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How to Build a Work Order Ticketing System in SmartSuite + Free Template

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Our view at Stack - You definitely can't pigeon-hole SmartSuite as it does so much! It's a collaborative work management platform that enables teams to plan, track, and manage workflows, projects, and everyday tasks. With features like automations, integrations, and AI capabilities, it streamlines work processes and empowers teams to achieve their goals. It's also available in 15 languages.

Today, we’re diving into how to take your traditional physical order forms and transform them into a streamlined digital work management system using SmartSuite. Imagine turning your pen-and-paper forms into a purpose-built software solution designed by you, sans any coding.

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Why Digitizing Work Orders Matters

1. Physical Work Orders Are Prone to Errors

Physical work orders might feel convenient, but they’re a challenge when it comes to retrieving information. Handwriting issues, spills, and lost documents are all too common. This can lead to team confusion, missed orders, and numerous mistakes. Digitizing your work orders significantly reduces these risks by keeping everything organized and easily accessible.

2. Overcomplicating Digital Solutions

While turning to digital solutions, many businesses overcomplicate the process by choosing industry-specific, rigid software that is often expensive and doesn’t always fit their workflow. This not only adds unnecessary costs but also eliminates the potential for a competitive advantage. Our approach focuses on creating a unique, cost-effective work order management system tailored to your business needs using SmartSuite.

Getting Started with SmartSuite

Let’s dive into the process of building your work order ticketing system using SmartSuite. For our example, we’ll pretend we’re running a property management company that serves landlords. We’ll be organizing work orders in SmartSuite, which is currently being tracked on paper.

Part 1: Replace Offline Work Orders with SmartSuite

Step 1: Setting Up the Space

Begin by opening your no-code, easy-to-use work management software—SmartSuite. If you don’t already have SmartSuite, you can load a template specific to your industry and follow along. In our demo, we’ve set up a property management solution using a template.

1. Click the plus button to start from scratch.

2. Name your new table "Work Orders."

3. Optionally, add an icon for visual appeal.

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Step 2: Analyze Your Existing Forms

Next, take your existing form and identify which parts need to be digitized and which can be discarded. For this example, we’ll use a template picked from a Google search result. Evaluate it and determine what fields are essential and what can be eliminated.

1. Cross out any redundant fields.

2. Circle fields that are already in SmartSuite.

3. Identify new fields you need to create.

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Step 3: Create Fields in SmartSuite

Start by creating the fields that aren’t marked for exclusion. This includes fields like request details, category, preferred completion date, and urgency. You can then move on to creating more complex fields, such as linked records, for elements like name and location.

**Example Fields:**- Request Name- Date and Time- Request Details- Category- Priority

Use SmartSuite’s “linked record” feature to avoid retyping information frequently. For instance, link the “Name” field to your tenant directory to pull details automatically.

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Importing and Adding Data

Now that your digital system is set up, the next step is to add your existing information:

Phase 1: Import Existing Data

You have two options:

1. Import all work orders you've ever done.

2. Pick a starting date and begin digitizing work orders from that point onward.

Phase 2: Getting Users Onboard

Ensure all relevant team members are added to SmartSuite. This includes admins or office workers with access to a computer or tablet, and field technicians using SmartSuite’s mobile app.

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Using Softr to Streamline Processes

To overcome app fatigue in your organization, consider using Softr—a no-code app builder. This will allow you to create a cohesive system that integrates all necessary tools and processes in one place.

Softr Overview

Softr lets you build custom apps that integrate with various tools like SmartSuite and Stripe. Here’s how you can leverage Softr to your advantage:

**Potential Uses:**- For Field Technicians: View and manage work requests assigned to them.- For Internal Teams: Integrate policies, time off requests, and clock in/out trackers.- For Customers: Submit, view, and manage their work requests.- For Billing: Allow customers to update their billing information.

Create pages that cater to different user groups—office workers, field workers, customers, and potential customers. Each group will have specific permissions tailored to their needs.

Step-by-Step Building in Softr

Let’s walk through creating your app in Softr:

  1. Log in to Softr using your account.
  2. Create a new app from scratch or use AI to generate one.
  3. Define your user groups and permissions.

Setting Up Pages for Different User Groups

Create customized pages that cater to each user group’s needs. Ensure these pages pull real-time information from SmartSuite.

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Examples:

Field Technicians: A page showing their work orders and allowing updates.
Internal Teams: A central hub for all company-related tasks and policies.
Customers: A portal to view and manage their orders and billing information
Public Page: Showcase your services and allow potential customers to contact you.

Each page and user group setup will ensure a seamless experience and reduce the need for multiple applications.

Conclusion: Bringing It All Together

By following these steps, you’ve successfully digitized your work order management and integrated various processes into a single, efficient system using SmartSuite and Softr. This setup not only eliminates the inconsistency and inconvenience of physical forms but also empowers your team and customers with a modern, dynamic tool tailored to your business needs.

To experience the future of work management firsthand, start your free SmartSuite trial today!

If Smartsuite is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Save Big 💵 with the Guest Role from SmartSuite

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Our view at Stack - You definitely can't pigeon-hole SmartSuite as it does so much! It's a collaborative work management platform that enables teams to plan, track, and manage workflows, projects, and everyday tasks. With features like automations, integrations, and AI capabilities, it streamlines work processes and empowers teams to achieve their goals. It's also available in 15 languages.

Why Most Software Charges Per Seat

Most software these days charges per seat, which means that every user you add into your account increases your monthly or annual bill. This can get expensive if you have a lot of collaborators, even if they only need limited access. This is not the case with SmartSuite. Let’s explore why.

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The SmartSuite Guest Role: A Money-Saver

SmartSuite offers a guest role that allows you to collaborate with people without increasing your bill. This is a game-changer for businesses of all sizes, especially those that work with contractors or part-time team members. The guest role in SmartSuite is entirely free yet still offers several collaboration features.

What is the Guest Role?

The guest role in SmartSuite is a user type that does not incur any additional costs. While it comes with some restrictions compared to a traditional paid user, it still allows for effective collaboration within SmartSuite.

“The guest role will not increase your bill, but you’re still gonna be able to collaborate and interact with others.”

SmartSuite Pricing and Guest Users

For every paid user you have in SmartSuite, you get a certain number of guest users. Here’s how it breaks down:

  • Team Plan: 1 guest user per paid user
  • Professional Plan: 3 guest users per paid user
  • Enterprise Plan: 5 guest users per paid user

For example, if you’re on a team plan with 15 paid users, you get 15 additional guest accounts. As you move up the tiers, you get even more guest users per paid user.

Step-by-Step Guide to Using Guest Roles in SmartSuite

Setting Up and Adding a Guest User

  1. Navigate to SmartSuite’s Pricing Plan: Make sure you’re aware of how many guest users you can have based on your subscription tier.
  2. Login to Your SmartSuite Account: Open your SmartSuite account to start the setup process.
  3. Create a New Template: For this example, we’ll use a marketing template. Go to “Marketing Campaigns” and install it.
  4. Assign Tasks to Yourself: Initially, all tasks will be assigned to you since you installed the template.
  5. Invite a Guest User: Go to the workspace admin section and manage members. Add your guest’s email here. For this demonstration, we’ll use a demo guest account, Guest McGesterson.
  6. Assign Records to Your Guest: Go back to your solution page and assign tasks to your new guest user.
  7. Any task assigned to Guest McGesterson will now be visible to them.

What Guests Can and Cannot Do

Guests have some limitations but still offer powerful features. Here’s what they can do:

  • View Assigned Records: Guests can only see records assigned to them, ensuring your data’s privacy.
  • Edit Status: They can update the status of tasks assigned to them.
  • Collaborate Through Comments: Guests can chat with other team members within the platform.

Here’s a breakdown of how this looks in practice:

  1. Guest View: When a guest logs in, they will see a simplified version of the interface showing only the records assigned to them.
  2. Add Comments: Guests can add comments to for internal collaboration.
  3. @Admin Can I get a little help here?
  4. Update Task Status: Guests can change the status of their tasks to reflect their progress.

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Example Use Case

Imagine you have a contractor working on a specific part of a project. They don’t need full access to all your data—just the tasks that pertain to them. Simply assign these tasks to them, and they’ll only see what they’ve been assigned.

Conclusion

The SmartSuite guest role offers a fantastic way to collaborate without incurring extra costs. Whether you’re a small team or a large enterprise, this feature can save you significant money while still allowing efficient collaboration. This capability makes SmartSuite stand out from the crowd, taking your no-code solutions to the next level.

To experience the future of work management firsthand, start your free SmartSuite trial today!

If Smartsuite is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Maximize Membership Tracking with SmartSuite! ⚡

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Our view at Stack - You definitely can't pigeon-hole SmartSuite as it does so much! It's a collaborative work management platform that enables teams to plan, track, and manage workflows, projects, and everyday tasks. With features like automations, integrations, and AI capabilities, it streamlines work processes and empowers teams to achieve their goals. It's also available in 15 languages.

One of the popular uses for no-code tools is being able to track the people who are a part of your membership. You can easily look in and see who has an active membership, when the last payment was made, and how things are going overall. Imagine building a dashboard to see the top level of how things are in your membership business.

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Setting Up SmartSuite for Membership Tracking

Without further ado, let’s hop into my screen and take a look at the next stages.

Tables in SmartSuite

The number one thing is to have two very specific tables for membership tracking:

  1. Members: All member details are listed here.
  2. Payments: This table links to the Members table and tracks the success of different payment attempts.

Members Table

In the Members table, you’ll want to bring in the following information at a minimum:

  • Member Name: Added to the record title.
  • Email Field: Essential for member identification.

Adding Fields

If you don’t have an email field already, add one by creating a new field.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Click on "Add New Field".
2. Select "Email" from the dropdown options.
3. Name the field and save it.

Payments Table

In the Payments table, we want to include:

  • Payment ID: Every processed payment gives an ID or tag. Store this in your database for future lookup.
  • Date of Payment: Track when the payment was processed.
  • Link to Member: Identify the member who made the payment.
  • Payment Processor ID: Every customer object in a payment processor has a unique ID.

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Setting Up Automation

Automation plays a crucial role in this setup. When a customer is created in your payment processor (e.g., Stripe), make sure this ID is plugged back into your SmartSuite system.

Example of Automation Setup
1. Create a new automation workflow.
2. Set trigger: "New Customer Created"
3. Action: "Record Customer ID in SmartSuite"
4. Map fields: Ensure the ID from the payment processor matches the customer record in SmartSuite.

Processing Payments

Let’s say it’s the 1st of June, and it’s time to process the next payment. Your payment system will process or attempt to process the payment. This action will trigger another automation that associates the payment with the correct customer in SmartSuite.

Identifying the Customer

The unique customer ID is utilized to ensure the correct association. Even if the email or name changes, the ID remains constant, guaranteeing accuracy.

Payment Status Updates

Construct an automation that checks the status of each transaction:

  • Failed Transaction
  • Completed Transaction

Calculating Last Payment Date

Create a formula in the Members table to track the last successful payment date:

Formula for Last Payment Date in SmartSuite:

1. Open formulas editor.
2. Use "Date Difference" to compare the latest payment date and the current date.
3. Format to display the number of days since the last payment.

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Example Scenario

Imagine updating the last payment date from June 1 to May 1. The formulas should automatically recalculate the membership status accordingly, determining if the member remains active or inactive.

Membership Status

The membership status is essential for managing access to your services:

  • Active: If a payment was made in the last 31 days.
  • Inactive: No payment in the last 31 days.

Determine Membership Status
1. Create a status field.
2. Apply a formula: "If days since last payment > 31, then Inactive, else Active".

Mark Members Active/Inactive

Allow members to self-manage their status via a portal:

  • Self Deactivate: Members can choose to halt their membership.
  • Automation: Build workflows to manage the subscription status based on the member’s choice.

Conclusion

Running a membership site using no-code tools offers endless possibilities. Whether it’s tracking payments, identifying members, or maintaining membership statuses, SmartSuite simplifies the entire process.

To experience the future of work management firsthand, start your free SmartSuite trial today!

If Smartsuite is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

ADA testing 101: How to create an accessible website

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Our view at Stack - Simplify web development with Webflow, reduce costs, and deliver professional results. No-code, responsive, and SEO-friendly. Explore your creative potential!

Incorporating Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accommodations into your website design system means more people can access and enjoy your content.

Optimizing your site for web accessibility involves ensuring people with disabilities can use your site, and ADA testing is a core practice that helps achieve this.

Many ADA testing tools exist on the market, but there are also ways to test your site’s accessibility without them. Whichever method you use, your primary goal remains the same — landing on a web design that more people can access and enjoy.

We’ve gathered some helpful information about how ADA compliance website testing works, who needs it, and its requirements. We’ve also detailed four techniques that work wonders for discovering issues and finding solutions.

ADA compliance testing

The Americans with Disabilities Act (passed in 1990) established standards for how every industry should maintain accessibility for disabled people. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice officially amended the law to apply to websites. Since then, companies large and small have worked toward updating site designs to follow ADA standards, and many testing tools have been developed to help them, like the WebAIM contrast checker and the U.S. Social Security Administration’s ANDI tool.

Testing for ADA compliance lets you find issues and adjust your design to make your site accessible for as many people as possible. And an ADA-compliant website brings in more visitors, improves your search engine optimization (SEO), and generally looks cleaner.

Do you need ADA compliance testing?

Most businesses are legally required to maintain accessibility standards in their physical and digital locations. Specifically, ADA impacts businesses in the following categories:

  • All private companies that employ 15 or more employees
  • All state and local government agencies
  • All businesses that offer a public service

If your company meets any of these criteria but fails to maintain ADA compliance, you’re risking lawsuits and hefty fines. Even if your organization doesn’t fit these descriptions, it’s better to follow ADA standards so you don’t need to worry about it when your business scales up.

WCAG requirements for ADA website compliance

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) describe all the digital requirements websites must maintain to comply with the ADA. It’s currently in version 2.2. In 2023, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the consortium that oversees the WCAG, released a working draft for the 3.0 version, but the finalized version is still a few years out.

For now, WCAG 2.2 establishes standards for the following categories:

  • Perceivable
  • Operable
  • Understandable
  • Robust

Perceivable

The perceivable category relates to how users with disabilities view, read, and interpret your content. Meeting the criteria in this category means your content is readable for people with impaired vision and color blindness and accessible for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. As an added benefit, following these visual design accessibility guidelines typically results in more pleasing color palettes and font choices that everyone can enjoy.

Here are the standards that fall into this category:

  • Text alternatives. Nontext elements must have a text description readable by screen readers.
  • Time-based media. Prerecorded audio and video files must offer captions or alternatives with the same information.
  • Adaptability. Content must follow a coherent structure that accessibility programs can use to determine the proper sequence, relationships, and presentation needed to portray the material.
  • Distinguishability. Text must remain distinguishable from the background, with a color contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text or 3:1 for large text. Audio must also have controls that enable users to disable it, and background audio must remain at least 20 decibels lower than speech.

Operable

The operable category establishes standards that ensure users with disabilities can easily navigate and interface with your content. That means prioritizing an accessible design with adaptive peripherals. Meeting this category’s criteria makes your site accessible to users with mobility and dexterity disabilities.

Here are the standards that fall into this category:

  • Keyboard accessibility. All functionality must be keyboard-compatible.
  • Enough time. Wherever content involves timing, you must offer alternatives or allow users to disable or adjust the time limit.
  • Resistance to seizures and physical reactions. Animations must not flash more than three times in any one-second period.
  • Navigability. Page titles, link text, and headings should provide useful information that helps users navigate content.
  • Input modalities. Interactions must not require path-based gestures, and all gestures must be possible with a single pointer.

Understandable

The understandable category establishes standards so all users can easily read and comprehend your content. They’re centered around making content inclusive and readable, which writers and designers should always have in mind. These standards aim to make websites accessible for users with learning and comprehension disabilities.

Here are the standards that fall into this category:

  • Readability. Language must be recognizable, and content must require no more than a lower secondary education level to understand. When the text requires a higher reading level, supplemental content or a separate version must be available.
  • Predictability. When user interface (UI) components receive focus, they must not change the content’s context. Also, navigation, help options, and identification must remain consistent.
  • Input assistance. Instructions and labels must clearly mark where your content requires input, and errors must come with clear correction instructions.

Robust

The robust criteria establish standards that ensure assistive technologies can interpret content correctly. The only standard in this category — compatibility — refers to keeping the names, roles, and values of UI components (like form elements) easy to navigate to and set programmatically. This helps screen readers and adaptive input devices navigate through the content naturally.

4 ADA testing techniques

There are many ADA compliance criteria to meet, and they’re relatively easy individually — but the challenge comes from taking them on as a whole. Thankfully, the following four ADA compliance testing techniques can help.

1. Automated testing

Quite a few tools exist today that can help test your site automatically. Some are free, and others offer additional services for a subscription. Here are a few options:

  • ANDI: A free government tool that the U.S. Social Security Administration created that you can run from your bookmarks
  • ARC Monitoring: A paid enterprise-level tool that offers dashboards and actionable insights
  • SortSite: A paid tool for businesses that creates a comprehensive report of accessibility issues

2. Manual testing

Automated tools are convenient, but manual testing is free and a valuable process for every design team. Carefully combing through content helps your team learn the accessibility guidelines more comprehensively.

To perform a manual test, you can use our accessibility checklist to check through every page on your website. If possible, ensure two people cross-check each page so neither misses anything. As you audit the site, create a list of common issues. Then, when the audit is complete, design website updates that fix the problems sitewide.

3. Assistive technology testing

Accessibility tools let you assess your site yourself. For example, you can use screen readers like NVDA and JAWS to learn how disabled users experience your site and optimize their interactions. Plus, these tools are both free to download.

4. User testing

Some tools, like Userlytics, offer comprehensive accessibility testing performed by users with disabilities. This process extracts honest feedback from your audience that can direct your accessibility initiatives.

Build more inclusive sites with Webflow

Inclusivity ensures that as many people as possible can access your content, and it’s every design team’s responsibility to make it happen. Webflow offers many features that make updating your site easier than ever, like reusable componentsand responsive designs. Our visual web development platform helps you accomplish this without relying on developers.

Webflow also provides professional tools that help create accessible, inclusive experiences for your customers. Get started with Webflow Enterprise today to transform how your team builds.

If Webflow is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Get started in the Miroverse: Here are our most popular templates

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Our view at Stack - our team love using Miro as an online workspace for innovation, enabling distributed teams to dream, design, and build together. With a full set of collaboration capabilities, it simplifies cross-functional teamwork, meetings, and workshops. Create concepts, map user stories, and conduct roadmap planning in real-time.

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The options for what you can create in Miro are nearly limitless. Wondering where to get started? We’ve rounded up 10 of our best and most popular Miro templates along with related Miro board examples from our community templates gallery, Miroverse.

Check out these templates and examples to see how our users treat templates as launch pads for their own creative, unique, and customized boards.

The best brainstorming sessions are full of bold ideas and free-flowing conversations — with just enough structure to keep people on track. 

That’s where this mind map template comes in. Put your central concept in the middle and use branches to explore related ideas and themes. You’ll have the flexibility to think freely while still maintaining focus on your core idea.

Best Miro board examples: Mind mapping

1. Mindmapping by Atlassian

2. Business mind map by De Brouwerij

Brainwriting is a brainstorming technique where participants use a specified amount of quiet time to independently jot down their ideas before sharing them with the broader team.

Research from Stanford University found that people are most creative when they work on their own. So, brainwriting can often yield more ideas (and better ones) than the typical rapid-fire, shout-out-suggestions-as-they-come-to-you style.

Plus, this quieter and more intentional approach allows space for all employees to meaningfully contribute — not just your most extroverted ones. 

Best Miro board examples: Brainwriting

1. Silent brainstorming by Julia Angilova

2. Canvas brainstorming by Rodrigo Subiabre

3. 4 step critical thinking brainstorm by Mel Khim

Touchpoints are a crucial part of your customer journeys. With this customer touchpoint map template, you can define and map all of your customers’ interactions with your brand. 

Completing this template helps you identify areas you can improve and also lays the necessary groundwork to create a more detailed and valuable customer journey map. 

Best Miro board examples: Customer touchpoint maps

1. Relationships blueprint by Entremission

2. Service blueprint by Sahar Naderi

You can’t improve your customer experience without understanding it first. A customer journey map is a visual representation of how customers experience your brand and company across all its touchpoints.

Use this template to map out the flow of interactions in a timeline. You’ll build a better understanding of what your customers are doing (and feeling) at each stage of the process, so you can make strategic improvements.

Best Miro board examples: Customer journey maps

1. Practical customer journey mapping by Alex Gilev

2. Customer journey map by Columbia Road

3. Journey map to plot the customer experience by Essense

A Kanban board is a simple and intuitive way to track the progress of your work. Each task gets a card, which moves between columns to indicate its status. It’s highly flexible, and the Miro board examples below show how this framework can be applied to different types of work, from sales outreach to daily to-dos. 

While the board can keep your team on track, it’s also a valuable resource to share with other cross-functional teams and stakeholders, so they can get visibility into your work.

Best Miro board examples: Kanban boards

1. Kanban calendar by Ondrej Papanek

2. Agile sales Kanban by Switch to Eleven

3. Featureban by Karl Morgan

During a retrospective, you and your team look back on a previous sprint or project to identify your successes, failures, and ways you can improve. 

While there are plenty of popular retrospective techniques, this quick retrospective template provides a simple framework for your reflection. During your candid conversation, you’ll place sticky notes into four quadrants: 

  • Continue: What helped you move forward?
  • Stop: What held you back?
  • Invent: How could you do things differently?
  • Act: What should you do next?

Best Miro board examples: Retrospectives 

1. Hero retrospective by Yogi Nur Fadilah

2. Sailboat retrospective by Johanna Torstensson

3. Project retrospective by Inktrap

When you think of a diagram, a flowchart is likely the first thing you’ll picture. This series of shapes and arrows is a way to map out your processes visually, helping you boost clarity, spot bottlenecks, and make improvements.

Our flowchart template is straightforward to use and easy to customize. But as the examples show, creativity knows no bounds when building and using flowcharts.

Best Miro board examples: Flowcharts

1. Cross-functional flowchart by Hiro Studio

2. Headcount approval process flowchart by Ben Craig

3. OGSM canvas by Henrik Stahl

Ever wish you could get inside your customers’ heads? This mental model template helps you do just that.

You’ll use research and your user personas to fill out the template. When you’re done, you’ll have a visual representation of what a user wants, needs, and believes about your product or system.

Best Miro board examples: Mental models

1. Deep customer empathy method by Shehab Beram

2. The customer question board by Julia Cowing

3. Brand preferences customer insights tool by Palmer&Co

Your product roadmap gets your entire team — and potentially even your customers and stakeholders — on the same page about your product’s vision and strategy. 

With this product roadmap template, you can collaboratively agree on your strategy before prioritizing requirements and ironing out a timeline for new features.

Best Miro board examples: Product roadmaps

1. Agile product roadmap by HatchWorks

2. Prioritized product roadmap by Jānis Dirveiks

3. Product roadmap by Isa Serpa

10. Timeline template

Time has a way of running together, and milestones and moments can quickly get left behind as you forge on to the next big thing. With this timeline template, you can plot important dates and events in chronological order.

Whether you want to build a timeline for a current project or create a detailed record of all of the major events up to this point, documenting a timeline ensures everybody is on the same page about what’s happening (or what happened) and when. 

Best Miro board examples: Timelines

1. Timeline design by Brigitta Laszlo

2. Year timeline by Ruslan Kildeev

3. Project timeline builder by Project Management GameBoard

Harness your creativity with Miro

While the possibilities are practically endless in Miro, these templates can give you a sense of confidence and direction without limiting your imagination.

After all, as the above examples show, the best templates don’t institute constraints — they inspire creativity. 

If Miro is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

How to optimize for Google answer boxes (5 tips)

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Our view at Stack - Simplify web development with Webflow, reduce costs, and deliver professional results. No-code, responsive, and SEO-friendly. Explore your creative potential!

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Discover how to get featured on the world’s biggest search engine without spending a dime.

Google is the go-to place for answers in the information age. And the answer box is the primary tool Google uses to communicate accurate, trustworthy answers to search queries.

The search engine now includes more than just simple answers. There are more types of featured answers, including videos, tables, and rich explanations. If you want to increase your website traffic, optimizing your content to appear in all these categories is an excellent strategy.

What is the Google answer box?

The Google answer box are featured snippets on search engine results pages (SERP) that display short paragraphs, videos, or rich content to quickly solve a user’s search query. These snippets provide relevant information in a small space so users can find answers quickly without scrolling through results or clicking through to sites.

You don’t need to write featured snippets explicitly to be featured in the answer box. Instead, Google will choose a segment from your content if it clearly answers a user’s query. That said, you can follow search engine optimization (SEO) tips and craft content with Google’s snippets in mind to hopefully earn a feature.

Being selected in the featured snippet box offers these benefits:

  • Increased organic traffic and conversions. Google’s algorithm gathers information to answer a user’s question immediately, but it only pulls a small slice of your content. If searchers want more information, they can click to your site — so the answer box can generate higher click-through rates (CTRs) and increase your website traffic.
  • Brand exposure with correct answers. So long as you provide answers corroborated across the internet, Google will continue to feature you in the box. When this happens consistently, you’ll receive more brand awareness from users who notice your site regularly.
  • Enhanced website authority. As Google detects that your site provides accurate, authoritative information, your site’s trustworthiness increases. Over time, this causes exponential growth in your SERP appearances as Google identifies your site as a reliable, authoritative source.

Types of featured snippets

Featured snippets appear in different formats depending on the available responses to a searcher’s question. For example, if a blog article specifically addresses a query, Google will probably show a paragraph snippet. But if a YouTube video explains the same concept better, Google’s algorithm might select a clip from that content instead.

 Here are various types of featured snippets:

  • Paragraph: Blocks of text that are usually highlighted to show a specific answer (the most common featured snippet that appears in any search type)
  • List: Bulleted sets of answers, often for queries that include the words “best,” “top,” or “favorite”
  • Table: Tables presenting comparative information, usually for queries that include the words “average,” “comparison,” or “which”
  • Video: Clips queued to play that Google determined includes an answer, standard for “how to” queries
  • Accordion: Lists with expandable sections that describe separated information, appropriate for queries that include the word “features”
  • Rich answer: Special snippets with added functionality, like search boxes, dictionary entries, and map directions (these answers typically appear for highly specific search results, such as particular companies, definitions, and locations)
  • Tools: A specialized result that presents a tool for the user, like a translator or calculator, common for queries about unit conversions, math problems, or translations

How to appear in the Google answer box: 5 tips

Most content types offer some opportunity to land in an answer box on Google’s SERP. You just need to know how to leverage structure and precision relevant to your site type. Paragraph and list snippets, for example, tend to come from blogs and help centers, while tables and accordions come from specification and documentation pages.

Here are five tips to increase your content’s chances of appearing in a Google answer box.

1. Discover optimization opportunities

Most answer box results contain 54–58 words and include relevant keywords and phrases. You can use SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs to identify which search queries show answer boxes, and what relevant keywords to include in your content. 

2. Include relevant headings

Google’s web crawlers use headings to understand a page’s most essential information, and they categorize and label depending on each heading’s content. Make these descriptive and accurate based on the information that follows. For example, a user might search specifically for “What is an answer box?” To be featured in the box, your webpage should include a heading that targets — and then answers — that question.

3. Tailor language to match queries

Wherever possible, streamline your content for concise answers to specific questions. For example, if you’re writing an article about UX design, use a sentence that begins with “UX design is…” and get right to the point with a simple response.

4. Provide reliable answers

One indicator Google uses to determine search results is the reliable information system, which determines the sites that provide the most authoritative information. For a higher score in this metric, your site must consistently provide trustworthy answers that are corroborated across the internet.

Avoid making bold claims without evidence, and only state facts as absolute when you’re certain. For example, the statement “all zebras are black with white stripes” is corroborated by the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, which Google considers a reliable source. If you reversed that statement to “all zebras are white with black stripes,” your reliability score would decrease for that page and your site as a whole.

5. Position snippet information strategically

Google can pull information from anywhere on a page to form a snippet, but it tends to prioritize content near the top. Whenever possible, place your most vital answers in headings that appear at the beginning of a page. For example, when writing a how-to guide, place a step-by-step list early in the article that Google can use to create a list snippet.

Establish online credibility with Webflow

When you optimize your content for precision and substance, you set yourself apart from the competition to earn higher search engine rankings and increased traffic. And with Webflow, you have all the tools to create a functional, aesthetic website that provides outstanding value to searchers.

Webflow offers fine-tuned controls, high-performance hosting, and flexible content management tools that let you create authoritative content and update it as you scale. Schedule a demo with our team to help you determine the best strategy for your site.

If Webflow is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Do more with diagramming: Combine the powers of draw.io and Miro

· ·

Our view at Stack - our team love using Miro as an online workspace for innovation, enabling distributed teams to dream, design, and build together. With a full set of collaboration capabilities, it simplifies cross-functional teamwork, meetings, and workshops. Create concepts, map user stories, and conduct roadmap planning in real-time.

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If your work requires you to create diagrams, you might be familiar with draw.io (also diagrams.net), an open-source, web-based diagramming tool offering complex and niche diagrams: network diagrams, server rack diagrams, floor plans, and more.  

You might also use Miro, an innovation workspace that lets you virtually collaborate with colleagues on a variety of tasks and projects — whether it’s brainstorming, planning, designing, or building the next big thing. It doesn’t matter if you’re mapping out a complex process, visualizing a system or cloud architectures, or just trying to make sense of your thoughts, Miro’s user-friendly interface makes it easy for everyone to contribute.

Miro and draw.io are both powerful diagramming tools, but using them together is even better. 

Why we like draw.io

draw.io offers a wide range of advanced features, such as custom libraries, data linking, and export options. By using draw.io within Miro, teams can leverage these powerful features to collaborate on sophisticated diagrams.

Here is just some of what you can do with draw.io in Miro:

  • Import existing diagrams built in Lucidchart, Gliffy, and Visio. No need to start from scratch. Seamlessly move your existing diagrams from other tools into Drawio to take your work over the finish line — without losing context.
  • Export diagrams as SVG, PDF, VSDX, and more. Easily share your draw.io diagrams with partners, customers, and other stakeholders using a variety of file formats.
  • Leverage thousands of highly technical shapes. draw.io supports niche shapes, plans, electrical circuits, and other visualizations often unavailable in other tools. This includes ArchiMate enterprise architecture modeling language. 

Learn how to get started with the Miro-built draw.io app to build floor plans, electrical circuits, or any number of other diagrams.

Why draw.io and Miro together is awesome

draw.io has been around since 2005, so it’s been battle-tested by longtime users and the open-source community. It’s a popular choice for those seeking a tried-and-true diagramming solution. By using draw.io in Miro, you get even more out of it.

Collaboration

By using draw.io within Miro, teams can collaborate on even more diagram types. After one user builds the draw.io diagram and adds it to a board, the rest of the team can join in to add stickies, comments, and other feedback, fostering a more collaborative and efficient work environment.

Centralized workspace

By using draw.io in Miro, you can keep all project-related content, including diagrams, in one centralized location. This makes it easier for teams to access, share, and reference diagrams alongside other project materials, such as notes, documents, and images. The result? No more silos.

Tool consolidation

The Okta 2024 Businesses at Work report indicates that large companies (those with 2,000 or more employees) use an average of 231 apps. Why not make your life easier and consolidate tools, and get the best of both worlds. 

How to use draw.io in Miro

Using draw.io in Miro is easy. To launch the app, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the creation toolbar on the left.
  2. Click the More apps icon (+) and type: draw.io diagrams.
  3. Launch the Draw.io Diagrams app.

Watch this video to see how you can create and collaborate on any type of diagram, including importing from other tools into Miro:

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Build a draw.io diagram in Miro today

As you can see, draw.io is a fantastic diagramming tool offering a wide variety of shapes and a high level of customization, and together with Miro you can bring your diagrams and people together in one workspace.

If Miro is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Predictive analytics for marketing: What you need to know

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Our view at Stack - Simplify web development with Webflow, reduce costs, and deliver professional results. No-code, responsive, and SEO-friendly. Explore your creative potential!

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Predictive marketing analytics take the guesswork out of addressing industry, market, and customer trends.

Including predictive analytics in your marketing strategies means you can create more strategic website experiences that attract the right audience — those who’ll love your offering. Avoid making guesses about what your buyer personas might enjoy. Learn how predictive analytics can revolutionize your marketing efforts and help your business grow.

Predictive analytics and marketing

Predictive analytics is a subfield of business analytics and marketing. It’s the process of using data analysis techniques to identify patterns and trends within datasets. Based on this evaluation, you can anticipate outcomes and their probability. These data analysis techniques include data mining, predictive modeling, and machine learning (ML).

Unlike Google Analytics, which focuses on collecting customer behavior data, predictive analytic tools use artificial intelligence (AI) to evaluate past and current data. Predictive analysis helps you make informed decisions and create strategies to anticipate or mitigate likely outcomes. This is game-changing for marketing teams, whose purpose is anticipating customer wants and strategically positioning products to fulfill those desires.

With the help of predictive analytics, teams can forecast consumer behavior, optimize campaigns, and tailor marketing strategies to align with predicted trends. This foresight minimizes uncertainty and empowers marketing professionals to focus on achieving maximum output while optimizing their efforts. In other words, predictive analytics enables marketing teams to do more with less.

Benefits of predictive analytics for marketing teams

Here are the primary ways your team can benefit by offloading future trend analysis to AI.

Prioritize leads efficiently

Predictive analytics can help you streamline lead prioritization by scrutinizing relevant data to determine which prospects are most likely to convert into customers. This lets your marketing team score potential consumers based on factors like historical information and engagement patterns. Your team can then focus on specific leads instead of taking a scattershot approach. This reduces resource waste while also enhancing conversion rates.

For instance, you can use predictive analytics on your website to identify visitors who signal interest by frequently engaging with product pages, attending webinars, and downloading resources. Instead of approaching all visitors, you can prioritize these particular leads for targeted outreach.

Hone customer segmentation

A predictive analytics-based forecasting strategy incorporates ML models to uncover hidden patterns and relationships within customer data. By identifying subtle connections between data points, you can create dynamic and granular customer segments. This empowers your team to deploy highly targeted and personalized marketing strategies.

Imagine your company uses predictive analytics to assess purchase history, online interactions, and demographic data. The predictive model identifies distinct customer segments like frequent shoppers, seasonal buyers, and discount enthusiasts. With these targets in mind, you can create personalized marketing approaches for each group.

Improve campaign modeling

Predictive analytics allows companies to model and simulate the impact of potential marketing campaigns. This helps you make data-driven decisions and adjustments prior to implementing a campaign so you can allocate resources more efficiently and optimize messaging before your campaign hits the ground. It also helps you avoid costly efforts to adjust your campaign after launching.

Let’s say you’re launching a new product campaign. If you use predictive analytics to analyze historical campaign data, market trends, and customer responses, you can gain insight into what will and won’t work. This helps your team make informed choices that ensure the campaign resonates with your target audience.

8 examples of predictive analytics in marketing

Predictive analytics in marketing rely on a diverse array of models to extract valuable data insights. These models are sophisticated algorithms designed to forecast future trends, behaviors, and outcomes based on historical and present information. Different predictive models also allow marketers to tailor their strategies to varying use cases.

Let’s dive into some key predictive analytics use cases and explore how they empower marketing strategies.

1. Demand forecasting

Demand forecasting predicts the future demand for a product or service based on historical data and market trends. Advanced models may incorporate factors like seasonality, economic indicators, and promotional activities to enhance accuracy.

Your team can use demand forecasting to optimize inventory and efficiently meet customer needs. For instance, you might use your data to anticipate a surge in demand for certain products during the holiday season. This empowers your team to strategically manage your inventory, issue targeted promotions, and reduce resource waste.

2. Clustering model

Clustering models categorize data into distinct groups based on similarities or patterns. Your model can reveal nuanced segments like high-value customers, price-sensitive customers, or those with specific purchasing behaviors. This categorization helps you identify audiences with shared characteristics and thus facilitates targeted marketing strategies for each.

3. Predicted lifetime value

Predicted lifetime value (PLV) estimates the total value a customer is expected to generate over their entire relationship with a business. The model considers factors like average transaction value, purchase frequency, and customer retention rates to project long-term value accurately.

PLV can help your team allocate resources effectively by focusing on acquiring and retaining high-value customers. Imagine that you run a subscription-based service. You can use PLV to identify and prioritize marketing efforts toward the customers who are likely to contribute the highest value over their subscription period.

4. Predicted share of wallet

Share of wallet predicts the portion of a customer’s spending that your business captures within its industry and factors in competitive analysis and customer preferences. Your team can use this model to gauge your market share and identify opportunities for increasing a customer’s spending with your brand.

5. Lead scoring

Lead scoring assigns scores to leads (potential visitors) based on their likelihood to convert into customers. This helps you to prioritize your sales and marketing efforts.

A lead scoring predictive model considers factors like lead engagement, demographics, and online behavior to determine lead quality.

6. Uplift modeling

Uplift modeling predicts a marketing campaign’s incremental impact on customer behavior. It lets you identify the subsets most responsive to a particular campaign. The model analyzes treatment and control groups to discern the marketing intervention’s net impact on consumer behavior. You can use uplift modeling for targeting customers most likely to respond to marketing efforts.

Say you’re running a software-as-a-service (SaaS) enterprise. You might use uplift modeling to identify the customers most likely to react positively to a certain software update. You could then send out an email campaign targeting these customers and promoting this new feature.

7. Next-sell recommendations

Next-sell recommendations help you select the most suitable product or service to offer customers based on past behavior and preferences. This predictive model considers cross-selling opportunities to suggest complementary products or upgrades that align with the customer’s previous purchases. By using next-sell recommendations, you not only increase the likelihood of making another sale — you also deepen a customer’s postpurchase experience and increase customer satisfaction.

8. Churn prediction

Churn prediction forecasts the likelihood of customers dropping off by considering factors like engagement, usage patterns, and feedback to identify potential churn indicators. Your team can use this model to proactively identify at-risk customers and implement retention strategies.

Implement predictive analytics with these 5 steps

To optimize predictive analysis and enhance decision-making in your marketing strategy, consider these five critical steps.

1. Define what you want to answer

Clearly articulate the specific questions or marketing challenges you want to address through predictive analytics. After all, predictive analytics is a powerful tool, but it’s not a cure-all.

For instance, you can articulate the marketing aspects you want to optimize, like lead conversion, customer retention, or campaign effectiveness. Let’s say your goal is to improve lead generation. You might ask the following questions:

  • What factors contribute most to lead conversion?
  • How can we prioritize high-value leads?

Defining your objectives helps you lay the groundwork for the rest of your predictive analysis process. This ensures that your efforts align with your marketing goals.

2. Collect data

Your predictive model’s accuracy and relevance depend on the quality and breadth of the insights you gather.

As you collect data, consider more than one source, like customer interactions, website analytics, and historical campaign performance. By examining both structured and unstructured data, you can create a comprehensive dataset that reflects your marketing efforts. For instance, you might want to accumulate data on customer demographics, purchase history, and social media interactions to build a robust dataset.

3. Analyze the information

Draw on statistical analysis and data exploration techniques to understand the patterns, correlations, and trends within your dataset. Consider using predictive analysis tools, like data visualization tools, to uncover anomalies and potential predictors that may influence your marketing goals.

Say you want to boost your conversion rate and marketing campaign return on investment. You might analyze customer behavior patterns to identify trends and correlations that influence purchasing decisions.

4. Create a model

Develop a predictive model based on the insights from your data analysis. To do so, you should choose an appropriate modeling technique like regression analysis or ML. The model you select depends on the complexity of your predictive task. It should also reflect the relationships between your variables and address the marketing question you articulated in the first step.

Say your goal is lead scoring. You should create a model that assigns scores based on factors like engagement history, demographics, and online behavior.

5. Interpret and monitor

Interpretation and ongoing monitoring allow you to refine your model. This helps you adapt to changing market conditions and ensures your model’s continued effectiveness. For instance, if your model predicts customer churn, interpret the results to identify at-risk customers and implement targeted retention strategies. Then, monitor your model to see if your actions had the intended effect.

Take your digital strategy to the next level

Leave the guesswork behind by leveraging predictive analysis models to make well-informed and data-driven marketing decisions. Learn more about the key analytics you might use to improve your site’s user experience on our blog.

If you’re ready to begin, check out Webflow’s visual web development platform, which provides the tools to build, analyze, and maintain reliable websites that grow with your business.

If Webflow is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

How I do it in Miro: Networking diagramming with software engineer Andre Mocke

· ·

Our view at Stack - our team love using Miro as an online workspace for innovation, enabling distributed teams to dream, design, and build together. With a full set of collaboration capabilities, it simplifies cross-functional teamwork, meetings, and workshops. Create concepts, map user stories, and conduct roadmap planning in real-time.

Technical diagramming tools help engineers and other IT workers visually represent systems, infrastructures, and complex interactions. These diagrams can help to optimize cloud performance and, in turn, ship products and services more efficiently. But not all diagramming tools were created equal. Some tools have a limited library of shapes and symbols, make it difficult to collaborate or communicate with team members, or require a separate tool for exporting and sharing work.

In this “How I do it in Miro” video, part of a series, we’ll learn from Miro software engineer Andre Mocke how his team solves a lot of its diagramming challenges by using Miro.

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Define the original state

Andre works on the team responsible for the internal networking of Miro. He likes using Miro because it makes it easy for his team to collaborate on network design using diagrams.

In this case, Andre and his team wanted to ensure a third-party integration was compliant with customer data residency requirements. After identifying the problem to solve, they needed to first define the state of the existing architecture. 

Diagramming without the correct shapes and icons can take a long time, but Miro makes it easy to visualize the original state. With a range of shape packs from different cloud platforms and services — AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Azure, to name a few — teams like Andre’s can create diagrams fast.

Screenshot of shape packs module in Miro

Using Miro’s diagramming shapes, they visualized the original architecture as follows:

Diagram depicting the team's original architecture state

Generate a target state

It can be challenging to align everyone’s mental models, but Miro makes it possible for the whole team to visualize what specific changes will be made, and to collaborate directly on the Miro board as they put together the desired final architecture.

Not only that, but everyone is able to express themselves in a variety of mediums — text, visuals, video, or audio — communicating right in this workspace until everyone is aligned.

Most often, Andre’s team uses comment threads, and in more complex diagrams, they use Talktrack recordings.

Working together, Andre’s team was able to generate a rough draft of the target state.

Diagram depicting the team's target architecture state

Implement a new architecture

When moving from abstract agreements to implementation details or examples, the team likes to use code blocks. You can use code blogs for debugging, collaborating programming, and problem solving. When combined with diagramming, they make it easy to review architecture and flows.

In this case, Andre’s team uses code blocks to define interfaces and break down the work when different people are responsible for implementing or consuming parts of the system.

As the team works toward the new architecture, everyone can follow along by referring to a living diagram. The below diagram tracks how the system is changing against the target state.

Diagram depicting the team's current, in-progress architecture state

Align during design pivots

More often than not, you may run into blockers or shifting deadlines. Miro allows the team to track unanticipated changes alongside the original designs, which speeds up alignment during design pivots.

Plus, because of Miro’s real-time, bi-directional integration with Jira, Andre’s team can use Miro to directly update tickets, roadmaps, leaders, and reports into the agile tool. And any issues that arise can be pulled from Miro and turned into Jira cards. 

Miro board visualization showing integration with Jira

Transform your technical diagramming with Miro

Before Miro, Andre often had to export his diagrams, copy and paste them into a presentation tool, and send them to his team in a tedious and time consuming process. But now everything is in one place — part of a unified workspace. He can work with the broader team on designs, embed code and tasks, and share it for feedback.

As you can see, it’s easy to use the same Miro board for all your technical diagramming needs. 

Be sure to watch the video to hear straight from Andre how you can transform your technical diagramming in Miro.

If Miro is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

How to increase survey response rates: 7 techniques

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Our view at Stack - Simplify web development with Webflow, reduce costs, and deliver professional results. No-code, responsive, and SEO-friendly. Explore your creative potential!

Great surveys use strategically chosen questions and an engaging design to return a high response rate.

Few tools are better suited for understanding customer preferences than surveys. A well-crafted survey encourages customers to provide thoughtful feedback that you can use to improve marketing campaigns and techniques — and a poorly crafted one can result in below-average survey response rates and less meaningful data.

Read on to discover how to encourage survey participation to gain a good survey response rate.

Why send out customer surveys?

Customer questionnaires ask respondents a fine-tuned series of questions intended to reveal key insights about their satisfaction and preferences. The results reveal valuable data, like whether a product is performing well in the market or if customers like a newly added feature. Marketers can use this information to inform their strategies.

Here are some more reasons to send out surveys:

  • Quantification. Surveys excel at translating customer feedback into actionable metrics like customer satisfaction scores (CSATs) and net promoter scores (NPSs).
  • Benchmarking. Benchmarks define how well something performs compared to some other metric, like competitors or a company’s previous year’s performance. Surveys are a great way to gather data needed to make these comparisons.
  • Cost efficiency. Designing and distributing an online survey is inexpensive, and tools like SurveyMonkey further reduce the workload.
  • Flexibility. You can design a survey to suit any need, such as asking respondents for new feature ideas or requesting customer feedback about a current design.

How to calculate your survey response rate

This simple calculation quantifies how many people in your sample participated:

Surveys Completed / Surveys Sent x 100 = Response Rate

So if you send a survey to 1,200 customers and 312 complete it, your response rate calculation looks like this:

312 / 1200 x 100 = 26%

If you use a survey-hosting site like Google Forms, the platform should offer a metric for the number of people navigating to your survey page versus those completing the questionnaire.

What’s a good survey response rate?

Generally, 5–30% is a good response rate, with anything over 50% being excellent. But you can also compete with yourself — if you typically get 5%, set a marketing KPI (key performance indicator) for increasing this to a rate you think is achievable.

Your rate also greatly depends on your email list. A well-refined and updated list increases the chance you’re targeting those who’ll offer input.

Challenges of low response rates

If you get anything less than a 5% response rate, your data might be skewed because you need a representative sample to draw accurate conclusions. Here are some challenges you might encounter if your sample is too small.

Weak results

Results garnered from a small minority don’t truly represent the entire audience. While they might provide some anecdotal information, they don’t make for genuinely informative data. In a small sample size, you’ll often see either overwhelmingly similar responses or a vague mix of disparate answers. You need a large sample size to fill in the gaps.

Errors

A 5% margin of error is an ideal consideration to bake into your survey strategy. This accounts for typical errors like participants skipping questions and entering incorrect information. If you have a 30% response rate, that 5% margin for error is acceptable, but it becomes problematic if you have fewer respondents where those errors could significantly impact the dataset.

Disinterest

A low response rate could indicate that your customers aren’t interested in helping you improve your product. This is a problem because disinterested customers make for poor participants. They don’t provide helpful answers, and their responses are less informative.

To find interested participants, you either need to stoke renewed interest or reach out to user research services like Userlytics.com to pay for a panel of compensated participants.

Webflow for Enterprise

Loved by designers. Trusted by enterprises. Bring Webflow in-house at your company with advanced security, custom traffic scaling, guaranteed uptime, and much more.

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Webflow for Enterprise

Loved by designers. Trusted by enterprises. Bring Webflow in-house at your company with advanced security, custom traffic scaling, guaranteed uptime, and much more.

Learn more

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Learn more

7 strategies to increase survey response rates

A low response rate equals lost data you could use to increase marketing team efficacy. Here are seven strategies worth trying to improve this rate.

1. Keep surveys concise

Long, arduous questionnaires take a fair amount of time to complete — time your customer might not have. Instead, keep your survey short and sweet by including to-the-point questions that focus on one area you’d like input on.

So, if you’re curious about the features your target audience prefers most, use one survey per feature and ask open-ended questions that encourage respondents to elaborate on their answers. They’ll be more compelled to fill out a short survey but will still offer the necessary information for improving marketing tactics.

2. Offer incentives

To respect respondents’ time and effort, offer something for completing the survey. Say you’re a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company. You might provide current customers with a reduced subscription price for a month and give closed accounts 10% off if they sign back up.

3. Welcome open-ended input

Incorporate a text box at the end of your survey that allows respondents to share their insights openly. You can make it optional so it doesn’t add friction for those who don’t want to complete it, but those who do might offer valuable insights you would’ve otherwise missed through more structured questions.

4. Ask for feedback regarding the survey

You might also ask participants to provide feedback on their survey experience, like whether the questionnaire-hosting platform was speedy and if there were too many questions. Use this information to adjust future questionnaires.

5. Tailor the survey to your brand and product

Support brand recognition and professionalism by matching the survey with your company style guide. And make sure survey questions reflect your usual voice and tone to ensure participants feel this is an official piece of communication (not spam).

6. Use a chatbot

Chatbots break the experience into small, digestible chunks that significantly reduce monotony. Use them to ask your series of questions in a conversational, casual style, and make sure to include visual signals that indicate how far along the survey participants are. Here are a few chatbot website templates to get you started.

When using a chatbot, consider decision trees that add personalization to the experience. As respondents answer, these decision trees lead them to increasingly specific questions about the products and services they use.

7. Refine your email list

A great way to increase response rates is to streamline your email list to include only those likely to respond. Start by emailing current and past clients asking whether they want to receive survey emails. Mention the incentives you’re offering and acknowledge how valuable their time is. Then, send out reminder emails to ensure you’ve reached everyone you can.

Once you’ve got a good idea of those interested, create an email list segment for sending only these individuals your surveys.

Driving engagement with Webflow

The final piece of the puzzle for more effective surveys is design. Webflow offers various survey site templates built by the Webflow community. Each one is designed to encourage receivers to provide thoughtful answers and continue until the end.

Webflow also integrates with various chatbot platforms. Build and host your site with Webflow and discover customer insights through chatbot interactions.

Build with Webflow

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Last Updated

May 28, 2024

If Webflow is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

What’s New: What we launched in May 2024

· ·

Our view at Stack - our team love using Miro as an online workspace for innovation, enabling distributed teams to dream, design, and build together. With a full set of collaboration capabilities, it simplifies cross-functional teamwork, meetings, and workshops. Create concepts, map user stories, and conduct roadmap planning in real-time.

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This month we’re thrilled to share several powerful updates that will amplify your planning, collaboration, and user experience.

An enhanced Planner app, smarter Azure DevOps integration, and AI-powered alt text suggestions: These updates and more were designed to streamline your workflow and boost productivity. Not to mention we have three accessibility updates to improve how assistive technology works with Miro, helping to ensure everyone can experience the Miro magic.

Dive in to explore how these updates can transform your team’s efficiency and creativity.

Product and service innovation

Add assignees to your columns and swimlanes in Planner

Since the launch of the Planner app last year, we’ve been working hard to add more fields and features to make it more horizontal and support more use cases. The latest addition is an assignee field for columns and swimlanes in Planner for Jira — to help support your sprint planning and stand-up needs. 

Estimate more easily with story points on Azure cards

As part of our work to level up the Azure DevOps integration and support Agile practices, we’ve added a story points field to Azure cards in Miro. Now you can select a card and open the story points field directly in Azure DevOps. After editing the field you’ll see the Azure card updated in Miro to reflect the latest estimation.

Diagramming and process design

Introducing Miro’s organizational chart widget

If you’re an enterprise organization, you need an efficient way to visualize and scale your human resources to align with the current state of the business, while looking ahead to future needs. With the new org chart widget, you can simplify organizational chart creation, easily share it, and collaborate in real time. Plus, import data from .CSV files and use auto-layout to arrange your cards fast. And whenever your org changes (which can be often in a dynamic company), rearranging cards is just as fast.

New pre-made diagramming templates to save you time

Speaking of org charts, Miro has just released dozens of new diagramming templates, with more on the way. Check out these new org chart templates to help you document and clarify the dynamic nature of a changing organization. We also recently released a bunch of new UML diagram templates to help your teams map out the structure, behavior, and interactions of complex software systems. 

Canvas and collaboration

Invite visitors to collaborate on Miro mobile app

Now your Miro board visitors — users who haven’t registered with Miro — can join your public Miro board using the Miro mobile app, for on-the-spot collaboration. The tailored mobile-first experience and core sync collaboration features mean all your collaborators can participate and contribute from anywhere.

An inclusive and flexible platform

Miro Assist helps teams become more accessible

Miro Assist, your AI partner for innovation, just got smarter. When adding images to boards, Miro Assist provides suggestions for alt text, making the process easier and more efficient. Not only that, but with the right alt text your boards will be more accessible, too.

Accessibility enhancements for a more inclusive experience 

Lots of exciting updates around assistive technology mean Miro is even more accessible to all users. First, we’ve introduced a board overview or table of contents that can be explored using built-in screen reader commands for navigating headers and buttons. Second, most features can now be accessed using voice control.

And last but certainly not least, users can navigate through diagrams using just their keyboard and assistive technology.

Send objects forward or backward incrementally

Users with editing rights can now move objects on a canvas one layer forward or backward at a time, making it easier to organize boards with multiple layers of content. Arranging objects on Miro has never been easier.

Your next project made easier with AI-ready templates

Miroverse is a gallery of templates made by and for the Miro user community — browse the latest ready-made frameworks added daily. This month we’ve hand-picked three templates that integrate AI to automate and accelerate your work:

  • Mode Team’s Miro AI Storytelling Game is an interactive way to learn how to use Miro Assist to generate sticky notes on a given topic that simplify your routine work.
  • Martin Gleitsmann’s AI-Enhanced Empathy Map is designed to help you save time, eliminate bias, and gain more depth in the outcome of your next empathy map.

Stay tuned for June

We hope these updates help your workflows go more smoothly, your collaboration more inclusive, and your delivery more efficient. Whether you’re organizing sprints, visualizing your company’s structure, or working on the go, these features are designed to get you to the next big thing.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates as we continue to innovate and improve the Miro experience.

If Miro is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Strategic branding: 6 steps to attract and retain your target audience

· ·

Our view at Stack - Simplify web development with Webflow, reduce costs, and deliver professional results. No-code, responsive, and SEO-friendly. Explore your creative potential!

Leave a lasting impression by strategically branding your business.

Despite market changes and evolving customer preferences, the world’s most timeless companies remain strong because of their strategic branding. A powerful brand identity goes beyond products, services, and the people creating them. It involves thoughtful planning and adapting nimbly to changing circumstances.

It’s never too late to build a new brand — or revamp an existing one. No matter your approach, building a strong brand establishes a foundation for an evergreen legacy. Read on to learn how strategic branding fosters a lasting impression and keeps your business sustainable in the long run.

What’s strategic branding?

Strategic branding involves creating a unique company identity to distinguish yourself in the industry and achieve a stronger market position than competitors. Building a brand involves more than designing a clever slogan or aesthetic logo — it’s about differentiating your offering and making an impression on consumers. And when you build an effective brand marketing strategy, you’ll encourage people to care about your brand on a deeper level, even beyond product features or price points. This creates loyalty among those who see your brand as more than a mere commodity.

Brand development strategies also guide in-house teams’ image-related activities. For example, when designers are clear on your goals for how you’d like people perceive and experience your company, they can create visuals that reflect this vision. Effective branding ensures consistency across touchpoints, from marketing and SEO to web designs and customer service.

Essential components for a brand strategy

Brand strategies in marketing typically include the following components:

  • The brand’s purpose is the underlying reason for its existence beyond profit-making. This is typically expressed in a vision or mission statement. For example, Patagonia’s purpose extends beyond selling outdoor clothing, offering aid and strategies to combat the consequences of global warming.
  • Target audiences include the demographics, behaviors, and preferences of your ideal customers. Nike’s target audience includes athletes and individuals who push their limits and strive to achieve greatness. Their campaigns resonate with a never-give-up mindset, supporting their “Just do it” slogan.
  • Brand positioning is how you want consumers to perceive your company relative to competitors, based on your brand’s unique value proposition, benefits, and features.
  • Brand personality embodies human-like traits that create emotional connections with customers. Consider Coca-Cola’s identity. Their marketing campaigns are optimistic, nostalgic, and colorful with signature taglines like “Open Happiness” and “Taste the Feeling.”
  • Visual identity, a way to create a unique and recognizable image for your brand, includes aesthetic design elements like logos, colors, and typography. For example, a retail company may adopt a minimalist approach with a flat-style logo, two-tone color combination, and modern font.
  • Awareness goals outline clear objectives for increasing brand awareness among target audiences. For example, a digital marketing agency may target high-profile clients, who are striving to be industry leaders in content marketing and social media engagement services.‍
  • Brand values are core principles and beliefs that guide your company’s actions and decisions, shaping its culture.

How to develop a brand strategy in 6 steps

Regardless of company size and industry, here are six steps to follow for effective strategic branding.

1. Determine a clear purpose

Your company’s brand purpose is its driving force and the reason it exists (beyond financial gain). Think about your organization’s mission and your desired target audience. Your intentions should resonate both with customers and your internal teams, guiding business actions and decisions.

When defining your purpose, it’s best to engage stakeholders during workshops and brainstorming sessions to identify your brand’s core values. You can also consider developing goals and timelines to direct your thinking and stay on track.

2. Define your target audience

Gather information about your target audience segments and ideal buyer personas by researching demographics and behavioral patterns. Use visual heatmaps and data tools to understand how visitors interact with your website, and then refine your site to better suit their needs. 

For example, a digital marketing agency may define its audience as small- to medium-sized businesses in the tech industry that are looking to expand their online presence. By understanding their unique goals and challenges, the agency can tailor its services to satisfy these demands.

3. Map the competitive landscape

Analyzing the competition is crucial for identifying gaps and opportunities. Conduct a competitive SWOT analysis to understand what works and what doesn’t. And find ways to differentiate your brand and offer unique value, while capturing a higher market share.

For example, a design company could analyze its competitors’ portfolios, pricing strategies, and customer reviews. Through this process the firm might learn that websites with responsive designs perform better than those without responsive design. The company’s UI/UX team then can fill these gaps in their own interfaces to deliver better user experiences.

4. Humanize your brand with visuals and voice

Give your brand a set of characteristics to represent its identity, tone of voice, and values. Consider how you want consumers and competitors to perceive and react to your company. Your chosen traits will influence their impression and inform your brand’s communication style.

Say you’re in the tech space and want to establish your brand personality as professional, knowledgeable, and results-driven. The messaging across marketing channels should be clear and authoritative, reflecting your commitment to delivering high-quality products and customer service.

Alongside the brand voice, design a visual identity to give the persona a distinguished appearance. Choose imagery, fonts, and design elements for your style guide to create a consistent visual experience across all touchpoints. 

After combining visuals and voice, ensure your website is accessible to as many people as possible to maintain a human touch. Using inclusive language and including meaningful alt text with your images can help promote this sense of approachability.

5. Launch your brand

A comprehensive launch plan includes promotional avenues like marketing campaigns, social media activations, and email marketing to grow your brand.

An omnichannel approach helps reach your target audience across multiple platforms, while targeted messaging and storytelling generate awareness and excitement. 

As you capture more leads, consider using AI for hyper-personalization to maximize your marketing. Through machine learning and comprehensive data analyses, you can forecast user behavior and preferences to more proactively satisfy customer needs. 

6. Analyze and improve

Monitor your brand strategy’s performance post-launch to identify improvement opportunities. Real-time data tools like Google Analytics help visualize metrics, but you can also collect direct customer feedback and track key performance indicators (KPIs). And website audits are a practical, long-term optimization approach that help you periodically track your brand’s standing and improve iteratively.

Build brands and businesses with Webflow

With an effective brand strategy, you can differentiate your company from the competition and build lasting connections with your target audience. You’ll also guide your design and marketing teams with a clear vision to work toward.

A brand isn’t complete without a strong website to anchor your company’s online presence. Your website is a representation of your visual identity and encourages visitors to become loyal customers aligned with your brand values.

Whether launching a new company or scaling an established business, Webflow Enterprise provides collaboration features (like advanced roles and permissions) and customization capabilities to ensure your team effectively expresses your brand.

Ready to get started? Build your brand from the ground up and scale it with Webflow.

If Webflow is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

5 process map templates to document, streamline, and optimize your processes

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Our view at Stack - our team love using Miro as an online workspace for innovation, enabling distributed teams to dream, design, and build together. With a full set of collaboration capabilities, it simplifies cross-functional teamwork, meetings, and workshops. Create concepts, map user stories, and conduct roadmap planning in real-time.

image

Inefficient processes carry a big price tag for businesses. Formstack’s State of Digital Maturity report found that 51% of U.S. workers spend at least two hours a day on repetitive or inefficient tasks. That translates into an estimated $14,560 per employee per year that could be invested in growth. 

One of the best tools for streamlining efficiencies (and banishing inefficiencies) is a process map. Just like a geographical map helps you orient yourself and find the best route, a process map offers a systematic approach to finding the most efficient path forward.

What are the stages of process mapping?

1. Define the scope

First, identify a process to be mapped. Comb through UX research or internal success metrics to pinpoint a challenge in your business, then narrow your scope down to a single process to optimize. 

Let’s say that you’re a product manager and you’ve noticed more bugs in the code you’ve shipped over the last quarter. Creating a process map for your bug fixes and deployment process might be a logical step. 

Define the process you want to map and analyze. Document any objectives you want to achieve, such as lowering the number of bugs reported or decreasing the time to deploy fixes. Then, determine who needs to be involved in the mapping process. 

How to visualize it: Visualize ongoing user feedback through a UX research repository or user research synthesis, so you can pick up on trends. An action priority matrix or problem prioritization workshop can be valuable to help you choose which priorities to tackle first. 

Use this template

2. Gather information

Once you’ve defined a process to map, it’s time to start gathering information. Connect with teams and individuals that touch each part of the process to explain their role, including which inputs they receive, which actions they perform, and which outputs they send along.

In the bug fix example, you would interview or hold a workshop with developers and the QA team to understand their roles in the process. List the activities involved in sticky notes or an online workspace, like Miro. 

How to visualize it: Create a SIPOC diagram to document all of the steps, inputs, outputs, and roles for a process. A SIPOC (Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, Customers) diagram is a visual tool that clarifies understanding and supports process standardization. 

3. Create a high-level flowchart

Once you’ve documented all of the roles, inputs, outputs, and action steps, you can begin to put them in order. Use a mapping tool to create a current state or as-is process map documenting your process. 

How to visualize it: Create a basic flowchart like this current state flowchart from Miro. Use symbols and shapes to indicate starting points, steps, decisions, and endpoints.  

Use this template

4. Refine the process map

Once you’ve created the high-level flowchart, engage your stakeholders to strengthen it. Ask teams to confirm its accuracy, provide feedback, and add more detail. This can be done asynchronously or synchronously through a virtual workshop. 

How to visualize it: Refine your initial flowchart with more details. For example, you can add color coding or swimlanes to show each party’s responsibilities. 

5. Analyze the process map for potential improvements 

This next crucial step will open up the doors for progress. Once the current state of the process is documented, look for bottlenecks and areas with frequent delays or inefficiencies. 

It’s also important to identify non-value-added activities or steps that don’t add overall value to the process. These often include unnecessary steps, duplicated efforts, or approvals that slow the process down. Consider which of these you can eliminate or streamline to reach your goals more efficiently. 

How to visualize it: Value stream mapping is a useful exercise to differentiate between value-add streams and non-value-add activities. 

6. Implement and maintain the process map

Once you’ve identified action steps, create a future state process map for your team. Monitor the new process to ensure it works as intended, and make any necessary adjustments to optimize its performance. 

As you do this, monitor any key metrics identified in the first stage to track progress toward your goal. Processes evolve and business needs change, so schedule regular reviews of the process map to keep it updated and relevant. 

How to visualize it: Create a future state process map to document the new process. Use a Kanban board to manage the action steps needed for improvements. 

How to visualize the stages in one collaborative workspace

The best way to manage these stages and your stakeholders is by pooling all of your research, brainstorming, and process mapping into one workspace. That way, participants can refer back to earlier versions and visualizations, and integrate data or information from third-party plugins. 

With Miro’s drag-and-click boards, it’s easy to document, improve, and share your processes. You can run brainstorming sessions and workshops in real-time, and add comments and video walkthroughs to create alignment. 

5 free templates for visualizing process mapping stages

Another benefit of an online workspace for process mapping: You don’t need to start from scratch. Explore hundreds of templates and user-generated workshop examples to suit your needs. 

Process map template

Use this template

At the start of the mapping process, it’s helpful to have a simple linear chart to brainstorm action steps. This Miro template offers just that: columns for each stage, with space to add activities and notes via stickies. This is perfect for the gathering information phase, then you can take all of those steps to order in a flowchart. 

Basic flowchart template

Use this template

This basic flowchart template is simple and uncomplicated for anyone new to process mapping. Use pre-populated shapes to represent entry points, endpoints, and decision points. Arrows show a process flow and relationships. Once you’ve copied the template, you can customize everything from colors to shapes to text to fit your needs. 

SIPOC template

Use this template

This SIPOC template by Leanscape founder Reagan Pannell outlines the SIPOC process with clear labels and descriptions of each section, helping teams understand all the components in a process and identify any gaps. 

Value stream mapping template

Use this template

Value stream mapping can be complex, but it lives up to its name — you’ll gain so much value through seeing a holistic view of your process. This template for value stream mapping guides you through mapping the basic elements (material streams, information streams, cycle time data, etc.) of your process so you can assess what can be cut to reduce waste. 

Use case flowchart

Use this template

This template by Product Manager Manar Alboqami includes swimlanes for multiple users or points of view, which can help build a full picture of all possible flows and paths (both happy and unhappy). There’s enough to start with that a user can easily build on it for many different scenarios, for instance mapping a user flow for a successful account signup versus one that encounters an error message. 

Map your way to process improvement

Broken processes waste time and resources, but a process map can guide you toward increased efficiency and better team alignment. With these process mapping templates, you’ll have a roadmap to follow so you can document and optimize your processes, whether you’re manufacturing products, developing software, or onboarding new employees. Download these templates, customize them to your needs, and start improving today.

If Miro is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

SmartSuite: Announcing GDPR Compliance

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Our view at Stack - You definitely can't pigeon-hole SmartSuite as it does so much! It's a collaborative work management platform that enables teams to plan, track, and manage workflows, projects, and everyday tasks. With features like automations, integrations, and AI capabilities, it streamlines work processes and empowers teams to achieve their goals. It's also available in 15 languages.

In the global compliance landscape, data security, privacy and compliance are paramount. Organizations handle sensitive information daily, and ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of this data is critical. We’re excited to announce that SmartSuite is now GDPR compliant.

GDPR Compliance: What It Means for You

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) governs the processing of personal data of individuals within the European Union (EU). By achieving GDPR compliance, SmartSuite ensures that your organization can confidently manage sensitive data while adhering to EU privacy regulations. Here’s what you can expect:

1. Enhanced Data Privacy

  • SmartSuite implements robust data protection measures, including encryption, access controls, and audit trails.
  • Personal data is handled with utmost care, ensuring privacy rights are respected.

2. Consent Management

  • SmartSuite provides tools to manage user consent effectively.
  • Users have control over their data and can grant or revoke consent as needed.

3. Right to Erasure (Right to Be Forgotten)

  • SmartSuite supports the right to erasure, allowing users to request the deletion of their data.
  • Compliance with this fundamental GDPR principle ensures transparency and user trust.

EU Datacenter: A Localized Solution

In Q3 2024, SmartSuite will launch a datacenter located within the European Union. Here’s why this matters:

Reduced Latency: Users in the EU will experience faster response times due to proximity to the datacenter.

Data Sovereignty: Hosting data within the EU ensures compliance with local regulations and GDPR.

An Important Side Note: Contrary to popular belief, GDPR does not explicitly mandate that personal data must be stored within the EU or the European Economic Area (EEA) for compliance. Instead, GDPR imposes stringent requirements on the transfer of personal data outside these regions.

It is indeed permissible to store and process personal data of EU and EEA citizens outside the EU, provided appropriate safeguards are in place to ensure data protection and GDPR compliance. Current EU customers can be confident that SmartSuite is adhering to the GDPR requirements with this new certification, and will be fulfilling additional requirements when we launch our datacenter in the EU.

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the transfer of personal data to countries outside the EU/EEA is allowed if certain conditions are met to ensure that the data is adequately protected. These safeguards include:

  1. Adequacy Decision: The European Commission can decide that a third country, a territory, or one or more specified sectors within that third country, or an international organization offers an adequate level of data protection. If such a decision is in place, data transfers can occur without any further safeguard.
  2. Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs): These are pre-approved model contracts that include provisions to protect data being transferred internationally.
  3. Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs): These are internal rules adopted by multinational companies to allow intra-organizational transfers of personal data across borders.
  4. Derogations: In specific situations, data transfers may occur based on explicit consent of the data subject, the necessity for the performance of a contract, important reasons of public interest, or for the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims.
  5. Other Mechanisms: There are additional mechanisms like codes of conduct or certification mechanisms, which are still evolving and being developed under the GDPR framework.

Thus, as long as these conditions are met, personal data of EU and EEA citizens can be processed and stored outside the EU in a manner compliant with GDPR.

Learn More

To learn more about our GDPR compliance practices and the upcoming EU datacenter launch, reach out to your SmartSuite account representative or contact our sales team at sales@smartsuite.com. We are committed to supporting your critical work while safeguarding your data and respecting privacy rights. Through this certification, we are able to work with our EU customers immediately.

If Smartsuite is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

User authentication and its importance in cybersecurity

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Our view at Stack - Simplify web development with Webflow, reduce costs, and deliver professional results. No-code, responsive, and SEO-friendly. Explore your creative potential!

Fortify your website’s defenses with robust user authentication practices.

From confidential customer information to proprietary company data, there’s a lot to protect on a website. Yet, many organizations still rely on outdated user authentication methods, like usernames and passwords, leaving them vulnerable to cyber threats and regulatory review.

Modern-day authentication methods offer multi-layered defense through biometrics, time-based verification, and behavior-based protocols. Read on to learn how this authentication benefits everyone involved.

What’s user authentication for websites?

User authentication involves verifying the identity of people trying to access your website. The system checks credentials against existing records to confirm the user’s identity. 

The most common method is username and password-based. Here’s how this process typically goes:

1. User input: Site visitors input their username or email address and corresponding password.

2. Verification: The website compares the username or email address against stored database records.

3. Hashing and comparison: The website uses cryptographic techniques to hash the password, converting it into an encrypted string of characters and comparing it to the password stored in the database.

4. Access granted or denied: If the passwords match, the website grants the user access. If not, the person must try again.

Other common types of user authentication

Username and password-based measures aren’t always the safest. Here are a few modern practices that boost site security: 

  • Biometric authentication: This involves using unique biological traits (like fingerprints, facial features, and iris patterns) to confirm a user’s identity. For example, most smartphones have in-display fingerprint scanners where you place your registered fingerprint in a designated area to unlock the phone. And many Apple devices have Face ID, a proprietary feature that uses the device’s front-facing camera and machine learning to grant access to an iPhone or iPad.
  • Two-factor authentication (2FA): With 2FA, users trying to gain entry to your website or application must provide two separate authentication factors for access, such as a password and a one-time password (OTP) sent to their mobile device.
  • Multi-factor authentication (MFA): MFA requires users to provide multiple authentication factors, like a password, biometric data, and a reCAPTCHA form.

Crucial components for building safer user authentication methods

Combining these elements for identity verification offers a multifaceted — and safer — approach to site security:

  • Knowledge factors: This includes offering information only the user knows, such as passwords, PINs, and security questions. This might involve entering a unique password or answering a question like, “What’s your mother’s maiden name?” when logging into an email account.
  • Possession factors: This refers to tangible objects — typically a physical token or an internet-enabled device, like a smartphone, tablet, or laptop. The platform sends the user to their device for verification with a password or biometric data to confirm they also own this other device. 
  • Inherence factors: These are characteristics inherent to the user, primarily for biometric authentication. Users authenticate themselves by providing a unique biological feature that’s challenging (and ideally impossible) to replicate, like a fingerprint or facial or voice recognition.
  • Time factors: These are time-sensitive authentication methods. Codes that expire after a limited time sent via SMS and email are the most common examples. If someone enters the temporary code after it expires, they can’t access the platform.
  • Location factors: This method verifies users based on their location. Websites and servers can use HTTP or HTTPS to track locations through IP addresses, GPS coordinates, or cellphone towers and grant or deny access based on a location relative to predefined factors.

The importance of implementing robust user authentication methods

Implementing powerful site security measures offers website owners and users peace of mind. Here’s why prioritizing cybersecurity matters:

  • Increased security: Likely the most apparent benefit, verifying user identities through authentication prevents unauthorized parties from accessing sensitive data (like financial, legal, or healthcare information). It also reduces the risk of data breaches and cyber-attacks, which is especially important for enterprise-level organizations with large customer-related datasets.
  • Regulatory compliance: Regulations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protect essential data privacy rights. Robust authentication methods protect users and promote safer online experiences.
  • Improved accountability: Implementing multi-step authentication showcases your organization’s overall approach to and respect for cybersecurity. It also expresses that you understand that you’re responsible for protecting site users’ data.
  • Protection against identity theft: Effective authentication mechanisms prevent fraudulent website access by asking users to provide verifiable, encrypted credentials. Whether that includes passwords or biometric data, having multiple authentication layers in place protects users’ against malicious impersonation attempts.
  • Positive brand reputation: Showcasing your care for data privacy builds trust and confidence with site visitors. Yes, they’ll feel like their data is in good hands. But this also boosts your overall brand reputation, making happy customers feel inclined to bring more business to your user-focused organization.

4 best practices for improving user authentication 

No matter the access points or datasets you’re protecting, here are four best practices for increasing security through user authentication.

1. Implement multi-layer authentication

Multi-layer authentication methods, like 2FA and MFA, require users to verify their identities using several factors, adding extra layers of security beyond traditional password authentication. 

For example, a financial services company can use MFA on their app by asking users to enter a unique password followed by a fingerprint scan and an OTP sent to their mobile device or email address.

2. Enforce strong password policies

Educate visitors about your approach to cybersecurity and user authentication and encourage them to use strong, unique passwords. Offer regular prompts to update outdated passwords and incorporate password manager functionality into your site to help visitors create, save, and manage passwords for quick and safe retrieval. You can even enforce mandatory password requirements, such as minimum length, complexity, and expiration periods.

When signing up for a new account, for instance, your website can ask users to create passwords that are at least 10 characters long and include uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. Then, schedule a popup notification every three months encouraging users to change their password.

3. Monitor user authentication logs

Keep a close eye on authentication logs for suspicious activity, such as multiple failed login attempts or suspicious login locations. Implement automated alerts to notify administrators of potential security breaches and send emails to users to verify whether or not it’s really them trying to log in.

For example, your system could notify you of several failed login attempts from different IP addresses within a short period, indicating a potential brute-force attack. This is where hackers use a trial-and-error approach by entering multiple usernames and passwords until they register the correct login details.

4. Use behavior-based authentication

Behavior-based authentication algorithms analyze user patterns to identify anomalies and potential threats. Your site can detect suspicious activities and trigger automated authentication measures by examining factors like typing speed, mouse movements, and navigation actions.

For example, an enterprise website may prompt additional verification if a user suddenly exhibits out-of-the-ordinary behavior, like accessing sensitive data at odd times or from unusual locations.

Secure your website with Webflow

By offering varying levels of security and usability, you can tailor your website’s authentication systems based on your resources and the protection level required for your users.

Whether growing a small business or scaling an enterprise, use Webflow Enterprise for increased security measures including reliable traffic management, single sign-on, and advanced DDoS protection. Our platform also leverages Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Fastly to build security directly into your site. Check out our 10-step security checklist and secure your website today.

If Webflow is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Mapping your software: Your guide to essential architecture diagrams

· ·

Our view at Stack - our team love using Miro as an online workspace for innovation, enabling distributed teams to dream, design, and build together. With a full set of collaboration capabilities, it simplifies cross-functional teamwork, meetings, and workshops. Create concepts, map user stories, and conduct roadmap planning in real-time.

Whether a developer is maintaining an existing product or building a new one, they’re likely not doing it in a silo. From teammates to designers and product managers, there can be many stakeholders for even just a small feature change. That’s why it’s so important to have a software architecture diagram: a source of truth that outlines your software’s structure and the relationship between its different components.  

This high-level overview makes it easier for everyone involved — especially the non-coders in the room — to understand and speak to the project, stay aligned on goals, and contribute meaningfully.  

What is a software architecture diagram?

There’s a wide assortment of software architecture diagrams for different purposes, each with varying detail levels. But in general, a software architecture diagram will include the following elements: 

  • Components: Building blocks of the software system representing the various modules, classes, services, or layers.
  • Relationships: Lines or arrows that indicate how the components interact or communicate with each other.
  • External systems: Entities outside the software that interact with the system, such as APIs, databases, or third-party services.
  • Interfaces: Define the “rules” for how one component will provide or consume information from another.
  • Boundaries: Sort related components into groups and distinguish between the subsystems within the architecture (for example, presentation layer, application layer, communication layer, etc.)

Anyone from a software architect or developer to a project manager or product owner can take the lead on building a software architecture diagram. However, these diagrams are the most accurate and helpful when they’re built collaboratively. 

What are the benefits of software architecture diagrams?

The biggest benefit of this type of diagram is that it boosts clarity and understanding, creating a high-level overview that simplifies even the most complex concepts. It also makes it easier to communicate with other stakeholders and team members who might have less technical knowledge of how the software works.

With that in mind, these diagrams offer value at all stages of software development and maintenance — not just during planning. Here’s a quick look at how architecture diagrams are helpful at each stage of the process:

Before software development

  • Planning and design: Diagrams define the high-level structure of the system and guide the development process.
  • Requirements analysis: Diagrams map out how the software system will meet defined requirements and what components are needed to make that happen.

During software development

  • Improvement and refinement: Diagrams can be revisited throughout the development process to iterate and make updates based on insights, feedback, or changes in requirements.
  • Communication: Diagrams are often used to communicate design choices, interfaces, and interactions on the development team and with other stakeholders.
  • Testing: Diagrams are a valuable reference point during testing to ensure the system matches the intended architecture. They also help teams quickly spot areas that need more testing or changes.

After software development

  • Documentation: Diagrams can be saved as part of the system’s documentation so they can be referenced for ongoing maintenance.
  • Review: Diagrams should be reviewed during a team retrospective to evaluate the architecture’s effectiveness. Teams should then use those insights to improve future architecture designs.

8 types of architecture diagrams (and templates to get started)

Software architecture diagrams are generally grouped into three different categories: 

  1. Structure: Shows the software’s components and their relationships
  2. Behavior: Shows how those components interact
  3. Deployment: Shows how software is distributed across devices

Let’s take a closer look at the types of diagrams that fall in each of these categories — along with templates you can use to get started.

Structure diagrams

1. Component diagram

Use this diagram to: Visualize the components and artifacts in a system and the structural relationship between them. 

2. Class diagram

Use this diagram to: Display the building blocks of your code, including different parts (classes), what they contain (properties and methods), and how they relate to each other.

Behavior diagrams

3. Sequence diagram

Use this diagram to: Understand the order of events in a sequence, such as what happens when a user logs into your application.

4. Activity diagram

Use this diagram to: Show the flow of tasks or processes in the system to see how things happen step-by-step, including decision points and parallel processes.

5. State diagram

Use this diagram: The software transitions between various states in response to events like user login, logout, or lockout. This diagram illustrates these states and the transitions between them.

The software transitions between various states in response to events like user login, logout, or lockout. This diagram illustrates these states and the transitions between them.

6. Use case diagram

Use this diagram to: Visualize how your users interact with your software so you can get a deeper understanding of user requirements and build your software accordingly.

7. Data flow diagram

Use this diagram to: See how data moves through the system, including where it comes from, how it changes over time, and where it ends up. 

Deployment diagrams

8. Deployment diagram

Use this diagram to: Understand how the software is set up on different hardware devices and how those devices interact with each other. 

Simplify your software architecture diagram with Miro

Building and maintaining software is complex and teams must develop a shared understanding of how the system works. 

That’s a lot easier with a software architecture diagram, which can boost clarity, simplify communication, and unite your team in creating a winning final product.

If Miro is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Mapping your software: Your guide to essential architecture diagrams

· ·

Our view at Stack - our team love using Miro as an online workspace for innovation, enabling distributed teams to dream, design, and build together. With a full set of collaboration capabilities, it simplifies cross-functional teamwork, meetings, and workshops. Create concepts, map user stories, and conduct roadmap planning in real-time.

Whether a developer is maintaining an existing product or building a new one, they’re likely not doing it in a silo. From teammates to designers and product managers, there can be many stakeholders for even just a small feature change. That’s why it’s so important to have a software architecture diagram: a source of truth that outlines your software’s structure and the relationship between its different components.  

This high-level overview makes it easier for everyone involved — especially the non-coders in the room — to understand and speak to the project, stay aligned on goals, and contribute meaningfully.  

What is a software architecture diagram?

There’s a wide assortment of software architecture diagrams for different purposes, each with varying detail levels. But in general, a software architecture diagram will include the following elements: 

  • Components: Building blocks of the software system representing the various modules, classes, services, or layers.
  • Relationships: Lines or arrows that indicate how the components interact or communicate with each other.
  • External systems: Entities outside the software that interact with the system, such as APIs, databases, or third-party services.
  • Interfaces: Define the “rules” for how one component will provide or consume information from another.
  • Boundaries: Sort related components into groups and distinguish between the subsystems within the architecture (for example, presentation layer, application layer, communication layer, etc.)

Anyone from a software architect or developer to a project manager or product owner can take the lead on building a software architecture diagram. However, these diagrams are the most accurate and helpful when they’re built collaboratively. 

What are the benefits of software architecture diagrams?

The biggest benefit of this type of diagram is that it boosts clarity and understanding, creating a high-level overview that simplifies even the most complex concepts. It also makes it easier to communicate with other stakeholders and team members who might have less technical knowledge of how the software works.

With that in mind, these diagrams offer value at all stages of software development and maintenance — not just during planning. Here’s a quick look at how architecture diagrams are helpful at each stage of the process:

Before software development

  • Planning and design: Diagrams define the high-level structure of the system and guide the development process.
  • Requirements analysis: Diagrams map out how the software system will meet defined requirements and what components are needed to make that happen.

During software development

  • Improvement and refinement: Diagrams can be revisited throughout the development process to iterate and make updates based on insights, feedback, or changes in requirements.
  • Communication: Diagrams are often used to communicate design choices, interfaces, and interactions on the development team and with other stakeholders.
  • Testing: Diagrams are a valuable reference point during testing to ensure the system matches the intended architecture. They also help teams quickly spot areas that need more testing or changes.

After software development

  • Documentation: Diagrams can be saved as part of the system’s documentation so they can be referenced for ongoing maintenance.
  • Review: Diagrams should be reviewed during a team retrospective to evaluate the architecture’s effectiveness. Teams should then use those insights to improve future architecture designs.

8 types of architecture diagrams (and templates to get started)

Software architecture diagrams are generally grouped into three different categories: 

  1. Structure: Shows the software’s components and their relationships
  2. Behavior: Shows how those components interact
  3. Deployment: Shows how software is distributed across devices

Let’s take a closer look at the types of diagrams that fall in each of these categories — along with templates you can use to get started.

Structure diagrams

1. Component diagram

Use this diagram to: Visualize the components and artifacts in a system and the structural relationship between them. 

2. Class diagram

Use this diagram to: Display the building blocks of your code, including different parts (classes), what they contain (properties and methods), and how they relate to each other.

Behavior diagrams

3. Sequence diagram

Use this diagram to: Understand the order of events in a sequence, such as what happens when a user logs into your application.

4. Activity diagram

Use this diagram to: Show the flow of tasks or processes in the system to see how things happen step-by-step, including decision points and parallel processes.

5. State diagram

Use this diagram: The software transitions between various states in response to events like user login, logout, or lockout. This diagram illustrates these states and the transitions between them.

The software transitions between various states in response to events like user login, logout, or lockout. This diagram illustrates these states and the transitions between them.

6. Use case diagram

Use this diagram to: Visualize how your users interact with your software so you can get a deeper understanding of user requirements and build your software accordingly.

7. Data flow diagram

Use this diagram to: See how data moves through the system, including where it comes from, how it changes over time, and where it ends up. 

Deployment diagrams

8. Deployment diagram

Use this diagram to: Understand how the software is set up on different hardware devices and how those devices interact with each other. 

Simplify your software architecture diagram with Miro

Building and maintaining software is complex and teams must develop a shared understanding of how the system works. 

That’s a lot easier with a software architecture diagram, which can boost clarity, simplify communication, and unite your team in creating a winning final product.

If Miro is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

SmartSuite: Announcing HIPAA Compliance

· ·

Our view at Stack - You definitely can't pigeon-hole SmartSuite as it does so much! It's a collaborative work management platform that enables teams to plan, track, and manage workflows, projects, and everyday tasks. With features like automations, integrations, and AI capabilities, it streamlines work processes and empowers teams to achieve their goals. It's also available in 15 languages.

In the ever-evolving compliance landscape, data security, privacy and compliance are paramount. Organizations handle sensitive information daily, and ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of this data is critical. We’re excited to announce that SmartSuite is now HIPAA compliant.

Why HIPAA Compliance Matters

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) sets the standard for protecting sensitive health related data. Compliance with HIPAA regulations is not only a legal requirement but also an ethical obligation for every organization that handles this type of information. By achieving HIPAA compliance, SmartSuite ensures that your organization can confidently manage patient records, clinical data, and administrative workflows while adhering to industry standards.

What SmartSuite Offers

1. Centralized Data Management

SmartSuite provides a centralized solution for managing various aspects of health industry operations. Whether you’re handling patient records, clinical trials, or administrative tasks, SmartSuite adapts to your organization’s unique needs.

2. Flexibility and Customization

SmartSuite’s flexible platform allows you to tailor workflows to your specific requirements. Customize forms, templates, and data fields to match your organization’s processes. Whether you’re a small clinic or a large healthcare network, SmartSuite scales to fit your needs.

3. Collaboration and Communication

Collaborate with your team securely within SmartSuite. Share patient information, discuss treatment plans, and assign tasks—all while maintaining data privacy. SmartSuite’s communication features facilitate seamless collaboration among health industry professionals.

4. HIPAA Compliance Features

SmartSuite’s HIPAA compliance features include:

  • Data Encryption: All data transmitted and stored within SmartSuite is encrypted to protect privacy.
  • Access Controls: Role-based access ensures that only authorized personnel can view and modify sensitive information.
  • Audit Trails: Detailed logs track user activity, allowing you to monitor data access and changes.
  • Business Associate Agreements (BAAs): SmartSuite offers BAAs to demonstrate our commitment to safeguarding patient data.

Learn More

To learn more about enabling HIPAA compliance for your organization, reach out to your SmartSuite account representative or contact our sales team at sales@smartsuite.com. We are committed to supporting your critical work while safeguarding your data and respecting privacy rights.

If Smartsuite is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

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