Importance of branding for your business
Brands are more important now than ever before. Decades ago, branding helped identify a product and distinguish it from other products and services. In this age, branding is more complex and even more important.
Branding doesn't happen overnight, it's quite a long process.
Branding includes every part of a consumer's experience, from logo to your site, social media, advertising and so on. Many businesses overlook branding efforts because they think of themselves as a business and not a brand.
In simple terms, your brand is defined by a customer's perception of your business.
Let's take a look at a few ways a strong brand impacts your business :
Generates New Customers
A strong brand generates referrals. Would it be possible to tell a friend about the new product that you love If you couldn't remember the brand? The word 'brand' is used because the goal is to leave an indelible impression. People are constantly talking and sharing information about the brands they love. It's all about word-of-mouth when it comes to successful brands.
Improves Recognition
One of the main reasons branding is important is because its how a company gains recognition and becomes familiar with consumers. One of the major components of a brand is its logo as it is essentially the face of the company. Having a powerful and memorable logo for your business is crucial to make an impression.
Drives a Higher Price Point
Great branding is everything when it comes to making your company more desirable to your target audience. Companies like Apple or Starbucks is more valuable thanks to branding alone. The brand makes the company stand out from the rest of the crowd.
Creates Trust
To develop elusive trust, you must convey why consumers should try you out. The more your audience know about your business, the more they trust you.
Having a professional appearance and strategic branding helps your company build trust with the consumers. Potential clients or consumers trust your brand when your company professionally presents itself and has social proof that your products and services are of great quality.
Improves Employee Satisfaction
Working for an established brand can often help employees satisfied with work. Besides, when employees work for a reputed brand, they are more likely to work in the direction to meet the goals the owner has set.
Wrapping It Up
Good branding brings about greater financial returns, improved employee performance, greater loyalty and brand perception among others.
Habits of Highly Effective Content Creators
Content marketing is an important tool that businesses use to generate leads, engage users, increase revenue, improve brand awareness and ROI. Content creation is an essential part of any marketing strategy. Content marketing focuses on editing, writing and publishing content online to a targeted audience.
But how can one be a great content creator?
Keep in mind that it's not going to happen overnight. Becoming a seasoned content creator takes time, it doesn't happen overnight and it shouldn't. For starters, while being naturally creative is important, it is also equally important to have a strong understanding of the subject, its internal and external factors greatly help during the process.
Just about anyone can report a topic but only a hardened content creator can reach their target audience with their work.
We've assembled a few of the habits of great content creators that are worth taking note of,
Habit #1 Understand Your Target Audience
Studying your audience is one step that simply cannot be skipped. Content creators thrive on this. To create content that the audiences love, there needs to be an in-depth understanding of that audience.
1. Who am I creating content for?
2. What's the personality I am going for?
3. What's my target audience's age?
Different audiences are going to have different questions, needs, and problems. To tackle all those, researching in-depth is crucial.
Habit #2 They Write Consistently
When it comes to posting, striking a balance between posting too often and rarely is key. Learning to find a way to post within that grey area is something that needs to be taken into account. Developing a plan for posting helps set expectations, build a consistent and loyal audience. Without overwhelming readers with excessive content, crafting new content regularly is necessary to reach people.
Habit #3 They Update Regularly
Great content creators know how to keep things fresh. They're aware of the latest information and updates to gain a competitive edge over others and also to enhance their user's experience. Eventually content turns stale, repetitive or outdated. They need to be constantly updating according to the changing environment.
Habit #4 Stand Out From The Crowd
There are a whole lot of content creators in every industry. What makes one stand out from the crowd? What is it that one can bring to the table that other content creators can't? To stand out, these are some of the hints: have a personality, diversify into a new medium, create fresh and original content, promote on different platforms and gain trust over time.
Habit #5 Networking All The Time
Successful content creators seize every opportunity they find. They accept the fact there's always more to learn and open to ideas. Networking makes one do exactly that. They're known to make full use of social media platforms. Also, following and collaborating with leaders in the industry. If it's hard to start networking big right away, take it easy and start small with colleagues.
Habit #6 Question Everything
Even seasoned content creators are always out looking for information that's being promoted. Curiosity has always been a common trait of great creators. Being so often leads to exploring new thoughts along the way. It isn't always about the existing problems but also about finding unidentified problems worth solving.
Bottom Line
Creating great content isn't easy, it takes time and effort. Most of the top content creators have attained that level after years of following a successful routine. Our list of habits gives you insights, so don't forget to note it down! In short: read, write, update, be unique and question everything!
How to Overcome Font Rendering Issues in Browsers?
Fonts play a crucial role in how quickly a web page renders. Fonts of large headings especially look different than what we see in design tools like Adobe XD, Photoshop, Sketch and so on since they have anti-aliasing engines to smoothen the fonts. The fonts look blocky on the web and nothing close to what it looks like in design tools. I believe most developers would stand by that fact.
The usage of custom fonts has steadily increased over the years.
Why do people use custom fonts?
Companies usually use custom fonts to stand out. However, custom fonts come with a cost. Some of the issues that usually tag along with custom fonts are performance issues and slow loading time. So custom fonts may not be the most ideal approach for most websites. Fonts need to be loaded quickly for optimal user experience hence it's a priority.
Now, why do issues occur?
Let's take a look at some of the reasons whyThe fonts that the design team use are usually print-friendly and not web-friendly.
Custom fonts are quite heavy.
How does it work under the hood?
First, the contents will be rendered using default font family of the browser or device.The chosen font family will be applied over the contents. If there’s no delay between applying the font family over the contents the user won't see any transitions over font family.
But if there is a delay in receiving the font family, the user will face font family transitions. And this is not a recommended approach.
Usually, all custom fonts were called using @font-face. When the browser encounters the font family it will check whether the custom font is locally available. If it's available, it will render the font or else it will download the fonts from the server.
Although it's a quick process, it takes a considerable amount of time for the browser to paint the font strokes into the DOM. So, the usage of custom fonts will jeopardize the performance If the recommended guidelines are not followed.
How to optimize the custom font rendering?
It's optimal If the design team provides the font files in WOFF format.
Why WOFF?
Usually, the custom font files take up a large amount of space, the WOFF format is optimised for the web.
Reducing the font file count :
The used font-weight files alone will suffice. The number of used font weight and font style variants in a font family will be enough. Doing so, the load time can be optimised considerably. To overcome this only load the font weight and font style variant required in the design.
Even after following this process, we can optimise 20% of the load time but the font rendering issue will remain.
WHY WEB FONTS :
Pros :1. Easily available in google fonts and free.
2. The browsers can easily render these fonts since their sizes are significantly smaller when compared to custom fonts.
3. It supports shared caching.
Cons :
1. Limited amount of font choices.
Most supported fonts for web & mobile development:
1. Open Sans
Current use case - PayTM2. Montserrat
Current Use Case - Knowing Design3. Playfair Display
Current Use Cases - Vogue, Spain, BMW4. Roboto
Current Use Cases - Almost all google products (Gmail, Youtube)5. Proxima Nova
Current Use Cases - Buzzfeed, Mashable, CNET
If we want the most optimal solution with minimal effort, the design team has to opt for web-compatible fonts rather than the print friendly fonts.
Video Marketing Is Taking Over
If you've heard that video marketing is the future, then you've heard right. According to recent statistics, 60% of the businesses have started using video marketing as a part of their marketing strategy.
Scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, most of the content that's present is a video. Millions of people are scrolling through their social media feeds or watching online videos. Video content is easily absorbed and provides actionable responses from consumers. That's an opportunity to reach millions of customers every minute.
Marketers have realized that video marketing not only heightens brand awareness but also helps brands connect with their target audience. In a recent poll, more than 50% voted to see more video related information from brands. Incorporating video content in their marketing strategies is crucial to stay competitive and relevant.
Videos allow you to communicate detailed information in a short amount of time. Here are a few reasons why you should incorporate videos in your marketing strategies.
Increases Engagement
Videos are extremely easy to consume, especially because humans are highly visual creatures. Written content has never been more attractive than videos. Consumers don't want to see long descriptions, they want to see the product in action.
Consumers don't want to see long descriptions, they want to see the product in action. Crafting information-dense, easy-to-understand and accessible videos, brands can develop a significant online following. Videos engage even the laziest buyers.
Appeals to Mobile Users
The number of smartphones is growing exponentially, and people like to watch videos on the go. Over 90% of consumers watch videos on their mobile. YouTube reports show a 100% increase in video content consumption every year. Being sensitive to the consumer's experience on their smartphones is something brands need to be careful about while crafting their video content.
Builds Trust
Consumers gain more confidence in your brand when they see your product or team in videos. Building long-term relationships with your consumers is a goal on its own. Video is an incredible way to evoke emotions, unlike any other medium.
Increases conversions and boosts sales
Videos can lead directly to sales. Recent studies show that over 80% of customers are more likely to purchase after watching a product video. Crafting an exciting video for your brand is important. Brands that used video marketing effectively see the highest numbers. Simply put, videos offer detailed description in a short amount of time which creates trust and eventually leads to conversions.
Improves Search Engine Ranking
Top search engine companies prioritize video content when updating algorithms. Posting videos on blogs, social media and your website increases your chances of hitting your target audience and ranking higher.
Google algorithms prioritize pages with video content ranks them higher in their search results. For your video SEO effort, make sure you:
Keep videos short Create high-quality thumbnails Optimize videos Transcribe your video script
Wrap Up
Video marketing is projected to only keep growing because it’s inexpensive, friendly and quite simply, it works. It will be critical for brands to incorporate video into their content marketing strategy to stay competitive and relevant.
How Travel Planner Changed The Travel And Tourism Industry
Gone are the days when individuals used to travel around the world with maps, guidebooks and strange printed pieces of stuff for directions, general information or anything for that matter. People mostly used to rely on travel bloggers when it comes to researching new destinations and finding ideas or had to depend on the travel agents to make proper arrangements for the trip. But fortunately, those days have lapsed. Assembling trip details with an Excel travel itinerary template or a Google doc itinerary template can be time-consuming.
Technology has played a major role in uplifting the tourism industry. The revolutionary transformation in this industry is thanks to the handy mobile applications. Presently with the evolving situation, the cast majority of the tour operating companies have developed their own travel apps and constantly offer attractive discounts and other facilities to charm potential customers.
What does a travel planner itinerary do
Crafting an itinerary for your trip can be both fun and overwhelming. What are the places one must visit or skip? How much time one should spend at the museum, and how close is it to that cafe you want to check out? And how can one keep all the ideas and bookings neatly organized?
A travel itinerary planner app composes all travel itineraries and documents so that one can have everything in one place before reaching the destination. The app goes further in giving you a custom-fitted interface to make it simple to add accurate travel details for your trip and be done in just a few minutes. It also offers customized tours, guides and maps, and shows restaurants and/or landmarks that are close to your hotel. Simply have the reservations automatically sent to the travel planner app, which will let one view travel confirmations, flight itineraries, tickets, hotel reservations, and driving directions in one place. Based on the number of days you plan to spend at a destination, the app offers recommended sightseeing guides. The app consequently assembles nearby attractions together and lets you know how far apart they are. You can likewise book tours and get general travel information about the destination through the app.
Customized services could include tour packages for several purposes, be it a corporate or a fun trip. Furthermore, travel agents have become quite conscious of paying attention to the specific needs and priorities of their clients. A strict eye is necessary on what the present interest of the market is and then design travel packages accordingly that suits different sets of people.
Advantages of travel planner apps
One significant change that mobile applications have offered to the tourism industry is that it has diminished the process of paperwork. Since smartphones are convenient and portable, one can save the soft copies, important documents and other things within your mobile. In addition, after the arrival of applications, the formalities related to travel booking has also reduced. Some of the top travel planner apps are TripIt, Google Trips, etc.
Closure
Here are some of the ways that artificial intelligence is transforming the future of fashion.
There is absolutely no doubt that mobile apps have become one of the most essential aspects of the travel and tourism industry. Being the seventh most downloaded mobile applications, it enhances it all the more. With all the information given instantly, a travel planner itinerary is a godsend for travellers and even an average user for that fact. Simply put, it does not get any easier than this to map out an entire trip.
Turning Qatar Micro and Small Scale Vendors to Online e-Commerce Players
Digital Transformation is overturning enterprises internationally and the retail sector, once resistance to waves of disruption, is now colossal weight following the rise of e-commerce. Beside guidelines that are not especially positive for online organizations, the Qatar population is skeptical of online shopping due to poor buying experience in the past, concerns about the online payment and delivery deficiencies.
Online Explosion
The online expansion will become a necessity to meet customers evolving demands and to stay significant in a changing market environment. Bricks and mortar players can't fulfill new customer needs in the future, especially in Qatar. This prompts extensive travel to shopping centers which are frequently stuffed and hard to shop with kids.
Around three-fourths of online shoppers are 18 to 34 years old and they mostly purchase household and electric goods.
Qatar’s online retail market is still in the embryonic stage. It has only barely penetrated the online retail market.
Qatar’s Vision
Qatar Development Bank was established to grow Qatar’s private sector and diversify its economy. Now, Qatar Development Bank is a centerpiece to achieving the Qatar National Vision 2030. Qatar Development Bank worked with a large number of Qatari entrepreneurs and enterprises, providing financial and non-financial support to both fresh startups a well-established as well as SME’s. In the days to come, embracing our national responsibility. QDB will continue to empower the nation’s citizens to take advantage of the most recent flood of economic globalization and evolve Qatar’s economy.
Qatar Development came up with an initiative to bring the small and medium-sized enterprises online, and this is where we came in. We've designed and developed a multi-vendor ecommerce website MATAJERCOM for Qatar Development Bank, which is a free platform for small to medium-sized enterprises to establish and drive their products.
They had one thing in mind, and that was to improve the national economic development cycle by providing local entrepreneurs, small and medium-sized ventures with a wide range of financial & non-financial, promotional, developmental, and advisory products under one roof.
Under the initiative, micro-business owners can utilize the services offered by different entities to grow their business and create an impact on the overall economic development of Qatar. The initiative empowers business owners to access information and resources, to develop and sustain their businesses.
The following support was provided by QDB to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises :
Direct and indirect financing, with a special emphasis on local businesses operating in industries, deemed vital for Qatar’s diversification push, namely: manufacturing, healthcare, education, tourism, agricultural, livestock, fishing, and services sectors. Business support through the provision of initiatives and services associated with real estate development and housing loans to citizens. Enhancement of technical skills and capability. Promotion of Qatari exports. Provision of matchmaking opportunities domestically and globally.
Benefits
Some of the benefits of the e-commerce site provided initiated by QDB were :
Availability of subsidized services and benefits through QDB and initiative partners to grow the business. Access to an online portal to upload and sell products. Large audience reach. Increased access to retailing networks to sell the businesses products in established supermarkets and other retail stores/outlets.
THE TAKEAWAY
Micro businesses are the engines of growth for Qatar’s business community. Operating a business at home has its perks - flexibility and convenience. Existing and potential micro-business owners can maximize their chance of success by registering with the initiative and availing the benefits associated with it. QDB along with its partners help micro-businesses to achieve this objective.
Future of e-Commerce in the Fashion Industry
What is the future of e-commerce going to look like? That's the question brands need to be asking themselves If they want to stay ahead. Although brick-and-mortar stores still hold the greatest piece of the overall industry, in reality, they are losing ground, while online stores are gaining it.
E-commerce market share has been growing at a fast rate, and valuations of online retail players are a lot higher than those of traditional retail companies. Major advancements are expected to be seen in e-commerce over the coming years.
Think about this, online shoppers have plenty of options. What separates one brand from the other?
The demand for custom and one of a kind experience is only constantly rising. Convenience is expected now more than ever before. How will this look on me and what could I pair this with? Technology enables brands to convey instinctive experiences to customers.
FASHION E-COMMERCE WEBSITES ARE A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PLAYGROUND
While being beautiful and mesmerizing, fashion e-commerce is an extremely competitive online business. To stand out from everyone else, knowing customer needs and using several tools of the trade of both fashion and online commerce business is absolutely necessary.
Some things to be taken into account to stay ahead of the competition:
Immersive and interactive experiences Attentive service features Viewing products in 3 dimensions, VR, AR, and Mixed Reality.
Smartphones, tablets, smart tv’s and smartwatches can play a huge part of all online retail sales. The future looks increasingly portable and multi-device.
AI WILL BE THE NEW NORMAL
Machine learning in retail is on the rise, so it’s no surprise that AI is becoming an integral part of technology in the apparel industry. Companies like Amazon, Alibaba, Myntra and a few others have already implemented the technology in different areas of the chain.
Here are some of the ways that artificial intelligence is transforming the future of fashion.
1) Manage inventory :Machine learning algorithms use historical data to make predictions which helps retailers know how much stock to maintain to keep the business moving.
2) Connects with customers :Virtual Stylist helps shoppers find the right fit, rise, and stretch that's best for them. The chatbot uses processing technology to reply to customers.
3) Tailor recommendations :By gathering and analyzing purchase data, brands can better predict customer preferences. Using this information alongside AI and machine learning, fashion retailers can create clothes that customers want to buy.
4) Reducing returns :AI can help personalize the shopping experience, leading to making more informed purchases. In addition to elevating the customer experience and satisfaction, this reduces the return rate.
5) Search experiences :Visual search makes it easier for shoppers to discover and purchase the products they want. Simply snap and upload a photo of the product, then AI identifies the pictured product across several sites. Another type of search would be voice-driven search using NLP (Natural language processing).
CLOSING THOUGHTS
It’s clear that the fate of fashion will be molded in large part by advancements in AI and machine learning technology. Retailers will probably keep using artificial intelligence to increase efficiency, save on costs, and, at last, create a top tier shopping experience for customers.
It's important to stay updated when it comes to changes in the e-commerce landscape.
Secrets of Online Marketing
People are embracing and consuming digital content daily. Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing is convenient and affordable. You can reach a much larger audience in a shorter period.
In a world where millions of people use social media every day, one needs to analyse a whole lot of details before marketing online.
Choosing The Right Content
It's crucial to research on topics, news, audience and produce content based on current events that affect your customer.
Using google trends is one of the ways to get started on a topic. Research and study the trending topics before writing content, this helps give an idea of what people are into that point.
Flaunt Your Expertise
To make your website noteworthy and authoritative, you will have to publicize your expertise.
One of the ways to do it is through your website's blog. Publish your opinions, thoughts, and content on professional platforms such as LinkedIn and other related websites in your industry.
Also, having a personal blog will help you connect with readers on a broader level. These blogs keep readers engaged longer because it feels natural and personal.
The team can also accept offers for email/online interviews and talk about your brand to promote it. You can also discuss your company's new initiatives and updates to create awareness and speculation.
Incorporate Social Media Across Your Organisation
Consolidating your business with different social networking sites gives you the ability to connect with your consumers directly. It's more than just communicating news and updates directly to your fan base in an instant.
The best part about social networking is that it's built to be shared. When you post something to your blog and share it on social media, it goes to every single follower. Of the followers who see the content or post, a couple of them might share it with their followers. At the point when that is scattered across several different networking websites such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, it has the potential to reach consumers who might have generally never known about your business.
The power of this connectivity boundless for your business potential.
Organic Social Media Reach
Let's think about the number of hours people scroll through Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat stories every day. In this age, people breathe social media. Not starting a business due to capital in this age is not an excuse, it has to do with your drive.
Any business can take advantage of social media in this new age of business, see massive returns with very little money.
Regularly posting on Facebook pages, going live on Youtube/Facebook and so many others can now be accomplished straight from your cell phone.
More organic more engagement, it’s as simple as that. A few of the ways to be more organic online :
Understand and stay up to date with social media algorithms Post the right content Curate user-generated content Make it personal
Focusing on spending more time on organic social content rather than tactics like direct mail, websites, etc.
Shift The Focus From Selling
One extremely common slip-on on brand pages is individuals talking exclusively about themselves. Organic social media must be social, and no-one wants to talk to the guy who only talks about himself.
You can discuss your products, their highlights and how they make people’s lives better. You can post about your latest deal or advancement, but it must be broken up with other types of engaging content to provide value through variety.
Your organic social media is a place that lets your audience trust you as a brand, where you can learn more about what they like. Don’t ruin that by shoving sales messages in their faces.
What To Take From This
Stop blaming the algorithm for lack of engagement, instead analyze your target audience, reconsider the content and dive into analytics.
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