Satellites, drag and drop, and more.

A free version of Urchin, a company Google bought. (official blog post)

If you sell physical products online, there’s nothing more frustrating than customer returns. Best case, it’s just annoying. For you AND for your customers. Worst case… You have to deal with people that EXPLOIT your policies. These people have no intention of buying. It’s borderline stealing. The good news is: I just read interesting new […]

So, the year was 2011. I had just given a speech at Marie Forleo‘s live event. And everyone seemingly loved it. (She even got me to moonwalk on stage…) This was one of my first speaking engagements about business and entrepreneurship. And I was a little stressed out about it. Social Triggers was new. I […]

If you're looking to grow profits next year, you've likely already made your plans for the new year. I get that. And it's the last days of this year, so you've stopped reading blogs. I get that too. But there's a good chance that while you've used one or a couple of the strategies below, ... Read more

The post Grow Your Business Profits in 2023 appeared first on Chris Lema.

In the world of business, understanding unit economics is crucial for achieving scalability, profitability, and maintaining overall business health. It provides valuable insights into the financial performance of a company, allowing entrepreneurs and managers to make informed decisions about resource allocation, pricing, and profitability. I spend a decent amount of time talking about this in ... Read more

The post Scaling Your Business Requires Understanding Your Unit Economics appeared first on Chris Lema.

I couldn't get my camera to focus by pressing the shutter button down half-way. It has always worked in the past. I didn't understand what had happened. I started with checking the modes – was I in a different mode than normal? Nope. Then I went to the settings. I set the focus setting correctly. ... Read more

The post Do you know your focus toggle? appeared first on Chris Lema.

Keeping high performers engaged at work not only maximizes productivity, but also drives revenue up. I won't bore you with the research, but studies show that a single top achiever can deliver as much productivity as up to four average employees. In the heart of every small business, there are standout stars – the true ... Read more

The post Keeping Your Top Talent Engaged appeared first on Chris Lema.

When your attention goes to many things, no real progress is ever made. Not all opportunities are worth pursuing — especially if it means being pulled away from something that is currently working.

In order to accomplish your goals you need: (1) a clear goal; (2) a winning action plan; and (3) consistency. Take away or invert any of those things, and you’ve eliminated the possibility of succeeding at your desired outcome. Here’s what they look like when inverted: (1) unclear direction; (2) random acts of productivity / […]

How many priorities do you have in your business and life right now? If you’re struggling to gain traction, perhaps its your lack of focus that’s causing your lack of growth.

Imagine the convenience of a hotel concierge, but with a recording that you can customize. That’s the draw of an at-home wake-up call service—which is far more affordable than booking a hotel room just to get access to a concierge. In any case, for less than the cost of a […]

The post How to Safely Set Up Your Own Wake Up Call Service appeared first on .

You want your call center to be prepared to tackle any challenge and come out safely on the other side. While many may brush over their business continuity plans and adopt a so-called “agile” approach to potential disasters, having a plan in place will make all the difference when facing […]

The post Business Continuity–8 Steps to Future-Proof Your Call Center appeared first on .

Setting up a good IVR (interactive voice response) call flow can pay dividends for your business because it can keep more customers on the line and route more of them to the exact resources they need without delays.  Below, we’ll explore 12 call flows that you can implement in your […]

The post 12 IVR Call Flows You Can Steal (and Use) in Your Call Center appeared first on .

If you work in an outbound call center, you know how important it is to hone your skills and keep outperforming the competition. At the same time, you also know not to waste time with useless gimmicks and low-level advice that was written by AI in two seconds.  What you […]

The post 9 Cold Calling Tips To Increase Your Sales This Week appeared first on .

Data makes the world go round, but without proper context, it can only tell a small part of the story.  At a call center, for example, the average time that agents spend on calls tells you very little about the success of those calls. If the calls are super short, […]

The post What Your Average Call Duration Says About Your Team appeared first on .

In today’s digital world, information spreads like wildfire. That includes information about you. What people read about you online—whether accurate or not—impacts your reputation and potentially all aspects of your life. You want the things people read about you to be true. But keeping track of everything that appears online […]

The post How to Automate Your Personal Reputation Management appeared first on .

Call simulators can be nice tools when you want to provide supplemental training and practice for your agents, but they can’t replace the hands-on experience they’d get from dealing with real customers. In other words, call simulators work, but they’re not very practical for training purposes—especially in the long term.  […]

The post Will a Call Simulator Help Your Agent Training? Not Really appeared first on .

First, let me tell you a little story involving butterflies and bladders. I've spent the past few days at MicroConf. Just a phenomenal conference, full of like-minded folks, loaded with actionable content. Not to get too carried away, but it...

Get daily news, stats, fans views and punditry from your Premiership club, all in one place.

As Wales head to Turkey in the Nations League, pick the team and approach you think Craig Bellamy should adopt in Kayseri.

Audiences can send their news stories to the BBC using the chat app, WhatsApp

Send in your questions for our experts to answer.

A selection of photographs submitted to BBC Scotland News from around the country this week.

The chancellor has delivered a packed Budget, so here's how it affects you and your money.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced a raft of changes to taxes and spending in the Budget.

People are being urged to start getting ready for flooding now.

This turned into an even longer essay than expected, and whilst it’s a personal narrative about cycling, the important part is: I’m riding RideLondon 100 for charity, you can find a link to the details – and the fundraising – at the end. But first, an essay about riding bikes. Since moving to London, I […]

Microsoft is set to announce at least one, and possibly two new phones this week, a successor to the most popular Windows Phone ever made, the Lumia 520, and if rumors are correct, a successor to the 1320, …

All good things must come to an end, and this blog is no exception. When Chris Overd, Matthew Weyer, and Harrison Hoffman founded LiveSide.net back in December of 2005 (LiveSide’s first post was on January 3^rd, 2006, …

“Investors, both individual and professional, want more than just the data that independent services can provide. They want the company’s own story and investment vision. What they don’t want is to wade through complex or irrelevant information.” Investor Relations on Corporate Websites, Nielsen Norman Group

Understand investor jobs-to-be-done

Primary users of investor relations areas on a website include, obviously, investors themselves but also analysts and financial journalists. There is an important secondary audience of potential customers and employees too. But the core audience is generally looking for:

• Company background and overview
• Press releases
• Stock exchange filings
• One-page financial overview
• Annual reports
• Quarterly reports
• Historical financial information
• Executive biographies
• Share price information
• Press and IR contact details
• Corporate governance information

Of course, each company will go beyond statutory reporting to add content and user journeys specific to their needs. For example, if they are dealing with specific events in their company history, such as acquisitions, crises or if they are approaching an IPO.

Interestingly, according to NN/Group, some of the fancier functionality that you often see on an IR site, such as webcasts, slides and investment calculators, were less important to real users. “People research company financials are more interested in getting facts quickly than in the technology used to deliver them.”

Best practice examples

GE Aerospace does well with very clear navigation on a fast-loading site that is designed to get people to the information they are looking for quickly.

Microsoft’s IR site clearly surfaces stock price information with a tidy design and recent company news, but we are not fans of carousels as a user interface solution.

In contrast, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) has the leanest, text-only IR page, which, like GE’s, aims to get visitors to key information as quickly as possible. Notably, they offer HTML and PDF versions of key reports, and we think this is good practice. PDFs are not great for usability but have an important role in communicating statutory information in a compliant way, so it’s important to find a user-friendly, SEO-friendly parallel structure to sit alongside them.

Michelmersh combines Microsoft’s visual approach with direct access to the most important information.

Core and optional functionality

We use a tool called Octopus to collaborate with clients to design a website’s information architecture and the high-level structure of individual pages.

For investor relations areas, the following site map templates from NN/Group are good starting points for high, medium and low-priority content. But each client is different and so understanding client needs and their users’ needs is always a project in itself.

Don’t forget basic website usability

For more information about how Articulate tackles the website design and development process, including information architecture and user journeys, see How we build websites at Articulate. For the end results, take a look at our Portfolio.

We think all sites - and all visitors - deserve a well-designed, easy-to-use website that helps them find the information they want. In particular, this means that IR areas need to be:

• Mobile-friendly. The widespread use of PDFs makes many IR sites difficult to use on mobile devices, representing an opportunity for forward-thinking companies to improve the user experience by offering HMTL options.
• Searchability. IR information should be searchable alongside other site content, either with a domain-specific search box (i.e. just the IR section) or as part of an integrated site-wide search.
• Accessibility is a basic requirement for a modern website, yet 97 percent of websites have fundamental accessibility issues. Designing for accessibility is good for every visitor. For example, our blog’s speed reading mode and audio player help people engage with our content whether they have specific needs or not. See our article about why accessibility is crucial for website design.
• Loading speed. Google and GE prioritise loading speed and ‘time to find’ for visitors over fancy imagery and functionality. This is in line with NN/Group’s user study findings. Some clients prefer more fizz and ginger on their IR sites as part of their investor brand, but this should never come at the expense of loading speed. For more on improving Core Web Vitals (as Google calls them) see: Don't lose traffic because of Google’s Core Web Vitals.
• SEO. Investors, journalists and advisors, like most of us, use Google to find information. IR areas should get the same SEO attention as the rest of the site. For more on our approach to SEO see: The ultimate SEO guide for B2B technology companies.
• PDFs vs. web pages. IR pages are loaded with PDFs for annual reports, statutory filings, and other important documents. It may be the case that these files have to be in PDF format—we’re not lawyers, so we can’t say for certain—but we think it would be valuable, as with Google, not to also make them available as web pages, even if it is a high-level summary page with a link to the downloadable PDF. There are strong usability reasons to avoid PDF files if at all possible.
• Carousels. We strongly recommend against Carousels. Buy us a pint, and we’ll bore for England about why.
• Use of videos, webcasts and podcasts. IR pages often feature investor briefings and other content in video format. This should never be a substitute for clear, scannable, searchable text. Where possible, provide transcripts or summaries. Where possible, provide short (<4 minutes) highlight reels as well as longer content. Videos should have captions and chapter headings so that people can find what they need quickly. Never autoplay videos.

Examples of investor-specific functionality

Company overview

“Offer a brief company overview that highlights a few significant facts, along with a link to more detailed corporate information.” For example, Causeway’s website has this succinct summary right on its homepage as well as more detailed information in a ‘Why us’ section.

Biographies

“Provide information about the company’s high-level managers, including each person’s name and job title, a recent picture, and a link to a full biography,” advises The Nielsen Norman Group. For example, HealthHero has a really easy-to-use, highly visual, and on-brand biographies section on its About Us page.

Press information

Journalists don’t just need press information, they need relevant, high-resolution images, logos, PR contacts and company information.

Press releases

Your news page should look like high-end news site or blog with all the support infrastructure such as the ability to sign up for alerts, search for specific information, filter and sort the information, as on this example from TCN.

ESG reports. Your investor brand goes beyond statutory reporting. Increasingly, environmental, social and governance information influences investment decisions and build investor confidence. HPE does a great job of communicating its progress in this area, and, ahem, we think our own Impact Report is pretty good, too. (Related to this, see our guide to establishing a strong ESG tone of voice.)

Security, availability, access controls and approvals

• Security and access control. IR areas often include market-sensitive information such as earnings announcements or new product introductions. For this reason (and others), it is important that any content management system (CMS) used for IR pages should have robust security and access controls, meaning that only authorised users can add or modify IR pages. We recommend HubSpot Content Hub which has granular user permissions, access control to specific assets (e.g. individual web pages) and (with an Enterprise tier) SSO integration and role-based permissions.
• Content approvals. HubSpot also has the option to require approvals before website changes are published. This may be valuable to ensure that legally responsible people, e.g. directors, have a final review and approval of statutory updates to the site, even if they delegate the content creation to others.
• Scheduling for publication. With time-sensitive and embargoed information, it is important to be able to set a specific publication time and date for content so that you can prepare the pages in advance but make sure they are published at the right time. With HubSpot, this is possible for pages and blog/new posts.

How Articulate can help

We design and code signature websites using our proprietary Nucleus technology, which are hosted on HubSpot Content Hub (CMS). See our website services page for more information.

Brochure websites are old-school. Instead, our team will build you a marketing engine that drives traffic, leads and customers, all while telling your brand story.

If you’d like an SEO, usability, or content review of your investor relations website or if you’d like us to help build a new one, please get in touch.

Personalisation in marketing works because personal connections matter. That extends beyond your customers, too. Personal connections include the relationships you have with your suppliers, your stakeholders, your employees, industry peers… the list goes on.

Igloos, rooftops and ski lodges.

Reflection on current events

The post Possible causes of your problems appeared first on Dave Walker.

F1 did something it has never done before last weekend and moved a race start time earlier. But did that affect your ability to watch?

I didn’t watch this in the cinema, and I had a bit more to say about it than my usual one-line movie review format, so it didn’t fit into my monthly round-up, but I do want to wholeheartedly recommend you...

This post discusses a new and easier way to add shipping or return information directly in Search Console.

Translating the legislation or regulations of a country, company or university into English requires certain skills and know-how. This post lists five things your translator should know when translating legislation into English. 1. How to apply English drafting conventions Conventions on headings, numbering, referencing and capitalisation differ from one legal language to another. For instance, […]

1. Your ultimate guide to Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour stops in Toronto  CP24
2. A Taylor Swift glossary to keep up with the Eras Tour fever gripping Canada this week  The Globe and Mail
3. IN PHOTOS | See Swiftmania sweep Toronto  CBC.ca
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1. Stop Using Chrome On Your iPhone, Warns Apple—Millions Of Users Must Now Decide  Forbes
2. 4 new Chrome improvements for iOS  The Keyword
3. Chrome on your iPhone can search using pictures and words at the same time  The Verge
4. Google Rolls Out Four New Chrome Features for iOS  iPhone in Canada
5. Chrome 131 for iOS adding new Google Drive, Maps integrations  9to5Google

Aim/Purpose: The increasingly growing number of virtual high schools around the world has engendered new modes for teaching and learning and a promising area of re-search. While research in this emerging field has mostly taken a comparative lens that highlights differences between traditional modes of teaching and online teaching, research on high school students’ and teachers’ perspectives has remained dearth. Background: This study identifies students’ and teachers’ perceptions of their learning and teaching advanced level mathematics and/or physics in the first Israeli virtual high school (VHS), which was launched five years ago. Methodology: A survey of 41 questions was disseminated to the first graduating cohort of 86 Grade-12 students as well as to 22 VHS teachers. Additional data sources include students’ essays on what it means to be a student in a VHS and field notes from a pedagogical development day. Contribution: The purpose of this study is to highlight the workings of the Israeli VHS and in particular its important building blocks that include a teacher-tutor model, an ongoing gauging of students’ work through a Learning Management System (LMS), and a continual teacher-developer interaction for the purpose of developing cutting-edge, technology-based course content. Findings: Given the unique features of the Israeli VHS, both teachers and students report on feelings of unit pride, motivation, and investment in teaching and learning in the VHS. Recommendations for Practitioners: The Israeli VHS uses a combination of a teacher-tutor format, together with tools for gauging students’ work and ongoing interaction between the teachers and the course content designers. Such a context creates new, fertile ground for technology-based, fully online teaching and learning of school mathematics and physics that may contribute to alleviating the problem of decreasing numbers of learners who are interested in taking advanced-level courses. Recommendation for Researchers: Further exploration of aspects for improvement in the teaching model of the VHS, its design, and its support system and for finding out factors that impact attrition lay down important research trajectories that have not yet been trodden. Impact on Society: Issues of equity and the democratization of learning of advanced STEM subjects are now possible to be seriously considered in a principled manner within the context of the VHS. Future Research: Future research may focus on the affordances, possibilities, and limitations of learning within a VHS to ensure a more robust process that will allow more students to learn advanced mathematics and physics.

WITH working from home being the new norm, the hours tend to blur and we often find ourselves looking for a pick-me-up to get through the day.

Now, working responsibly while enjoying a cold one is made possible with Heineken 0.0 – a beer minus the guilt and the alcohol.

In line with the brand’s advocacy of responsible consumption, Heineken is giving away 10,000 Heineken 0.0 four-can packs to refresh your next long day of work.

To kick-start a “work smart, drink smart” routine, simply sign up at www.heineken00drinksmart.com.

As you drag the Heineken 0.0 can into the calendar within the site, a redemption form will pop up and a free four-can Heineken pack 0.0 will be making its way to your doorstep.

“Our days are often filled with back-to-back meetings and long checklists to complete,” said Heineken Malaysia Bhd marketing director Pablo Chabot.

“There are times we cannot even pause to take a break.

“We hear you, hence we are giving away 10,000 free four-can packs of Heineken 0.0 for you to enjoy while you work.

“Gone are the days where you cannot have a beer while working, when you can now work smart and drink smart with Heineken 0.0,” he added.

The free four-can packs are available on a first come, first served basis and subject to eligibility.

Only one redemption per person is allowed, while stocks last.

Those who miss out on this giveaway can purchase the packs via the Drinkies app (available on both iOS and Android) or www.drinkies.my.

For more information, visit www.heineken00drinksmart.com.

(Heineken 0.0 and all promotions and giveaways are for non-Muslims aged 21 and above only.)

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The number of drivers who let their insurance monitor their driving has more than doubled in less than a decade! While many drivers were once skeptical of the practice, the benefits are becoming more and more appealing as people make the switch to usage-based insurance. And as car insurance rates continue to climb, even more […]

The post Should You Allow Your Auto Insurance To Monitor Your Driving? appeared first on Clark Howard.