can achieve using pure CSS solutions, take a look at:
Takeaway: Use CSS to optimize how many files you have to load using rotations or filters. Takeaway: CSS animations can add character to pages, and often require less resources than JavaScript. Takeaway: CSS is perfectly capable of implementing many interactive UI elements. Wrap upHopefully you've found these examples useful in themselves, but the broader point I want to make is that we should all try to think a bit more out of the box with regards to site speed. Of particular importance is reducing the number of round trips needed to the server; even small assets take some time to fetch and can have an appreciable impact on performance (especially mobile). There are plenty more ideas than we've covered here, so please do jump into the comments if you have other things you have come across. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! via The Moz Blog https://ift.tt/2u3vGgK tin tran https://ift.tt/2zmt50V 0919992336 tin tran #tintran #trantantin #trantin As a customer-facing representative — whether you work in sales, service, or support — you’re probably used to working in a busy, noisy office space. Maybe you work on a loud sales floor surrounded by reps chatting on the phone with leads. Perhaps you work in an office space with customer service and support reps working to assist customers over the phone or video chat throughout the day. Whatever the cause of your workspace being noisy, it’s not always easy to block out the environment around you. That’s why we’ve compiled the following list of tips and tricks HubSpotters use to stay productive and focused in a noisy, busy, and sometimes, distracting workspace. Before diving into the examples from HubSpotters, let’s take a look at some all-encompassing and actionable techniques to improve your productivity. Now, let’s hear from HubSpotters about how they use these specific tips and techniques. 1. Block time on your calendar or communicate your need for disruption-free time to your coworkers.
2. Invest in noise-canceling headphones.
3. Listen to white noise or music (specifically, without lyrics).
4. Move around, find a quiet space elsewhere, or work remotely when possible.
5. Make daily to-do lists and micro-goals, then cross them off items upon completion.
6. Experiment with tactics that are specific to your particular role in the office.
Stay Focused and ProductiveNo matter what your current technique is for staying productive on a noisy floor, don’t be afraid to chat with your fellow reps about their favorite tactics. Or, try using one of these tips from HubSpotters located across the globe. Who knows? You might just find your new favorite strategy. via Marketing https://ift.tt/2Mv3glV tin tran https://tintran.org/mmo 0919992336 tin tran #tintran #trantantin #trantin Want to craft better stories in your marketing? Wondering what makes a good story? To explore the power of stories in marketing, I interview Kindra Hall on the Social Media Marketing Podcast. Kindra is the author of Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business. She’s also a keynote […] The post Creating Stories That Stick: How Marketers Can Win With Story appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner. via Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/34ZePsi tin tran https://tintran.org 0919992336 tin tran #tintran #trantantin #trantin |
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