Category: Insights

Visuals in Landing Pages: Using Them Right

Miley on July 23, 2020

Tapping on the emotional instinct of your prospects and customers is imperative if you want your landing pages to convert and bring you better sales. Visuals can be a powerful element that can make your visitors smile, share valuable information, inspire the readers, and encourage them to make the purchase.

Take a look at this landing page inviting the visitors to a webinar that would discuss the future of retail-borderless commerce. It has perfectly combined text, visuals, and CTAs to encourage the readers to take action.

That said, let’s move on to exploring the world of visuals in landing pages.

1. Use relevant imagery

When your content is accompanied by relevant images, readers find it easier to grasp the message and make up their mind to complete the purchase. The key to using imagery is that if a message can be conveyed with the help of an image, there is no need to have a wall of text to explain it.

Moo has gone a step ahead and incorporated the principle of storytelling in their email landing page.

While the email shows an interesting GIF of a toaster with the CTA “Push the lever”, the landing page continues the story and displays a toast with toaster marks of 15% to promote their 15% off and coupon code.

2. Grab attention with GIFs

GIFs are the perfect substitute to videos as they emulate a video-like experience without any major impact on the loading speed of the landing page. According to GIPHY, 500 million active users spend close to 11 million hours in viewing GIFs on their channel which demonstrates the love for GIFs.

Just make sure that the size of the GIF does not go over 1MB so that your page does not take too much time to load.

3. Let videos do the magic

So many companies have started using videos in their landing pages to make the message more impactful for the readers and showcase your products or services effectively. You can either use the videos in the background or have a different section for the video followed by a sign-up form and CTA.

If you want to stand out from the crowd, you can even try out personalized videos on the landing pages. These videos can be easily created with the help of tools like Hippo Video in which you create a video template with placeholder text and then edit it with tailormade content according to the reader’s preferences.

4. Take help of illustrations

Illustrations are way more convenient to create when compared to videos or GIFs. Another advantage of these modern images is that they have a great visual appeal too. They can be used to symbolically represent an idea through graphics and explain your offerings to the visitor.

5. Harness the power of graphs

Often, marketers need to showcase complicated statistics on a landing page. Graphs can help you with this.

Here are some ways in which you can use graphs to their maximum potential.

i. Take help of scatter plots and treemaps to display huge set of information.

ii. If you want to show trends over a decade or two, use line charts or bar graphs.

iii. Pyramids and pie charts work well if you want to show the proportion of elements.

6. Choose the right colors

Whenever you sit to strategize your landing page design and visual elements, pick the right colors according to your business type and industry. For example, if you are a premium brand, black and white would be the perfect choice for you. Remember Apple?

On the other hand, if you are an FMCG brand, red would work better for you. (Example: McDonald’s)

Green stands for tranquility, health, and good luck which makes it a good choice for brands that are related to growth.

To learn more about how to use the appropriate visuals, colors, and CTA in your landing pages, head to the insightful infographic by Email Uplers: A deep dive into “the use of visuals in landing pages”.

IMAGE EMBED CODE

Source:<a href=”https://email.uplers.com/infographics/landing-page-visual-elements/”> How to Use Visual Elements in Landing Page to Boost Conversions </a>

About the author

Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest growing custom email design and coding companies, and specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and free responsive HTML email templates in addition to providing email automation, campaign management, and data integration & migration services. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz, and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.

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10 Ways to Maximize your Kickstarter Marketing Strategy in 2020

Miley on July 15, 2020

At a very trying time of COVID-19, times are quite tough for businesses, especially startups and entrepreneurs. However, what if there was a way to get funding by putting your project, idea, or invention online?

In this article, we will look at:

What is Kickstarter?
Marketing Tips for Kickstarter Campaign

What is Kickstarter?

For people who have been living under a rock, Kickstarter is a funding platform where creators can share and gather interest on a particular creative project they will like to launch.

Every project is created and independently crafted while the general public offers to fund them in return for rewards or the finished product itself. They are the ones that ultimately send the projects into production.

Kickstarter is split into two types of users: creators and backers. Creators are of course the ones who present their project ideas and the backers are the ones who fund them. To establish a great Kickstarter project, creators need to step up a page to display all the details of their project using text, video, and photos to tell viewers about their project. From there, creators set a funding goal and a deadline, and also need to include different levels of rewards backers can receive by pledging a specific amount because the more the higher the amount they pledge, the bigger the reward.

Kickstarter also has a number of general rules that creators must abide by for their projects. They must create something that can be shared with others; be honest and clearly presented; not be fundraising for charity; not be offering equity; and not involve prohibited items.

Marketing Tips for Kickstarter Campaign

The reality of any Kickstarter Campaign is that it takes a lot of time and energy o prepare, create, maintain, and manage a Kickstarter campaign. There are definitely certain steps that people as project creators can improve their chances of success on Kickstarter.

1. Do your research

Creators need to research their project before anything happens. The questions that they need to answer before starting their campaign is: how much does it actually cost to make their project? What is the minimum amount of funding they need? How many days do they want to run the campaign? Are there already similar projects?

You need to figure out how much it actually costs because it will help when it comes to creating rewards. They also need to research domestic and international shipping costs. Kickstarter is all or nothing, so companies need to remember and understand that if they don’t reach their funding goals, they do not get any money. If they set the money goal too high, they risk not hitting their goal and won’t get any money and reciprocally, if it is set too low, you may not be able to fulfill your obligations to backers.

Campaigns can last anywhere for one day to 2 months. Longer campaigns do not guarantee success because companies may have exhausted resources by the time the project wraps up and on the other hand, campaigns that are under 30 days risk not getting enough exposure and can result in less funding.

Companies also need to do their research to see if there are other similar campaigns because if there are, there really is no point in putting the campaign up because just because something similar that raised a lot of money will not translate into instant success for your project.

2. Spread the news about your upcoming launch

It is important to spread awareness for the upcoming launch. Having a website is very important because it drives traffic to it. Adding a banner at the top of your homepage with a call to action to sign up is very important so that people could learn more about your upcoming launch. The leads that you receive should be nurtured leading up to launch day with about one email a week. The emails that are sent out should educate subscribers on your product, tell them why they need your product, and explain how Kickstarter works and inform them of when and why you’re launching your project.

It is also important to build up social media presence and creating advertising campaigns. The more informed subscribers are about your product and upcoming launch, the more likely they are to convert into actual backers once your project goes live.

Sometimes it can be difficult to run everything and stay on it constantly, so employing companies like Pressfarm can help with public relations and creating everything needed to build a successful crowdfunding campaign.

3. Email existing and new contacts

Email marketing is a great way to spread awareness for your upcoming launch to new and existing contacts who have shown interest in your product. The main goal is to get subscribers on board with your project and have them ready to spread the word. However, don’t stop emailing when you are live, you can keep sending out emails with important campaign milestones too. But, during your campaign, do not bombard your family, friends, or other subscribers incessantly because it can lead to a large number of unsubscribers.

4. Make an engaging video

Your video that you create is the main point of your campaign and it is the first thing that people look at. You need to make sure that your video is easily understandable and gets your project’s point across. Longer videos tend to have a lower video completion rate and there is a correlation between a high video completion rate and overall funding.

5. Create an easy-to-read Kickstarter page

Digital content should be written for the people who tend to skim instead of reading in detail. When you do this, you are making your content more digestible and easier to understand. Campaigns should be very visual and get to the point without using too much content.

6. Make sure your rewards are easy to understand

Keep your rewards descriptions short and to the point. You need to let people know what they are getting, how much they are saving and when they will be getting them. Do not over do your rewards because a campaign with a lot of rewards rarely works and creating a small quantity gives you a chance to introduce new rewards like flash sales, during your campaign.

7. Include multiple images

You should use high resolution, high-quality images for your social networks, advertising efforts, press releases and blog posts. Also, if you will be using any print media, they should also be hi-res images.

8. Create a Bitly link

You can use Bitly to shorten your Kickstarter page URL and use that link when you are referencing your project. Bitly actually provides great stats because it includes how many clicks you link there and where they are coming from. This information will help decide where to spend the most time promoting your project.

9. Utilize updates and your backers

You should create periodic updates on Kickstarter to send to your backers. Write updates when you hit milestones to thank your backers and use them to pass on the message of new stretch goal rewards and drive backers to your social network.

Your backers already like your project, so they are the ones that will help you and be your biggest advocates. Ask them to help spread the word whether it be word-of-mouth or social media. Make it easy for them to share by including short messages they can copy and paste to share on social media outlets.

10. Social media is important

Create your profile on the top networks by starting a Facebook Advertising campaign to build an audience base, help build your email list and begin building buzz around the upcoming launch.

Conclusion

Creating a Kickstarter Campaign is very easy, but getting the right backing and the right amount of money is the hard part. Timing is everything because you want to be the project that people are wanting to back, so you need to see what your competition is. Your product needs to be something that people want and are willing to put money into. These tips are as simple as it comes and used correctly will maximize your Kickstarter Marketing strategy.

Development Insights

6 Internal Communications Best Practices to Connect Your Workplace

Miley on July 15, 2020

How much internal communication matters in the business world simply can’t be stressed enough. When the management and the employees communicate effectively, all chances for misunderstandings disappear. The work environment is healthy so employees have all the conditions necessary for performing well at work. Through open and efficient communication, completing tasks and projects will be smoother and faster. For this reason, let’s look at the top 6 practices for enhancing communication at the workplace.

1. Use a Platform for Connecting Employees

There is no better way of connecting employees than through a platform or an app. We live in a high-tech era so why not use it to our advantage. Although selecting the right platform seems like a piece of cake, it is easier said than done. There are so many options available that make it harder for managers to select the proper tool. In this situation, intranet systems are the go-to tool for most companies, especially large ones. They are largely praised for their ability to connect all employees and the management in one place. Once you have all the staff connected, you have set a great foundation for improving other, equally important, business aspects.

2. Celebrate Milestones

Employees are an important, if not the most important, part of any company. They like to have their efforts acknowledged and valued. It motivates them to participate more and work even harder at their job. For this reason, it is essential to publicly recognize their contribution and share it with everyone in the company. This praise can take many forms. It can be a simple shout out in a corporate app, post on social media, or a special article on the company’s website. Celebrating milestones has a dual impact on the company. Firstly, it keeps all the staff informed about the latest events in the organization. Secondly, the management has clear insight into employee engagement and performance. This is why it is important to mark employee success, big or small.

3. Include Visuals during Communication

Most people are visual beings. For this group of people, messages containing images, colorful charts, and objects are more effective than plain text. With this in mind, managers should make use of visual effects to deliver the message more efficiently during communication with employees. Presentations are the ideal way to communicate effectively with employees. It not only allows managers to present their message visually but also concisely and straight to the point. As a result, employees will be able to refer to the presentation in the future if needed. Videos are another useful visual tools. However, they demand more time and it is easy to get carried away and show more content than actually needed.

4. Videoconference with Remote Workers

Past months have shown an increase in remote workers all around the world. While this arrangement has many advantages, employers are afraid internal communication and employee collaboration suffer. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. With proper video conferencing tools and apps, employees can be well connected even when working remotely. Managers should make sure video conferences are timely scheduled and everyone is familiar with the agenda. Participants can clearly see each other so they have a feeling they are attending the real meeting. Before or after the meeting, managers can spare a couple of minutes and allow employees to catch up and chat. This way, all participants will relax and eagerly participate in discussions and brainstorming sessions.

Diverse coworkers having online conference in modern office

5. Avoid Overwhelming Employees

Every day, employees are swamped with numerous pieces of information, especially on a busy day at the office. It is impossible for them to consume so much content all at once. It can cause them to feel stressed, anxious, and frustrated which can reflect poorly on their performance. For this reason, managers should use various channels for various message types. In accordance with employees, they can decide which channel should be used for which type of information. If something demands their immediate attention, then the corporate app is the place to send it to. When internal communication is organized, employees won’t feel overwhelmed. They will receive the most important messages and act accordingly.

6. Encourage Employees to Post on Social Media

Social media has finally found its way into the workplace. Every company has profiles on the most popular social networks. Managers can encourage their employees to either take over them for a day or post photos from the offices followed by an appropriate hashtag. This is the ideal opportunity to let everyone interested in joining the organization see what is it like from the inside. Also, the brand will become more exposed and it will attract greater attention. All employees should be encouraged to participate in the activities, but only if they want to. Forcing them will only cause the opposite effect.

About the author

Sarah Jessica Smith is a young blogger from Sydney. She is in love with life and all the things that can make her daily routine easier. She loves to write about business, marketing, productivity and workspace décor.

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How Can a Medical Device Company Stay Competitive in The Medical Device Market

Miley on July 7, 2020

There is currently a period of steady growth in the global medical device industry. Competition-driven innovations have enabled small companies to enter the market and compete with established companies. Competitive analysis consulting firms also play an important role in the success of a medical device innovator. Competitive market analysis delivers an understanding of both the direct and indirect competitive landscape. Using medical device competitive analysis consulting experts, a medical device developer can identify the target market’s unmet needs, underserved market segments and clinical expectations competitors are unable to meet. This supports decision making that attracts the allocation of available resources and can drive accelerated adoption. Competitive analysis consulting experts assess the target market space, strategic product positioning and potential existing technology’s product line extension. Product positioning analysis may include:

Competitive landscape
Competitive pricing
Product positioning analysis
Competitor corporate deep dive
Competitive product and company documentation

A medical technology that enters the target market and delivers accurate and efficient clinical results at a reduced cost can earn a significant market share. Hospital value analysis committees focus on the value a device delivers in terms of healthcare outcomes, cost and safety.

Medical device companies are now able to achieve the highest possible return on investment with early and extensive exit planning. Medical device consulting firms can identify potential mergers and acquisition targets. They can also identify potential companies for strategic alliances. This allows an innovator a range of desirable exit strategies.

With the full suite of strategic consulting services by medical device consulting companies, a medical device developer can address hurdles presented by reimbursement constraints and compliance-related restrictions. This allows the company to divert its resources to an innovation that has the potential to secure accelerated adoption and the highest return on investment. With strategically informed internal and external decision making, this affords a range of medical innovation to remain competitive.

Harmonize Operations

A medical company that effectively achieves operational harmony will have the highest probability to achieve successful commercialization. Harmonizing operations can leverage real-time information across the company. This information typically includes end-user procedural preferences, post-market clinical data including cost-effective clinical outcomes data along with research and development effectiveness. This information guides device development.

The medical device company must ensure seamless data sharing across different departments. For this, the company requires the right infrastructure to transfer data. The company also requires high-quality analytics to utilize available data. Medical device consulting firms have the required communication tools and resources to gather, verify and analyze data to develop an improved and cost-effective technology.

Leverage New Markets

A company can identify a new market or a segment of the market for its existing medical device. Identifying expanded markets can offer longer and sustained competitive advantage. However, the company is recommended to work with a competitive analysis consulting expert to analyze the level of current and future competition in the new market. A company can identify new markets with medical device market analysis by a medical device consulting firm.

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How to Measure the Effectiveness of your Intranet Collaboration Solution

Miley on July 2, 2020

Modern intranets have completely replaced the dead, traditional intranets. Modern intranet solutions are more than a powerful collaboration solution. Implementing an intranet solution allows your employees to access valuable content anytime and from anywhere. It is a reliable tool that your employees can use to share knowledge and collaborate.

An intranet collaboration solution is a much-needed tool for an organization having a dispersed workforce. According to an estimation, one-third of the workforce of an organization will be mobile workforce in the next ten years. 70% of business professionals do their jobs remotely at least once a week. With this shift towards mobile and remote workforce, organizations require a digital workplace solution, a solution that is efficient, fast, secure, and provides all the required features and functionalities.

It often takes too long to find and share documents. Modern intranet collaboration solutions offer document management and other features to solve the problems with traditional intranet solutions. Traditional intranet does not offer the functionalities and features required in modern organizations.

When you are using a modern collaboration solution, you want to make sure that it meets your expectations. For this, you need to measure its effectiveness.

You need a plan to address your business needs with an intranet solution. As your intranet requirements change, you may need to make some changes in your collaboration solution as well. You also need to make sure that you measure the right things.

The following are the metrics you can use to measure the effectiveness of your intranet collaboration solution.

Usage and engagement
Employee satisfaction
Productivity

Usage and Engagement

It is important to see that employees use the intranet and understand its value. Measure their awareness of the intranet. See how often they access and use the collaboration solution each month. You can measure the usage and engagement of digital workplace solutions such as your integrated social channel, a newsroom, or an onboarding center. These are the solutions employees commonly use to connect and share information.

Engagement is more important than usage. You can determine the level of interaction to measure employee engagement. If they are accessing content, it doesn’t mean that they are engaging. Are they sharing content? Are they commenting? Make sure that they are participating in conversations.

Employee Satisfaction

The right collaboration solution can play an important role in improving overall employee satisfaction. The number of quality tools and development opportunities available at work influences employee engagement. When it comes to workplace satisfaction, most employees rank technology above office space, heating, and other physical aspects of the workplace.

There are different ways you can measure employee satisfaction such as user ratings, internal surveys, and polls, and the most important, changes in retention rate.

To determine the shortcomings or limitations of your intranet collaboration solution, you can ask pointed questions about communication and collaboration. Now you need to make changes in your intranet collaboration solution to keep it relevant.

Productivity

Communication and collaboration are important but composing, sending and receiving emails reduce employee productivity. Although it is not easy to measure productivity, if your employees have been using an intranet collaboration solution for several months, you can determine the level of impact by comparing productivity metrics before and after the implementation of the intranet collaboration solution.

A next-gen intranet collaboration solution can make you a forward-thinking organization. You can use an intranet collaboration solution as a powerful tool to address specific business challenges.

An effective intranet software connects local and remote employees and allows them to create, share and respond to content.

However, your intranet must evolve with your business. For this, you must measure the effectiveness of your intranet collaboration solution.

Development Insights

Culture Shock: Improving Company Culture Through Technology

Miley on June 30, 2020

Corporate culture matters. Shared values and beliefs backed by strong business strategy help staff feel valued and connected, boosting engagement and productivity. Implemented effectively, cultural conventions can ensure employees are certain in their response to any given situation and are confident they’ll be rewarded for demonstrating key organizational values.

However, there’s a challenge. Small business owners and entrepreneurs must keep in mind, legacy solutions and software deliver digital disconnects, in turn forging fragmented cultural frameworks that frustrate staff and C-suites alike. Improving corporate culture demands a kind of system shock — an effective implementation of new technology services that cultivate communication, collaboration, and connection at scale.

Shock Value

Culture is often viewed as an organizational opportunity — the chance for small businesses to act in concert based on shared understanding — but also offers practical potential.

Consider teamwork and morale. When employees trust one another, their earnest efforts will be met with appreciation from upper management. They’re more efficient and effective. Projects are completed more quickly and with fewer interpersonal issues, and personnel is more likely to stay engaged.

This cultural creation is often undercut by cumbersome legacy technologies. From proprietary tools that limit connectivity to outdated solutions that complicate communication, tech-savvy staff members need ways to interact and innovate on demand.

Here, strategy is key. Simply tossing technology at the problem can have the opposite effect intended if workers are suddenly faced with fragmented functions and digital distractions. For culture shock to be positive, permanent, and productive, it’s critical for companies to adopt a two-factor approach that articulates key values and delivers actionable results.

Talk the Talk

To build corporate culture that lasts, businesses must streamline staff communication. This starts with multiplatform collaboration tools that make it easy for employees to connect and create wherever, whenever, and however, they want. By removing common collaboration barriers, it’s possible to facilitate effective interactions and reduce potential frictions, in turn improving project outcomes. Over time, this boosts morale and motivation — employees are confident they easily tackle big projects and that their contributions will be recognized.

Walk the Walk

Talk isn’t cheap — the right collaboration and communication tools demand strategic investment to drive ROI — and it’s not enough in isolation.

For effective cultural transitions, corporate leaders must walk the walk. This starts with transparency: Delivering consistent messaging about what’s expected, what’s appreciated, and what’s next on the cultural horizon. Automated messaging tools help shorten the distance between intention and action by allowing C-suite members to quickly draft and distribute companywide corporate mandates.

There’s also a need for operational insight that doesn’t come from inside the organization. From security assessments to software adoptions and service analytics, third-party expertise can help identify potential issues, suggest specific solutions, and show staff you’re committed to completed cultural transformation.

Cultural Relevance

Corporate culture matters — great culture cultivates trust, enhances communication, and improves staff commitment. Yet existing technology processes often frustrate the development of effective office culture, forcing staff to fight complexity rather than facilitating operations.

System shock can help short-circuit company culture challenges by empowering employee collaboration, facilitating C-suite connections, and delivering transformative strategy solutions. Be sure to review the accompanying infographic for more ways of strengthening company culture via technology.

Sources

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/toolkits/pages/understandinganddevelopingorganizationalculture.aspx

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/05/23/digital-disappointment-your-employees-top-five-it-frustrations/#e9c412d60d62

Courtesy Of Halock Security Labs

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What You Need For Your Next Online Business Meeting

Miley on June 30, 2020

With more of the world working from home than ever before, chances are you will attend or run an online business meeting. And since the majority of businesses usually use face to face meetings, it takes an adjustment to run a meeting online while remaining effective.

That is why it’s essential to learn what you need for your next online business meeting because virtual meetings require equipment and software you might not currently have. So, in case you have to run your business in the virtual world, even if it’s temporary, follow this guide to set up your tech.

Meeting Software

The central part of any online business meeting is your meeting software, and there are several programs to choose from. Zoom is a popular software choice for businesses to meet with their staff because it’s free and easy to use. That said, Zoom isn’t the only meeting software you can choose for your business meetings.

Here are some other software choices you could download and use:

Cisco Webex Meetings
Join.me
GoToMeeting
BlueJeans
UberConference
Microsoft Teams
Google Meet

Be sure the software you pick has the capabilities you need, like screen sharing, whiteboarding, or dedicated sub-rooms for breakout sessions. Each conference software has different amenities, so choose one that works for you and your business.

Also, be sure that your team can easily download the software because each participant will need the software to join your meeting.

Proper Lighting

Using your computer’s camera or your front-facing phone camera is probably your best choice if you don’t want to invest in a third-party camera.

The problem is, you still have to worry about proper lighting because if your lighting is in the wrong place, your staff will have a hard time concentrating on your words. So, you want to gather three LED daylight bulbs and place one directly in front of you, one at 45 degrees to your right, and one 45 degrees to your left.

Be sure these lights are slightly above you, so the lighting isn’t too harsh, and they will give you sufficient lighting for your meeting without distracting shadows.

Up to Date Microphone

More important than lighting is your staff’s ability to hear what you’re saying, and for that, you need a proper microphone. You might have a sufficient microphone inside your computer already, and the best way to tell if your audience can hear you is to test it before your meeting.

If you don’t like the sound coming through your microphone, you want to invest in a standalone microphone. These products have noise-canceling features that block out surrounding sounds so that your staff can hear you better.

For example, noise-canceling features could block out a residential air conditioning repair Santa Rosa residents might need during a business meeting to stay cool. In fact, that feature would be helpful in any house across the world because sometimes there are loud noises during your meeting and you don’t want the disruption.

The Blue Yeti microphone is a popular model for podcasters and would work perfectly for any online business meeting you conduct.

Bring Your Teams Together

Businesses need to adjust to current times and that means conducting business meetings online. The truth is, it doesn’t take a whole lot of preparation to have business meetings with your staff because you already have most of the equipment you need.

When you don’t or if it’s not good enough, ordering tech gadgets to enhance your current equipment is a smart investment in your business. Doing so will allow you to conduct business anywhere and in any climate so you can carry on regardless of the state of the world.

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Choosing The Right Data Catalog – 14 Tips For Businesses

Miley on June 29, 2020

When you are selecting a data catalog, this decision is similar (and equally complicated) to the purchase of any other tangible or intangible element. It is obvious that any data catalog would help you understand and analyze previous data sets. However, the ease of getting to the final outcome (the quality) of the data catalog marks the difference.

In the following article, we will discuss how you can utilize various key markers to evaluate the quality of the data catalog. Let’s move forward and explore more about data catalogs.

What Is the Function of a Data Catalog?

The original purpose of a data catalog is to help a data analyst understand data. With better visibility into the past and existing information sets, the usefulness of this data improves. As a result, the quality of the findings also improve. Simply put, a data catalog is your one-stop solution for data curation and governance.

Today, data catalogs are being utilized not only for handling data inventory of organizations but also for enhancing analysis outcomes, quality, and handling data assets. In fact, compliance teams necessarily check cataloging to maintain critical guidelines of GDPR and other regulations. Traditionally, data cataloging was restricted to analyzing and understanding data. But now, it has moved towards a community-centric and extensive organizational collaboration approach, which has made cataloging essential for data management.

14 Tips to Choose The Best Data Catalog

When you are selecting a data catalog, it is necessary to ensure that this catalog meets the requirements and fits the culture of your organization. To help you achieve this, we have discussed 14 tips below. Read on.

Data Set Cataloging

The first thing that you should expect your data catalog to do is to support data discovery, including new dataset discovery and the initial making of the catalog. With the help of machine learning, your data catalog should fetch metadata, perform automated tagging, and achieve semantic inference. This is imperative to acquire optimum value from cataloging automation. It can reduce manual efforts and errors.

Data Set Search

The data catalog should include the ability to search – something which is the basic requirement. Your team should be able to search with keywords, facets, and other related business terms. An NLP-powered catalog can make this task easier for non-tech teams or users.

Note: The search option should always have a mask to secure datasets that a certain user is not authorized to view or access.

Operation Cataloging

Any data catalog should have the ability to offer preparation of operations to users. These operations should be integrated into datasets for data blending, formatting, and improvement. This means that the catalog should support multiple operational associations with – data operations to data and many-to-many.

For instance, one of the mandatory operations would be to secure PII or personally identifiable information of users.

Data Set Recommendation

Recommendations are great for finding data quickly. This is why having a data catalog with recommendations can help you improve the connection between dataset, workflow, and data preparation. This recommendation engine should be equipped to automatically detect dataset relationships and overlapping features of datasets.

Evaluation of Data Set

Finding datasets is the first leg of the bigger picture. This means that the data catalog should also allow the data analyst to see profiles of data, preview data, find ratings, understand customer reviews, evaluate the quality of information, and check annotation by the curator.

Access to Data

After checking the data evaluation, data access should be analyzed. There exist multiple types of datasets, which could be connected to the catalog. For instance, tagged files, RDBMS, flat files, graph databases, document stores, text documents, geospatial data, etc. Along with access to these datasets, protections should be placed to ensure compliance and security.

Catalog of Metadata

Always ensure that the metadata collected in your data catalog is rich in quality.

What type of data is sourced related to datasets?
What knowledge do we have of processes and data lineage?
Does the data contain details of SMEs, curators, etc.?

Asking these questions will give you a clear idea about the quality of metadata cataloging. Once these details are cataloged, it is necessary to ensure the right usage of metadata.

Who is using it?
What are the use cases of this usage?
What is the frequency of use?

This can help you move towards intelligent recommendations.

Valuation of Data

One of the widely accepted facts about data catalogs is data valuation. The catalog should offer value for data datasets. This means that the information you receive should be able to create some value for the business, and the catalog itself should contribute to the estimation of value.

Data Security

Proper security governance is necessary to ensure authorization and authentication. Allowing users to securely access data which they are authorized to see and authenticating access to the catalog for complete data security remain a top function of the process of cataloging.

Here, consider the levels of security constraints: row or record level, or field or column level.

Data Lineage or Tracing

The data catalog should offer transparency to the user to check data lineage. This means the ability to check the source of data, how it was generated, and where it is coming from. It is not uncommon to have breaks in lineage, such as when the dataset is extracted from ETL tools. When your catalog is able to fill these gaps, you can derive the source of the dataset to understand a dataset fully.

Data Compliance

One of the amazing features that we get with the right data catalog is the ability to maintain compliance. It, in fact, should maintain compliance according to the changing regulations. Hence, when you are selecting a data catalog, look for a catalog powered by machine learning, which will automatically determine metadata and profile assets. This will also contain pre-written procedures for access restrictions and masking.

Data Quality

When your catalog doesn’t offer quality data, your reports and other models are of no use. For this reason, quality data helps you achieve business-ready datasets. So, the catalog should be integrated to achieve quality data from disparate sources to seamlessly improve the output in the form of reports.

It is necessary to understand that your catalog will not perform the cleansing, but it can offer you discrepancy and deficiency points, which are likely to create a bottleneck in the quality. You can use this to make amends.

Data Interoperability

Data interoperability simply means the ability to integrate with various tools. This indicates the manner in which your data catalog will integrate with your visualization tools and data preparation software.

Data Catalog Deployment

Once you have considered all the above factors, check the technical infrastructure support that you need. Whether your culture supports cloud, hybrid, and on-premise deployments, or if you want web-based or server-based implementations. After analyzing all these deployment requirements, run a final check with the data catalog vendor to move in the right direction.

Conclusion

There are multiple factors that help in deciding the right data catalog. Only after considering all the above requirements, you would be able to arrive at the right point, from where you can evaluate your budget and finalize a data catalog. Before you make that decision, don’t forget to take note of the consulting offered, along with the future plans of the vendor for transformation. Once you are satisfied with all these factors, you would be able to select the right data catalog.

Development Insights Products

Essential Services for Silicon Valley Startups

Miley on June 28, 2020

Running a startup is not easy – especially if you don’t have a proper plan in place. Just like any other business, running a startup comes will numerous challenges.

Most entrepreneurs take up those challenges and create opportunities out of them. They try to make each day as productive as possible.

Nonetheless, the truth of the matter is that you can’t have enough time to complete all the responsibilities of your business. That’s where outsourcing comes in handy.

There are several companies that specialize in offering different types of services designed to support startups and other businesses. The good thing about outsourcing is that you get time to concentrate or focus on other important matters.

Below are some of the essential services for Silicon Valley startups:

1. Credit card processing

Every business today – no matter how small or big needs to process card payments. This can be a hectic job particularly if you have many customers. It can eat up a great deal of your time to ensure that everything is done correctly.

However, you can save yourself from all that trouble by outsourcing your credit processing to an expert. Most companies charge a small fee of about 1 to 3%, per transaction – which is reasonable compared to the amount of work they do.

Getting paid on time on time is a bid deal for most businesses. As long as you are able to keep the end of your bargain, then accepting credit cards can rapidly drive the growth of your business.

2. Reliable printing services

Printing is another essential service that is key to the operation of many small businesses and startups. Although most of the operations have gone digital, there are some business aspects that still need documents to be printed out.

This can be time-consuming for a company that has limited resources and employees. The best option is to find reliable printing services in San Francisco or San Jose.

There are many companies that specialize in bulk printing services at fair prices. The most important thing is to know your budget and how to negotiate.

3. Website design services

Most customers expect your business to have a website – even if the business has nothing to do with the internet. Besides, having a website gives an impression of seriousness and commitment to serve customers in a better way.

That’s why you need to create not just a website, but a website that will command respect from customers and competitors.

There are many website design companies that can create a website that speaks to the strengths of your business. Get a list of them and identify one that offers quality services at reasonable prices.

4. Marketing consultancy

Marketing is critical for any business. As such, it needs a lot of planning and strategizing to be able to promote a business effectively. Most businesses find it hard to do marketing for themselves because of the time it requires.

This is the reason why outsourcing can be a great solution for such businesses. Marketing consultancy firms specialize in different kinds of marketing and branding. All you need is to identify a company that understands your business.

5. Accounting

Gone are the days when companies had to struggle with reconciling their accounts to ensure everything is in order. Today, companies are realizing the importance of outsourcing accounting services instead of hiring internal staff to do that.

Development Insights Martech

Understanding the Difference Between Popular Platforms for Business

Miley on June 27, 2020

Over the years, modern marketing techniques have evolved to provide businesses with a more efficient and effective approach to build and promote their brands. Since modern marketing relies on data, the use of platforms such as Customer Data Platform (CDP) and Data Management Platforms (DMP) are on the rise.

Unfortunately, many businesses and marketers aren’t familiar with these platforms yet. Here is a brief guide to help you understand the differences between popular platforms.

Customer Data Platform

In the past 12 months, the CDP landscape has exploded, with over 100 sellers claiming to provide customer data platforms. However, to find the right solution for your business, you need to know what a DP is and what it does.

So what is CDP and how does it help small businesses?

A CDP is a form of technology used to understand your company’s client base and scale personalized experiences on various service, sales, and marketing channels. First, it collects data from first-party and 3rd party data sources, real-time interactions, and customer identities.

Second, it stitches this data together and removes any duplicates to create a single, persistent history of every client. CDP also empowers small businesses and marketers using a user-friendly interface to segment audiences, analyze customers, and project future actions.

Lastly, it allows businesses to automate the orchestration of one-on-one personalized marketing campaigns on several commerce, customer experience, and marketing channels.

The main difference between CDPs and other platforms, such as the customer relationship management platform (CRM), is that it can ingest huge volumes of data by connecting to all types and sources of customer data. Hence, your small business can form a much more comprehensive view to understand your audience better and act accordingly.

Data Management Platform (DMP)

Most people confuse CDPs with DMPs. But, DMPs plan and manage advertisements on third-party websites and enable retargeting using site cookies. A DMP focuses more on anonymous categories and customers, while CDPs focuses on creating single profiles for each customer.

A CDP also creates a persistent client profile and stores the data to create a single record, which can’t be accomplished by DMPs.

Customer Relation Management Platform (CRM)

A CRM is a service and sales tool that logs direct interaction with clients. This includes:

• Price quote

• Customer complaint

• Customer questions

It also updates client information such as phone, email, and name. Although both CDP and CRM collect consumer data, a CRM can only track a client’s intentional interactions with your business via manual entry. Additionally, CDPs can track both online and offline data, while CRMs can only track online data.

Digital Event Distribution Platform DED

IT organizations use DED for the transmission of data from one technology to another. For example, when new content is created, you can use DED to trigger the content from your content management system to another management system.

The main difference between DEDs and CDPs is that DEDs have a little marketing feel. Therefore, a marketer has to rely on the IT department, which makes the process of ideation to execution slow. In contrast, CDP makes customer data quickly accessible and actionable, increasing internal marketing processes.

Multichannel Marketing Hub Platform (MMH)

MMH, also known as marketing clouds, is used in the management and delivery of marketing campaigns through push, text, social, and email channels.

So, in conclusion, what makes CDP different from other systems? CDP is a packaged system that creates a unified, persistent client database and can ingest all types of data sources while being marketer-centric.