Archive for month: October, 2018

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/10/the-future-of-e-commerce-platforms/

The competition in the e-commerce market is fiercer than ever, as brands wrangle to outdo rivals by deploying the latest techniques and practices technology can offer. However, it’s hard to predict an industry-leader for a longer duration with the future of e-commerce constantly shifting.

This fast-paced evolution of e-commerce has not only expanded the digital footprint of online brands but also served as an impetus to accelerate the performance of shopping carts and increase revenues for online merchants.

Retailers aren’t the only ones affected. Platform developers are also facing the challenge of meeting the demands of multi-channel users. All these criteria along with the expectation of improved delivery times, customer service and greater product selection will define the future of e-commerce platforms.

1. Personalization & Customer Experience

E-commerce personalization and enhanced user experience will remain as the leading fundamentals of e-commerce. Customer purchase decisions will be influenced by a combination of showrooming and webrooming; product demos as well as the unique in-store experience being offered by retailers. Hence, e-commerce platforms will evolve continuously to offer the great versatility and depth-of-choice that comes with online shopping, along with the option of in-store purchasing, collection, or returns.

e-commerce platforms will evolve continuously to offer the great versatility and depth-of-choice

Creating a perfect profile of your customers is essential to fabricate a hyper-personalized shopping experience. For many years, retailers have relied on “online-to-offline,” or O2O business tactics that include online ads, coupons, and other enticements to nudge customers into the sales funnel. However, as consumers are growing more mindful, the O2O is slowly deteriorating and we’re starting to see what might be described as an “O2O 2.0” approach.

Walmart Inc. stores in China now allow shoppers to pay for their purchases via WeChat, a multi-purpose Chinese messaging, social media, and mobile payment application. Developed by Tencent, WeChat analyzes the data on consumers’ shopping habits and preferences to suggest shopping lists, coupons, and other items.

2. Integration of AI Systems

Rapidly changing and improving technology will define the next big step for the online-retail industry, which is the full automation of the processes across e-commerce platforms. AI systems integrated with e-commerce platforms can run algorithms to determine the optimum conditions for the sales procedure, highest converting design, etc. for every unique online shop. By using algorithms to effectively run tests, optimize settings and repeat the process on loop, retailers can maximize their web store capabilities and yield higher conversions.

It also anticipated that visual content will play a more important role in buying decisions. While internet giants like Google and eBay have already launched their own versions of visual search—which are still very much in their infancy—retailers like West Elm are also capitalizing on latest AI technologies to add similar functionality to their stores.

In future stores will allow shoppers to input their height, weight, complexion, favorite color etc, and then suggest clothing purchases based on those results.

Digital marketing and e-commerce gurus predict that e-commerce platforms will integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies into the shopping experience. This will give retailers more control over the buying process by gathering and storing information about shoppers’ buying habits. In future stores will allow shoppers to input their height, weight, complexion, favorite color etc, and then suggest clothing purchases based on those results. Retailers could use augmented reality to allow customers try on clothes virtually and further suggest other clothing items like shoes or trousers to round out a complete outfit.

3. Measurement Across All Devices

Owing to the abundance of available devices, consumers are now actively engaging on multiple devices at once. This means that e-commerce platforms must create solutions that can help retailers to engage with customers on all fronts. Though a lot of e-commerce platforms like Magento and WooCommerce are already providing extensions that can easily create a native mobile app for your store; a seamless mobile checkout is still a challenge for many platforms.

M-commerce has already achieved the trillion dollar mark

M-commerce has already achieved the trillion dollar mark and will slowly overtake e-commerce in the near future. Moreover, updates from Google mean that the mobile version of your website will soon become a starting point for what Google includes in their index, and an important ranking factor. So in future, we anticipate e-commerce platforms will work on providing more innovative mobile-friendly solutions for retailers.

4. The Decline of Monolithic Platforms

Traditional e-commerce platforms are inflexible and do not support features for performing dedicated tasks. To further define the problem, the issues can be broken down into three broad categories:

The first issue is the wastage of resources, that comes with getting a powerful server to handle the load from seasonal shoppers, but which may otherwise remain dormant during the rest of the year.
Secondly, servers in a certain physical location may not be able to provide the performance and speed to customers in another country. This can be a major setback to efforts in converting global customers.
Lastly, by housing all required servers in one location, they become more vulnerable to online attacks, server crashes, and numerous other issues—especially if the servers lack a backup. It can lead to major complications and tarnish brand reputation as well as loss of income.

To enhance customer experience retailers need to incorporate all sorts of customer analytics into their offerings. The efficiency ratio of this procedure varies depending on the platform and presents its challenges.

Converting a monolithic web application into smaller and simpler services…increases your website’s efficiency and its ability to scale

Custom-built platforms can successfully address these issues, but it can be a daunting task requiring a big team of highly-experienced developers working on the development and continuous optimization. Converting a monolithic web application into smaller and simpler services not only increases your website’s efficiency and its ability to scale, but will also allow you to react more quickly to change.

Back in 2011, Best Buy broke down its monolithic website into separate web services. This immediately benefited both the company and its customers. (However; this can be an expensive option for small retailers, who more than likely will not be able to rationalize these costs.)

5. Using Hyperscale Computing

Hyperscale is not only cost-effective and provides more space for innovation, but it allows retailers to explore different solutions for individual services. Moreover, retailers will have more freedom in managing the expenses and will be freed from the need of making a permanent commitment. Retailers will be able to focus on development in areas that highlight their strengths and attract customers in a highly competitive market.

There is no debate that cloud computing has helped e-commerce entrepreneurs to save both time and resources. It has opened the world to consumers and online retailers. Walmart has spent more than five years and millions of dollars just to built its own internal cloud network; this clearly indicates their determination to grab a bigger slice of online shopping and is an inspiration for all online retailers to quickly move to cloud computing not only to increase their sales but to improve their in-store operations as well.

What the Future Holds

New technologies and the latest products are increasingly changing the manner in which most consumers shop online. Innovative devices, such as Google Home, are decreasing the number of steps required for completing a purchase. Consumers can create a wish list using Google Home and directly place their orders without even launching a web browser or other apps.

the most elaborate solution may not necessarily be the most effective

Social media channels have also become a big part of the online retail process. They have proven effective means of advertising products according to demographics and specific customer behavior. More importantly, customers can use the social media channels to gain direct access to the e-commerce platform. The future of these integration tools seems to suggest that soon customers may even be able to purchase by simply selecting a product image displayed on a social media channel.

While the complexities of e-commerce continue to increase, retailers are starting to learn the most elaborate solution may not necessarily be the most effective.

Reducing the e-commerce platform into manageable sections and utilizing consumer data to better develop functions to address specific customer behavior are approaches which will set retailers on the track to prepare for the near future of e-commerce.

Featured image via DepositPhotos.

Add Realistic Chalk and Sketch Lettering Effects with Sketch’it – only $5!

Source

p img {display:inline-block; margin-right:10px;}
.alignleft {float:left;}
p.showcase {clear:both;}
body#browserfriendly p, body#podcast p, div#emailbody p{margin:0;}

Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/css-debugging-and-optimization-code-quality-tools/

The following introduction to CSS code-quality tools is an extract from Tiffany’s upcoming book, CSS Master, 2nd Edition, which will be available shortly.

On your road to becoming a CSS master, you’ll need to know how to troubleshoot and optimize your CSS. How do you diagnose and fix rendering problems? How do you ensure that your CSS creates no performance lags for end users? And how do you ensure code quality?

Knowing which tools to use will help you ensure that your front end works well.

In this article, we’ll discuss tools that help you analyze the quality of your CSS. We’ll focus on two:

stylelint
UnCSS

stylelint is a linting tool. A linter is an application that checks code for potential trouble spots, enforcing coding conventions such as spaces instead of tabs for indentation. stylelint can find problems such as duplicate selectors, invalid rules, or unnecessary specificity. These have the greatest impact on CSS maintainability.

UnCSS, on the other hand, checks your CSS for unused selectors and style rules. It parses a stylesheet and a list of HTML pages, returning a CSS file that’s stripped of unused rules.

Both of these tools use Node.js and can be installed using npm.

If you’re working on a small site, such as a personal blog or a few pages that are updated infrequently, many of the problems that these tools flag can safely be ignored. You’ll spend time refactoring for little gain in maintainability and speed. For larger projects, however, they’re invaluable. They’ll help you head off maintainability problems before they start.

stylelint

stylelint helps you avoid errors and enforce conventions in your styles. It has more than 160 error-catching rules and allows you to create your own as well via plugins.

stylelint Installation and Configuration

Install stylelint as you would any other npm package:

npm install -g stylelint

Once it’s installed, we’ll need to configure stylelint before using it. stylelint doesn’t ship with a default configuration file. Instead, we need to create one. Create a .stylelistrc file in your project directory. This file will contain our configuration rules, which can use JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) or YAML (YAML Ain’t Markup Language) syntax. Examples in this section use JSON.

Our .stylelistrc file must contain an object that has a rules property. The value of rules will itself be an object containing a set of stylelist rules and their values:

{
“rules”: {}
}

If, for example, we wanted to banish !important from declarations, we can set the declaration-no-important to true:

{
“rules”: {
“declaration-no-important”: true
}
}

stylelint supports over 150 rules that check for syntax errors, indentation and line-break consistency, invalid rules, and selector specificity. You’ll find a complete list of rules and their available values in the stylelint User Guide.

Starting with a Base stylelint Configuration

You’ll probably find it easier to start with a base configuration and then customize it to your project needs. The stylelint-config-recommended base configuration is a good starting configuration. It enables all of the “possible errors” rules. Install it using npm:

npm install -g stylelint-config-recommended

Then, in your project directory, create a .stylelistrc file that contains the following lines:

{
“extends”: “/absolute/path/to/stylelint-config-recommended”
}

Replace /absolute/path/to/ with the directory to which stylelint-config-recommended was installed. Global npm packages can usually be found in the %AppData%npmnode_modules directory on Windows 10 systems, and in /usr/local/lib/node_modules on Unix/Linux and macOS systems. Type npm list -g to locate your global node_modules directory.

We can then augment our configuration by adding a rules property. For example, to disallow vendor prefixes, our .stylelistrc file would look similar to the what’s below:

{
“extends”: “/absolute/path/to/stylelint-config-recommended”,
“rules”: {
“value-no-vendor-prefix”: true
}
}

What if we wanted to limit the maximum specificity of our selectors to 0,2,0? That would permit selectors such as .sidebar .title but not #footer_nav. We can do this by adding a selector-max-specificity rule to our configuration:

{
“extends”: “/absolute/path/to/stylelint-config-recommended”,
“rules”: {
“value-no-vendor-prefix”: true,
“selector-max-specificity”: “0,2,0”
}
}

The post CSS Debugging and Optimization: Code-quality Tools appeared first on SitePoint.

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/RBwS7SfLz1w/can-this-font-improve-your-memory

Ever read a passage of text only to realise that you didn't take it in? It's a problem that affects a lot of readers, especially students cramming in exam season. To give text more traction and make it easier to remember, Melbourne-based researchers at RMIT University have created a fun font that makes reading harder.

The appropriately named Sans Forgetica does this by taking advantage of "desirable difficulty". This line of thought argues that a small obstruction aids the learning process by forcing a person to create a memory trace.

To make reading legible but also difficult, the Sans Forgetica typeface has been riddled with gaps and given a seven degree back slant. The result is a jarring font that requires an extra bit of effort on the reader's part. It only takes a fraction of a second longer to read, but Sans Forgetica already appears to be making a difference.

Sans Forgetica co-creator Stephen Banham advises you read the typeface in small bursts

As part of a study by the university, students noticed a small increase in memory retention when reading text in Sans Forgetica compared to Arial. The 400 participants were found to remember 57 per cent of Sans Fogetica text, and only 50 per cent when reading Arial. 

Despite the promising statistics, Sans Forgetica has limitations. Typography lecturer and Sans Forgetica co-creator Stephen Banham told The Guardian that the typeface is best suited to short passages. "You wouldn’t want novels printed in it, it would probably induce a headache."

Sans Forgetica took six months to develop and went through three different iterations. With a promising study behind it, it's hoped that the typeface could also be used to aid proofreading. You can download this free font here.

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/vKrBzW2PyXA/best-full-frame-cameras

Full-frame cameras have a lot to offer the creative photographer, and they come in a wide range of shapes and sizes. To help you figure out which is the right model for you, we've rounded up our pick of the best full-frame cameras in a range of different categories. If you're not sure it's a full-frame camera you want, we also have a guide to the best camera for creatives.

So what exactly is a full-frame camera, and why would you want one? Full-frame cameras can deliver a tighter depth of field than models with a crop sensor, which can be a major bonus in portraiture and still life photography. 

The fact that the image sensor has a physically larger surface area can be a key advantage in other ways as well. Manufacturers can cram extra megapixels onto the sensor, increasing the potential for capturing ultra-fine detail and texture. Alternatively, they can stick to a more modest megapixel count and increase the size of the actual photosites, which equate to pixels in the resulting image. Bigger photosites enable the camera to capture more light, which can result in less image noise when shooting at high ISO (sensitivity) settings.

Many photographers still prefer conventional DLSRs, with their reflex mirrors and optical viewfinders. However, there's a growing range of mirrorless 'compact system cameras' on the market, with Sony offering a number of full-frame bodies and companion lenses in its lineup. 

Let's check out the best full-frame cameras on the market to suit your budget and specific requirements.

With the notable exceptions of the 5DS and 5DS R, Canon's highly regarded EOS 5D series of cameras have never set the world alight in terms of megapixel count. True to form, the latest Mk IV weighs in with a 30.4MP image sensor, which turns out to be a very good compromise. It enables the camera to capture fine detail extremely well, while also maintaining very clean image quality at high ISO settings, along with a fairly fast 7fps maximum drive rate. The autofocus systems are excellent, with a 61-point phase-detection module for shooting stills through the viewfinder, and Dual Pixel AF for live view and movie capture, the latter of which is available at 4K UHD.

Sony's latest flagship mirrorless camera packs a full-frame sensor and dual memory card slots into a typically small and lightweight package. The sensor itself might look unimpressive, with a 24.2 megapixel count, but it's a stacked CMOS device with onboard processing and memory. 

Advantages include low-noise image quality at very high ISO settings, and blistering continuous drive speeds of up to 20fps, complete with autofocus tracking. An electronic shutter is also on hand, to enable shutter speeds of up to 1/32000th of a second, so you can freeze even the fastest action. The electronic viewfinder is absolutely outstanding and the rear touchscreen is nice and clear, although it only has a tilt facility and lacks full articulation.

For outright resolving power, the 45.4MP Nikon D850 clearly wins out against the 30.4MP Canon 5D Mk IV. And despite having 50 per cent more megapixels, it matches the Canon for maximum drive rate, at 7fps. The rear screen is also ultra-high-res, and very easy on the eye. As a pro-grade Nikon, it has a substantially different control layout to consumer-grade cameras like the D750. It's more like a scaled-down Nikon D5, without the built-in vertical grip. As such, it's reasonably small and lightweight for a pro-grade DSLR. 

The only real downside is that, for shooting under low lighting conditions at high ISO settings, image noise can be rather noticeable, especially compared with the likes of the Canon 5D Mk IV and the super-smooth Nikon D750.

This is our pick for the best full-frame budget camera on the market. It took six years for the Mark II edition of Canon's 'enthusiast' level full-frame DSLR to topple the original 6D from its throne. It's been well worth the wait, as the main autofocus system gets a mighty upgrade from 11 AF points with only a single cross-type point, to 45 AF points, all of which are cross-type for greater accuracy. 

The sensor-based autofocus system for live view and movie capture gets an even bigger upgrade, with a dual pixel AF sensor that makes focusing massively faster. The maximum drive rate is 2fps faster at 6.5fps, and the new model features 5-axis stabilisation for movie capture. However, this isn't available for shooting stills, and movies themselves are limited to 1080p rather than 4K. Even so, the excellent fully articulated touchscreen will benefit those shooting movies as well as live view stills.

What you see is what you get with this camera. The immensely detailed and super-sharp electronic viewfinder has crystal clarity, reflected in the ultra-high definition stills that are captured by the 42.4MP image sensor. 4K UHD movie capture is just as much of a treat, as the A9 delivers wonderfully sharp and detailed results, helped along by its 5-axis image stabiliser. Overall 4K movie quality beats that of any regular DSLR currently on the market, and you can boost resolution to 5K in 'Super 35mm' mode. Advanced functions to suit serious videographers include a clean HDMI output, zebra display, time code and slow/quick motion, to name but a few.

Costing two-thirds of the price of the A7R III and little more than half the price of the A9, the A7 III is the most 'sensible' option for those hunting for the best full-frame camera for travel. There's no shortage of advanced features, including a back-illuminated image sensor that enables very clean high-ISO images (more so than in the A7R III), a fabulously fast and reliable hybrid autofocus system, speedy 10fps continuous stills shooting, and 4K video capture. 

With its small, lightweight build, it's eminently suitable for travel photography and, while the A9 and A7R III are also very travel-friendly, the A7 III edges ahead in terms of battery life, with up to 610 or 710 shots per charge, using the viewfinder or rear screen respectively. If you're going to be hitting the beach or engaging in adventurous activities on your travels, it's also nice not to be packing quite such an expensive camera.

If you're after the best full-frame camera for sports or wildlife photography, look no further than the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II. Many pros love this DSLR simply for its handling characteristics. With a built-in vertical grip that fully duplicates all the important shooting controls, it feels equally natural to use in portrait or landscape orientation.

The camera really comes into its own for action sports and wildlife photography where, for a DSLR at least, it delivers a super-fast continuous drive rate of 14fps, and as much as 16fps in live view mode. The 61-point autofocus system makes a spectacularly good job of keeping tabs on fast or erratically moving objects, with plentiful tracking options to choose from. The shooting speed is helped by the modest megapixel count of 20.2MP, but this also ensures relatively noise-free image quality when you need to shoot at very high ISO speeds, for example when freezing the wildlife action at twilight, or for indoor sports.

Inspired by classic yesteryear Nikon 35mm stills cameras, the Df will appeal to photographers of a certain age or inclination. It has a plethora of hands-on, dedicated dials up on top, for adjusting shooting parameters like ISO, shutter speed and exposure compensation, as well as the usual shooting buttons and dials on the front and back. Based on the same image sensor and processor as the flagship D4 (which has now been superseded by the D5), the Df is also starting to look a bit retro in terms of its 16.2 megapixel count. An upside is that high-ISO images are fairly noise-free. A major downside for many modern photographers is that Nikon has taken the 'retro' theme to the extreme by stripping out any video capture facility from the camera.

With a similar price tag to the Canon 6D Mark II, the older Nikon D750 almost matches it for megapixel count, with a 24.3MP sensor. The D750 is equally able to capture fine detail and texture but draws slightly ahead in minimising image noise at very high ISO settings. It's far better than the Nikon D850 in this respect, making the D750 a better proposition for shooting indoors or under very low lighting without resorting to flash. This can be a particular plus point for wedding photographers and others needing to shoot indoor events. Another upside for capturing important, unrepeatable events is that, unlike the Canon 6D Mark II, the D750 has dual memory card slots, so you can create instant backups of every shot you take, on separate cards.

With a keen eye for detail, the K-1 Mark II has a 36MP image sensor with no anti-alias filter, and can deploy its 5-axis sensor-shift image stabiliser in a variety of ways. For starters, it can reduce camera-shake in handheld shooting with up to 5-stop efficiency. There are also tripod and handheld modes for shifting pixels between successive shots, to enhance the capture of ultra-fine detail. 

For shooting the night sky, there's a more intriguing 'Astrotracer' mode. This employs the camera's internal GPS module and electronic compass for astrophotography. The latitudinal position on the globe, plus its direction and horizontal/vertical tilt are all measured automatically. Calculations are performed and the image stabiliser shifts the sensor throughout the exposure. This effectively tracks the movement of the moon, stars and other celestial bodies, so that they don't blur or appear to streak through the night sky.