Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

So you’re thinking about adding Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to your website? Stop thinking and start doing! Of course, it is all about how you implement AMP, but we'll get into that.
If you’re unfamiliar with AMP, it’s an open-source technology that enables pages on your site to load quickly for users on a mobile device. This happens with the help of a JavaScript library and some additional HTML markup.
Here are five reasons why you should add AMP technology to your website:

1. AMP is essential for good mobile SEO.

By now, you already know that if you want your site to rank well, you need to make sure that it’s mobile-friendly. That’s also why you need AMP. Think of it as the latest iteration of mobile-friendly design.
With AMP, your pages and blog posts will load quickly on mobile devices. That will not only give your users a better experience, but it will also give Google a good reason to rank your site well in the mobile search engine results pages (SERPs).
But it’s not just about organic ranking with AMP. Your site could be featured at the very top of the SERPs. How? With Google’s carousel that displays AMP pages -- and only AMP pages -- at the very top of the results list.
If you take your mobile device right now and Google a keyword related to current events, you’ll see that the results include a carousel of AMP pages at the very top of the SERPs. That’s where your page could be, but only if you adopt AMP.

2. AMP is so fast, it will reduce your bounce rate.

Don’t you hate a high bounce rate? When people visit your site, hang around for a few seconds, and then go somewhere else, you’re obviously not doing something right to inspire them to hang around for a while.
One reason people bounce -- the site is just too darned slow. That’s why AMP is so valuable. It will load your pages in a flash so that users will have one less reason to run away.

3. AMP could help you monetize your site.

Do you know why some sites are agonizingly slow? It’s because they’re loaded up with ad technology. It’s ironic, really. Websites increase ads to generate more revenue, but in the process the increased load times caused by the new ads also cause people to leave the site. That means, in all likelihood, less revenue in the long run.
Of course, some users who really like ad-overloaded websites will install ad blockers just so that the sites load faster. That’s also a problem for publishers because their ads won’t be seen, and they’ll lose revenue.
Enter AMP. It was designed with ad monetization in mind.
Here’s what the folks who started the AMP project have to say about their technology as it relates to advertising. “A goal of the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project is to ensure effective ad monetization on the mobile web while embracing a user-centric approach. With that context, the objective is to provide support for a comprehensive range of ad formats, ad networks and technologies in Accelerated Mobile Pages.”
The idea is that mobile pages -- even ones with an abundance of ads -- will load quickly with AMP. As a result, mobile users won’t see any reason to install ad blockers. AMP is great news for advertisers and publishers alike.

4. AMP offers analytics.

By now, everybody in the online marketing universe knows about the importance of analytics. Those are key metrics that offer insight about the effectiveness of specific marketing campaigns. AMP offers analytics as well.
Using AMP, you can track important information about visitor counts, new versus returning users, clicks, conversions, video engagement, link tracking and more.
Even better -- AMP analytics offer built-in support for almost every marketer’s favorite analytics tool, Google Analytics. Specifically, you can easily track three request values with AMP -- page views, events and social interactions.
If you’re really a hardcore GA aficionado, you can even use AMP to send custom dimension parameters to Google Analytics. That way, you can track very specific data points.

5. Google loves AMP so you should too. 

If you want to maximize the visibility of your website, then you need to play nice with Google. And Google absolutely loves AMP.
Just within the past few weeks, Google has made it easier to split-test AMP pages, announced that it will display AMP errors to site owners in search results and announced that AMP pages will be added to Google’s organic search results.
And that’s not all. If your site doesn’t support AMP, you might log in to the Search Console and see the following message -- “Google has detected that your site has many pages that may benefit from being served as AMP pages. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are HTML pages that are optimized to load fast on mobile devices. Learn more about AMP benefits in the resources below. Valid AMP pages on your site will be eligible to be shown in search results and receive special badging in search results.”
In other words, Google really wants you to use AMP. Why not get started today?

It's pretty clear that AMP is here to stay. They are even making AMP possible for e-commerce websites now.

Why Email marketing ???

It is fact that Email marketing allows you to reach a highly targeted audience at a low cost. In fact, experts at Campaign Monitor, an email marketing company, estimate that an effective email marketing message has the potential to result in $38 in revenue, for just $1 of marketing investment.Here are some email marketing conversion tips all small businesses can use:

1. Include descriptive tags with your images. 

Online publication giants revealed that the average person receives more than 400 commercial emails a month. Emails that include images can help your small business stand out in an already-crowded inbox, especially if you choose those that evoke an emotional response to a product, a promotional campaign concept or your brand. 

However, email marketing now comes with a “catch 22,” given that at least half of all email messages are checked on a mobile device, according to experts at Litmus, an email analytics company. While mobile devices may positively boost response to time-sensitive messages, small screens aren’t always conducive to images. If a recipient opens your email only to see that images have been blocked, you could be banished to his or her spam box indefinitely. The more often that happens, the harder it is to form a reputation as a sender whose emails are recognized as legitimate: According to the experts at Sender Score, 28 percent of the email messages that are sent reach a user’s inbox.

2. Don’t send messages that aren’t targeted. 

While you may not have robust data on prospects, you can learn a little more about what they respond to with each message you send. Diligently track open and click-through rates with each campaign, including the optimal times to send messages based on response and headline tests. Place email recipients in segments based on your findings to build an effective drip campaign that is personalized and relevant based on their activity.  Internet Retailer reports that retailer totes Isotoner improved its email marketing campaign revenue by a whopping 7,000 percent when it used analytics based on past email activity, site search history and past purchases to deliver highly targeted email messages.

3. Don’t ask for too much. 

Segment your email marketing campaigns so that each recipient is served the most relevant offer based on his or her preferences, and that he or she is presented with one clear message, call to action and a seamless checkout experience -- whether on a desktop or mobile device. Prefill special offers the email message may include so customers aren’t required to key special discount codes that are part of your email offer at checkout. Partner with a reputable mobile payment provider for a secure and branded checkout experience to eliminate concerns with payment security, or require the customer to take additional steps to complete the transaction. For example, Mobile Commerce Daily reports that despite the popularity of PayPal by retailers in online sales, evidence suggests that it kills conversion by nearly 15 percent (particularly when consumers are shopping on a mobile device), because it requires additional steps to make a purchase.

4. Use emails to form a lasting relationship. 

Email campaigns should build upon one another, and acknowledge what you know about the customer, based on his or her past activity. In fact, marketing firm Epsilon cites data indicating that “triggered” emails targeted based on a recipient’s engagement with past messages have open rates that are 76 percent higher than those with generic messaging. If you cannot convince your customers to click on your message, you can’t convert them, regardless of your pricing or product quality.

Conclusion 

Email marketing is an affordable way to communicate with prospects and customers, gain valuable insights about their preferences and increase sales. However, it requires strategy to convert message recipients into buyers. Follow these steps to improve the ROI you realize from every email you send.

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Make Your Digital Marketing to the Customer Experience

As much as two decades ago, the way consumers seek for buying brands depended on how much the brands were able to thrust their products into the consumers’ vicinity and at the same time, appeal to their taste. For instance, a commercial soap ad in between a TV series or a radio program, would be enough to sway consumers’ preferences of buying a soap product. In fact, that gave rise to the term ‘soap operas.’ Procter and Gamble (P&G) would produce radio and TV shows so that they could advertise their products during the breaks.
Fast forward to 2016, and you will see that brands have drastically changed the way they communicate with consumers. In the Internet era, brands push their products to their consumers in the form of recommendations. That is why Amazon and other ecommerce sites are able to execute targeted ads in the form of suggestions and recommendations.

Today’s technologically-savvy consumers are more informed and knowledgeable, and are moving out of the traditional route of researching and making purchasing decisions about products. They research well before buying a product or a service. This post that highlights ‘from search to store’ by Matt Lawson does great justice about how brands must ‘deliver on expectations in moments that matter’. Then the pertinent question to digital marketers is:

• What is our customer's’ decision making journey?
• Why and how should we align our digital marketing strategies that will fall in place with the customer’s decision?

Let’s give a quick look at what our customer’s decision making journey looks like: Recognition → Familiarization → Consideration → Purchase
The idea is to avoid premature optimization in marketing. We don’t solve a non-existent problem, when it comes to engineering. But we identify a problem and build a solution around it. Similarly we must focus on the right things at the right stage when it comes to digital marketing.

Recognition.

If you think about building a business, your website would be a natural location to showcase everything about your business and product. And one way to build maximum awareness and recognition is by generating traffic to your website. So, your first objective would be to get, say, 100 visitors a day, and then, 1,000 visitors a week.
37Signals wrote an interesting post on how they built the buzz with their side projects. “It takes a lot to differentiate your brand in today’s “me too” world of electronic business solutions”, it says. And it is very important to engage in such projects that will ensure that traffic is headed your way -- consistently. How:

• Hang out where your audience hangs out and sign out with your website details -- answer relevant questions on Reddit, HackerNews, Quora etc., so that the audience learns of your expertise in the space.
• Use Call to Actions at different places on the site so that the visitors are engaged and are compelled to explore the website, rather than opt for an early exit.
• Invest in SEO efforts to drive organic search traffic to your website.
• Paid Search is one of the most effective ways of driving traffic to your website, but businesses must be able to justify the expenses while measuring the outcome. (Here’s a hack - you could experiment with a paid search channel like Google Adwords even before you build your product, if you have the budget. This works well as a research tool, to see if the product you are building has demand and will sell).

Familiarization.

Right, now that you have a 1.000 potential leads visiting your site, how do you familiarize them with your product? How do you ensure that they know what they have signed up for? Customers rely on their common sense of familiarity of choosing a familiar and known brand. How do you feature there? Simple - meaningful and engaging content.

Content Marketing found its origins in 1891. More than a century ago, August Oetker, the German inventor of baking powder - Backin, sold packages to households. What made Backin a familiar brand was the little recipes printed on the back of these packages. In 1911, he published his cookbook and over 100 years, it reached a global audience with about 19 million copies. That was the first example of content marketing.
It’s 2016, and that’s still pretty much how we could do it too along with the added advantage of using social media. With the right message and relevant content, across mediums, marketers should focus their attention on their target market.

Consideration.

The top of the mind problem for a brief time is signup conversion. So you move to the next stage, which is user engagement. Now, here’s the thing about brand consideration. In today’s digital world, consumers speak with brands as much as brands speak with consumers. In this two way communication, you would need to empower customers to explore your product, to play around the sandbox test site, to ask questions. How:

• Two way engagement with customers
• Test and prioritize objectives. Optimize CTAs. Here are some great posts on optimizing CTAs by HubSpot and CrazyEgg.
• Treat pricing as a filter. Change pricing to attract the right audience that you need.

Buying.

Now you are happy with user engagement, why aren't they converting into paying customers sooner? How:        

• Continue making tweaks -- tweak application onboarding process.
• Setup demo calls with prospects to understand their business requirements and make  suggestions on how your product can cater to them.
• Fix application onboarding with drip emails, simplifying documentation, product and measure time it takes for customers to go-live.

While you are at it, rinse and repeat what is already working for your business to bring in more traffic. With hundreds of such iterations you now have a pipe instead of a straw to convert visitors into customers. A positive user experience through all these bottlenecks will ensure that your customers who have now bought your product will spread positive word about not just your business, but your attention to detail to improve customer experience.

How to Make Full Use of Twitter’s 140 Characters

1. Provide more context in replies

One vast advantage of this update is that the undeniable fact that user @names can now not count against your a hundred and forty characters. Now, whenever you begin a tweet back to a different user, you continue to have space to mention everything you needed to in your tweet, while not having to think about the length of their Twitter handle.

This unveil more room to supply extra details that antecedently could have taken one or two of tweets. for instance, if you’re responding to a client service question, you'll share your reply in a hundred and forty characters, however conjointly add a GIF voice communication “Thanks for reaching out” or a screencast video to any make a case for a way to fix their support issue.

2. Utilize visuals more often

Visuals area unit a good thanks to stand out on Twitter. Studies have shown that visual and media attachments on tweets area unit a giant consider boosting engagement and retweets. One study by Twitter found that photos average a thirty fifth boost in Retweets and videos get a twenty eighth boost:
However, until now, it’s been difficult to convey the message you’d like in your tweet text and conjointly embody a media attachment in a hundred and forty characters.
When these changes area unit unrolled, Twitter users are able to utilize the total a hundred and forty characters to share their copy and still embody media, while not infringing thereon limit. For marketers, this suggests a lot of chance to incorporate beautiful visuals, videos, product demos, and a lot of at intervals our tweets. For client support groups, it conjointly provides the possibility to share further content like screenshots and screencasts to assist customers with their support tickets.

3. No more need for the .@ to begin tweets

These changes bring associate degree finish to a long-standing Twitter peculiarity wherever tweets that began with usernames were visible solely to users UN agency followed each the person tweeting and therefore the person named. This cause several users starting conversations or tweets that mention alternative users with a ‘.’ before the @name, for example:
This quirk has invariably been slightly confusing for a few of Twitter’s users, each new and recent. And Jack Dorsey hopes this modification can facilitate to create Twitter a trifle easier to grasp: “Unfortunately those rules area unit hidden, so they verify later,” Dorsey same to The Verge. “So then they need to find out this weird syntax that sort of appearance janky. thus we would like to require that away initial and foremost to get rid of a number of the confusing aspects of the service.”

4. Quote yourself to share longer thoughts

It’s become fairly common to break up a tweet into a couple of sections to fully elaborate and share thoughts. However, with Twitter’s quote option, you can share two tweets that are intertwined and easy to follow – meaning users won’t have to scroll in the timeline of visit your profile to see the first part of your tweet. This gives you 280 characters to play with.

How does it work? Simply share your first tweet, and then quote that tweet and add the rest of your message in the 140 characters available to you in the second tweet.

5. Opportunity for better conversation

Twitter, at its heart, is all about conversation and connecting with others. One of the most important factors in this update is that we now have the opportunity for better conversation on the platform. With usernames not counting against character counts, we can fully embrace the 140 characters available to us to express ourselves.
Previously, having a conversation with two or more participants could become a little difficult as usernames could take up anywhere from 5-20+ characters, leaving little room to get your thoughts across.

Conclusion 
These were some of the suggestions that might be helpful but till there v can be others as well. 

Now Longer Tweets : All You Need to Know About Twitter’s 140 Character Update

Twitter has simply created an enormous modification to the approach tweets work.

From today, Twitter is cutting short on what styles of content can use its 140-character limit.

Now, @names in replies, media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) and quoted Tweets can now not be counted against the precious a hundred and forty characters that structure a tweet. this enables for richer public conversations that ar easier to follow on Twitter and ensures individuals will attach media to tweets while not sacrificing the characters they need to precise themselves.

Twitter initial proclaimed this update back in might however didn’t quite ensure a date once these changes would reach Twitter’s 300m+ users. However, nowadays the corporate confirmed the update has been unrolled.

What’s changed? Full details on Twitter’s 140 character update

This update has been much anticipated by many Twitter users and on their blog, Twitter shared the full details of what’s changed:

• Replies: When replying to a Tweet, @names will no longer count toward the 140-character count. This will make having conversations on Twitter easier and more straightforward, no more penny-pinching your words to ensure they reach the whole group.
• Media attachments: When you add attachments like photos, GIFs, videos, polls, or Quote Tweets, that media will no longer count as characters within your Tweet. More room for words!
• Retweet and Quote Tweet yourself: We’ll be enabling the Retweet button on your own Tweets, so you can easily Retweet or Quote Tweet yourself when you want to share a new reflection or feel like a really good one went unnoticed.
• Goodbye, .@: These changes will help simplify the rules around Tweets that start with a username. New Tweets that begin with a username will reach all your followers. (That means you’ll no longer have to use the ”.@” convention, which people currently use to broadcast Tweets broadly.) If you want a reply to be seen by all your followers, you will be able to Retweet it to signal that you intend for it to be viewed more broadly.