Archives for February 2018

February 28, 2018

4 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Standing out is one of the toughest things to do in a crowded market. You are too busy chasing your dream job and wanting to do your passion project for a living that you forget to make money. How do we go about it?

Make yourself equal and make yourself different.

What do others expect from you?

I always tell people to deliver what other people do not expect from you. Back when I was the CEO at Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment, we would tell our athletes to surprise people by presenting themselves in a different manner from how others perceive an athlete normally behaves.We taught the players to make sure they were always the first to hold a door and say “thank you.” A simple action can go a long way.

Challenge others to re-evaluate their perspective on who you are with your unexpected actions. Catching someone by surprise allows us to make a bigger impact on those around us who expected something else. Use this surprise in your favor by making it into a competitive advantage.

Create a competitive advantage.

Surprising people also means that you tend to have a competitive advantage over the rest of the field. You have something different to offer, which helps you to get noticed.

What we want to do before leveraging your advantage, though, is make ourselves equal to our competitors. Show how you possess the same attributes as your competitors, that you are equally deserving of consideration.

Simply saying “I’m different” does nothing to convince others of your value. Prove it. Show them that you have the same skills as your competitors. The same knowledge. The same desire. Then, show them how different you are from the rest.

If you cannot convince someone you are equal first, trying to convince them that you are different becomes more difficult.

See separation in action.

Whether we’re applying for jobs, dreaming about what we want to do next in our career or just meeting people, we want to make ourselves their equal first.

Recently I went into a business meeting and, because of my career history, they were expecting me to act like a sports agent. They were expecting more of what they had received in the past from other people in that industry, one based on greed and insecurity.

I showed up and made myself equal, as I still possess the skills and situational knowledge of a sports agent. But, I also made myself different from other agents they had met before with an abundant attitude. Unlike most sports agents, I believe that there is more than enough of everything for everyone and this approach resonates with people who do not expect it.

Differentiation means success.

Making yourself different means you are more likely to have long-term success.

Renowned business strategist Michael E. Porter teaches us that, “The fundamental basis of above-average performance in the long run is sustainable competitive advantage. Though a [person] can have a myriad of strengths and weaknesses vis-a-vis [her] competitors, there are two types of competitive advantage that a [person] can possess: low cost or differentiation.”

Competitive advantage is broken down to two simple things: being cheap and being different. Which would you prefer to be known for?

With a differentiation strategy, a person seeks to be unique in an industry, selecting attributes that others in the industry perceive as important and positioning themselves to meet those needs.

Be the same and then be different.

You must remember to come into a situation humble and make yourself equal first, then get to work on differentiating yourself. Your competition never quits, and neither should you. Your work on yourself needs to be consistent if you want to maintain your competitive advantage. Keep striving to be different, but don’t forget to make yourself equal first.

February 27, 2018

7 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Growing any business is, well, tough business. You’ve got your hand in every pot while simultaneously wearing every hat. You’re worrying about marketing strategies, product creation and growth plans, all in the same day.

Related: 39 Quick Ways to Increase Your Website’s Conversion Rate

With so many ongoing tasks, it can be far too easy to let a little thing like digital presence fall by the wayside. However, that would be a grave mistake.

The Harvard Business Review recently conducted a study on what exactly makes people want to complete a purchase from a particular website, and the results were a resounding “trustworthiness.” By making consumers feel safe, comfortable and at ease when they visit your online destination, you stand a much higher chance of not just encouraging them to complete a purchase, but convincing them to become longtime users.

A strong website design is paramount in creating this trustworthiness. By presenting an online destination that is straightforward and easy to navigate, users will have a more positive experience throughout your website, making them more likely to complete a purchase. 

So, while things like company transparency, great testimonials, and a solid product are obvious ways to ingrain familiarity to potential customers, website design clearly ranks particularly high when determining if a brand seems trustworthy or not.

In order to stand out from the crowd, there are a few tried-and-true design elements that will transform your website visitors into loyal customers. Don’t worry, I’m not going to say something obvious like “responsive designs” — elements like that are a given.

Related: 10 Steps to Creating an Engaging Digital Experience

Here are five top web design and UX trends that will grow your business fast.

1. Video landing page

Incorporating video into your website design is a no-brainer. I mean, 78 percent of internet users watch videos online every week. 

But, don’t just embed any old YouTube video. Instead, take your website design to the next level by creating a video landing page.

You could target this video to a direct call to action on a particular web page, a la Salesforce. Or you could take a page out of Baesman’s book and create an immersive video that auto-plays on your homepage. Either of these approaches can provide information or drive home the brand’s identity — but both will improve UX and users’ impression of your company as a whole.

Not sold? The proof is in the pudding. According to Vidyard and Demand Metric’s The State of Video Marketing 2017 study — which surveyed 159 B2B and B2C professionals and entrepreneurs — it is predicted that 69 percent of website traffic will be video, while 70 percent of professional participants reported that video converts better than other forms of information and content.

Related: 50 Must-Have Features for Small-Business Websites (Infographic)

2. Parallax scrolling

While digital experiences have no doubt improved many aspects of our daily lives, it has had one negative impact: People are lazy. So lazy, in fact, that clicking a button is often too far out of the realm of possibility.

Enter parallax scrolling.

This uneven-like scrolling effect has combated consumers’ general laziness while remaining engaging and visually appealing. With a simple swipe (a la Tinder), users have easily consumed your information as they make their way down the page.

The popularity of parallax scrolling has also introduced more deep-scrolling and single-page website designs, and renders what information is “above the fold” a little less necessary, since it is easier to see what’s below, too. Ultimately, that makes prioritizing content easier for you to manage and increases your user’s likelihood of seeing everything anyways.

Make Your Money Matter took its parallax scrolling to the next level, with effects spanning an illustrated timeline that goes both horizontally and vertically, ensuring it captivates users.

Related: Improve Your Website’s Conversion Rates With These 6 Design Tips

3. Animated calls to action

Calls to action are a necessary evil in website design. The fact remains that your consumers won’t know what to do unless you explicitly tell them. Many. Many. Times.

However, simply telling your consumers what to do just isn’t enough anymore, either. They’re seeing stimuli and instructions from all corners of the web, so you need a little something extra to help your goal stand out.

Adding a little animation to your important action items might be just the ticket. Whether it’s a micro-mini interaction (such as “liking” a Facebook post and seeing the many reaction animations) or a simple effect to catch users’ eyes, consumers are more likely to execute the action you’re pushing when the call to action grabs their attention and provides confirmation of completion.

Need some inspiration? Airbnb uses its animation app, Lottie, to incorporate subtle graphics animations atop its calls to action throughout its website and app designs.

Related: 4 Ways to Make Your Business Website More User-Friendly

4. Custom typography

Every website needs text, but the days of boring Times New Roman, Arial or any other basic stock font have long-since passed. Instead, take your message to the next level with unique typography that encompasses your brand identity while simultaneously communicating to users.

This unique typography can take many shapes (literally) or be found in different areas of your design. Some brands may choose to utilize this in their logo design, while other businesses (like mine) will sprinkle custom font throughout the entire design to draw attention to important content, like this newsletter signup call to action (below). Ultimately, the choice in how and where you utilize this trend is up to you.

Related: 10 Tips for Web Design That Drives Sales

5. Artificial intelligence

Despite the surge in ecommerce sales over brick and mortar storefronts, people still crave connections, which is likely one of the reasons that artificial intelligence in all its forms is so popular.

AI in website design can take many shapes, but some popular examples include machine learning, personalization and chatbots. Machine learning and personalization are cut from the same cloth to a degree and ingratiate a feeling of “being special” with users that, in turn, fosters brand loyalty.

Chatbots influence user experience much more directly, though. While they provide an engaging element, the biggest draw to incorporating chatbots into your website design relates to customer service. Users can ask questions and receive answers in real time — which is easy to visualize — and acquire information quickly.

Quartz is a stellar example of chatbots within immersive app design. Through a conversational interface and hilarious memes, users are more likely to return to consume the entertaining content than they are to read a boring news article on another app.

Related: 10 Best WordPress Themes to Choose From for Your Next Website Project

By investing in website design, you can cultivate a broad and dedicated consumer base that will use your product time and time again. While there are many more design elements that you can incorporate into your designs, ultimate each choice should:

• Make users feel comfortable.
• Represent the brand.
• Clearly draw attention to important calls to action.
• Give users the information they need to make an informed choice.

February 25, 2018

2 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

When it comes to business, the tides are always changing. And to be successful as an entrepreneur, it’s important to keep up to date with what’s trending in the startup world. To identify and understand what’s hot and what’s not right now, Kempler Industries analyzed data from 200 of the world’s top startups, as ranked by the website Startup Ranking.

Related: 18 Marketing Trends to Watch in 2018

Wondering what the most popular categories are amongst startups today? Based on what businesses are helping customers accomplish, the study found that 21 percent help customers “find,” meaning discover content and recommend places to go and people to help. Following the “find” category, another 11 percent of businesses are helping consumers “buy” goods and services online and 9 percent are helping people and businesses “organize.” The study uncovered a total of 16 other top categories including “reading,” “creating” and “collaborating,” to name a few.

Related: 10 Social-Media Trends to Prepare for in 2018

Overall, the United States was found to be the country with the most startups. Following the U.S. is India, Canada and Japan and Spain. So, which startup is on top? Airbnb, which has millions of hosts and guests using the platform worldwide. Following close behind is Uber, Medium, 500px and Hootsuite.

Check out Kempler’s infographic below to learn more on what’s trending in the startup space today.

February 24, 2018

3 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

It’s pretty standard for people in tech to take home some big salaries. But just how much money are these people making? A recent study by Hired.com analyzed data from more than 69,000 job seekers and 10,000 companies, as well as surveying more than 700 tech workers, to uncover salary trends among tech workers in major cities around the world.

Related: 4 Winning Salary Negotiation Strategies

It’s no surprise that some of today’s highest-paid tech workers reside in the Bay Area — home to companies including Facebook, Google and Apple. On average, a tech employee makes an annual salary of $142,000 in the Bay. However, workers in cities including Seattle, Los Angeles and New York aren’t far behind. Seattle comes in second for highest-paid tech workers, with an average of $132,000 annually. Tech employees in the Big Apple and La La Land each take home an average $129,000 a year.

Thinking about moving to one of these cities? Before doing that, it’s important to take into account the typical standard of living costs in each of these places. While a $129,000 salary might sound like a dream-come-true, people in New York City are actually worse off than any others because of the high cost of living. In fact, after adjusting the salary with the average total cost of living in New York, researchers found that NYC techies are the worst off compared to people in other cities and that their average salary is still $6,000 lower than that of residents in the Bay Area. So, if you want to save money, take a look at Austin, Texas.

Related: Fixing the Pay Gap Starts With Your Salary Negotiation Skills

Austin is making its way onto the map in the tech world, with average salaries there increasing between 2016 and 2017 by 7 percent, with an average $118,000 in 2017. However, after taking into account living costs, the adjusted salary winds up being more like $202,000. “This means the average Austin tech worker would need an $84,000 raise to maintain their same standard of living in San Francisco,” the study explains.

Overall, the global average salary for tech workers in major cities is $135,000. And the tech industry that’s paying workers the most is transportation, which has an average $145,000 annual salary. Unfortunately, these numbers tend to plateau for people 45 and older. According to the research, the salaries of tech workers usually peak around $151,000 in their mid-forties, and decline to $150,000 or less for people 45 years old until retirement.

Related: Level-Up Your Salary With These 5 Simple Tips

For a closer look at the tech salary trends of major cities, check out the infographic below.

Image credit: Hired.com

February 23, 2018

7 min read

You can’t please everybody, and the people who design tech interfaces know this truth all too well.

These folks have to consider conflicting suggestions from users to improve the experience on their favorite platforms, but their customers aren’t the only ones whose preferences they have to take into account.

They’ve got advertisers who want their images and videos prominently displayed. They’ve got academics, activists and governments scrutinizing how tech features manipulate the masses. They’ve got various other egos, from investors to executives, chiming in with their two cents. And they’ve got competitors that they’re trying to either copy or out-innovate.

Related: Why These People and Brands Are Fed Up With Facebook

The users who express their grievances with updates don’t consider this. It seems that every time a major tech platform introduces a new feature or redesign, people get mad. Think this is an exaggeration? Check out these tweets from 2007 through 2012 containing the words “hate Facebook update.” Or these tweets containing “Instagram changes suck” from 2015 through 2017. Or the most recent tweets about “the new Google calendar.”

Or take Snapchat, which recently rolled out a redesign of its interface that separates brands from friends and fills a tab that used to house stories with branded content. Putting partner content front-and-center, in a section of the app users habitually visit, was meant to boost engagement with that paid content. In fact, the number of daily users watching stories from publishers grew 40 percent in tests of the redesigned version of the app vs. in the old version.

It pissed people off. A Change.org petition titled “Remove the new Snapchat Update” circulated and received upwards of 1.23 million signatures. On Feb. 21, 2018, celebrity influencer Kylie Jenner tweeted that she no longer uses Snapchat to her 24.5 million Twitter followers. The comment tanked parent company Snap’s market valuation — it fell by $1.3 billion in less than a day. Jenner, mind you, was the most popular person on Snapchat for a period in 2015.

sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.

— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018

still love you tho snap … my first love

— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018

Image Credit: Google

Ironically, content about Kylie Jenner was among the featured posts on Snapchat Discover on Feb. 22 and 23 — “still love you tho!”

In the past, Snapchat has listened to users’ requests and implemented changes, such as when it stopped autoplaying consecutive stories in late 2016. And it listened to the Change.org petitioners, too, posting a response on Feb. 20 (before Jenner dropped her damning tweet). “We hear you,” Snap told the concerned users. “We completely understand the new Snapchat has felt uncomfortable for many.”

Related: 5 Stats That Show Snap May Be Turning Its Struggling Business Around

Snap then explained the goals it had with the redesign: To make interactions among friends more accessible and for both friend and branded content to surface according to what the user is most likely to want to see. It also announced that tabs in both the Friends and Discover sections are on their way, to allow users to customize what they see.

“This new foundation is just the beginning, and we will always listen closely to find new ways to make the service better for everyone,” the statement concluded. “We are grateful for your enthusiasm and creativity. We are very excited for what’s ahead.”

Although user feedback would suggest that Snapchat really messed up with its new redesign, it’s getting at least two things right with this statement. The company has told its users it’s listening to them, and it’s explained why it made the changes it did.

That’s what Basecamp designer Jonas Downey advised in a Medium post, “How to launch software changes without pissing people off,” last March:

“It’s bad enough to be forced into an update you didn’t agree to, but it’s even worse if you have no idea what happened or why things changed. Make sure you have a way to introduce and explain what’s new when you launch, either via in-app announcements, a mailing list, a blog or whatever method you have to communicate with customers.”

Developers and users need to empathize with each other. It’s hard to roll out a redesign that won’t be jarring to users. It’s also difficult (not impossible, but it requires extra work) for companies to maintain two versions — old and new — just so users can choose to opt out of an update.

TechCrunch contributor and FreshBooks Creative Director Jeremy Bailey suggests taking a proactive approach to considering customer feedback. Companies should research customer wants and needs before and during development to prevent backlash upon a rollout.

“Design teams must learn to become a group of ethnographers, learning to spot the unmet needs of customers and adapting to meet their concerns,” Bailey writes, noting that “every product design — or redesign — should start with customer research, generally in the form of interviews to understand customer needs and gather insights that inform a ‘problem statement’ — a series of issues that must be addressed in the design process.”

It’s also important for companies to be receptive when users point out unforeseen issues with product updates, says Sara Wachter-Boettcher, author of Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech.

“Oftentimes, those complaints highlight real failures,” Wachter-Boettcher told Entrepreneur in an email, “failures that could harm people or leave them open to abuse.”

She sites Snapchat’s June 2017 Snap Maps update as an example of a new feature that users flagged as having potential for abuse in the form of stalking, as well as a Google Maps update that associated walking distance with calories burned, depicted with cupcake symbols. She explains how users found the latter update to be harmful to people with eating disorders or who could not or chose not to walk, not to mention that calorie counts aren’t the best indicator of fitness, among other issues.

“Most of all, they complained that this is not something they signed up for,” she says. “The app was meant to map things. They hadn’t opted in to a health tracker. Google turned off the features.”

A final example she provides happened with Twitter in early 2017: The company temporarily stopped notifying users when they were added to Twitter Lists. Women, in particular, wanted to know, “because lists are one way trolls and abusers share targets” by adding women to lists with names such as “stupid bitches.” Twitter reinstated notifications after people raised these concerns.

“If companies care about the safety and wellbeing of their users, then they can’t write off criticism that might seem superficial or change-averse at first blush,” Wachter-Boettcher says. “I think that loud, massive outcry is actually a gift to a tech company. It’s free feedback that may allow them to uncover a problem that they hadn’t anticipated, before it hurts people.”

Entrepreneur will update this story amid outcry about future tech updates.

Related video: Why This Business Leader Says Feedback Is the ‘Breakfast of Champions’