Last week, some of the most progressive marketers and innovative thinkers using WordPress came together at the 2018 WP Engine Summit. Attendees left exhilarated and inspired to push their brands and agencies forward faster. The theme of this year’s Summit was Breakthrough. Insight into the Internet’s most forward-thinking trends like AI, voice technology, AMP, and PWA energized attendees with the knowledge and inspiration to fuel their professional breakthroughs. Additionally, Becky Hammon, Assistant Coach to the San Antonio Spurs, delivered a keynote speech to help ignite personal breakthroughs.
To conclude the Summit, we heard from WP Engine leaders who offered a look into the WP Engine roadmap. This included a look...
Last week, our first hackathon of the year kicked off with more than a dozen teams and respective projects. After the 48-hour build period was up, those groups presented their cutting edge ideas to a packed audience of WP Engine employees. The presentations lasted an entire day, and only after all
Every year it can feel like the holidays sneak up on us. We assemble, we strategize, and we take the necessary precautions yet we frequently feel like we are scrambling. For ecommerce businesses, this time of year is crucial not only for generating revenue but for generating recurrent relationships
As we continue to showcase a sample of the amazing StudioPress themes now available to WP Engine customers, we’re extra excited to bring you this new StudioPress Theme: Breakthrough Pro, which is the first new theme to be launched since our acquisition of StudioPress in June. Breakthrough Pro
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability
CSS conversion of my Radio weblog
The hardest thing about the re-design was integrating the tableless CSS design into Radio Userland. I had to do some jiggery-pokery with the Radio Userland templates and macros, and the CSS implementation is not yet complete. I’ve had to temporarily remove my blogroll and topicroll, along
Can the blockchain and IoT solve international freight’s issues?
DS: IOTA is a distributed ledger that can be used for transactional settlements as well as data transfers. Because of the properties of IOTA — namely, its scalability, lightweight-ness and lack of transaction fees – it’s the perfect solution for the Internet of Things. We see IOTA as
Brand Is Experience in the Digital Age
In digital systems, customers interact with the representation of the brand in the form of websites and other interactive services, making behavior a crucial attribute of brand. The granularity of behavior as a brand attribute can and does vary and can be expressed holistically at the level of
a look back at the 2018 wp engine summit
Brand Is Experience in the Digital Age
As his pillaging continued and Blackbeard grew in craftiness, he realized it would be prudent to extend the essence of his menacing nature from afar. He devised a tool to extend his message — an early version of the skull-and-crossbones pirate flag we all know well today. The flag served as
Usability 101: Introduction to Usability
Usability and utility are equally important and together determine whether something is useful: It matters little that something is easy if it's not what you want. It's also no good if the system can hypothetically do what you want, but you can't make it happen because the user interface is too
Assessing the Usability of a User Interface Standard
User interface standards have become the object of increasingly intense activities in recent years [Abernethy 1988; Holdaway and Bevan 1989], including work in the International Standards Organization (ISO) [Brooke et al. 1990] and the European Community [Stewart 1990]. Work is also going on in
Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking
In this step, the team moves through the stickies on the board collaboratively and clusters similar notes that belong to the same quadrant. Name your clusters with themes that represent each group (for example, “validation from others” or “research”). Repeat themes in each quadrant if
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
It used to be that you would buy two or three nice outfits to have in your wardrobe and would rotate them for special events. But in today’s era, with social media like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, all your friends will see what you wear, whether they go to the same event or not. And even
How to use Screening Questions to Select the Right Participants for User Research
However, open-ended questions alone are not enough to ensure effective participant screening, because they have some critical limitations. If you are recruiting for a very specific niche behavior, an open-ended question may fail to elicit relevant information because some people who do engage in
a look back at the 2018 wp engine summit
Store Finders and Locators
Another noticeable change over our years of research is users’ increasing reliance on external mapping tools such as Google Maps, Apple Maps, or Waze to provide turn-by-turn directions. Companies have reacted to this new state of facts. In Study 4, only two of the 11 sites tested used an on-site
Customer-Service Information on Websites: The Hub-and-Spoke Model
Some approaches worked better than others in enabling customers to efficiently locate the information they needed. One user on OneKingsLane.com was looking for a phone number. He spent several minutes on the home page going back and forth between the header and footer in search of a link, saying
Long-Term Exposure to Flat Design: How the Trend Slowly Makes Users Less Efficient
You may ask: isn’t it a good thing if users are forced to pay more attention to language and placement of design elements on the screen? In our course on the foundations of HCI we teach that deep processing is better for memory than shallow processing (in other words, processing the meaning and
Troubleshooting Group Ideation: 10 Fixes for More and Better UX Ideas
Adding structure and rules to your session can make your ideation process effective. In particular, parallel design can help you reap the benefits of both individual and group ideation. One way to implement it in an ideation session is to have team members start working on ideas solo for a short
Brand Is Experience in the Digital Age
Before a siege, Blackbeard dressed himself in a dark heavy coat and captain’s hat to accentuate his domineering stature. He strapped pistols to his chest and tucked lit, smoking fuses under his hat and in his beard to create an image reminiscent of the devil himself having just emerged from some
4 Things Spotify Can Teach You About Data Sharing
After Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal broke this past May, the social network announced it would roll out a suite of new privacy tools. But while Facebook did debut a feature that allows users to access and download their data, it’s months behind on a “Clear History” tool. “That
Dear Senior Citizens – You Folks are the Easy Target of Hackers
Mostly, seniors are self-sufficient, but with age, they need a bit of help; so many seniors entirely rely on their younger generations to help them with their finances, legal affairs, housing, taxes, and other issues. In that case, it’s helpful or sometimes necessary for caretakers to access a
Data Lake vs. Data Warehouse: Which Is the Best Data Architecture?
But for most companies embarking on big data initiatives, structured data is only part of the story. Each year, businesses generate a staggering quantity of unstructured data. In fact, 451 Research in conjunction with Western Digital found that 63 percent of enterprises and service providers are
JS-Kit Score: Turn Your Site into a Localized Digg
Widget provider JS-Kit has released their latest widget this morning, Score. Score adds a thumbs up/thumbs down-style ratings widget to any page content, and then aggregates the data across the entire web site into an info box that can highlight a site’s top content. It can also integrate
a look back at the 2018 wp engine summit
3 Reasons Why Your Success Depends on More Than a Great Product
Today’s customers look for proof that you know them before buying. Martech tools can aid in your efforts to give customers a personal experience with your brand. For instance, some systems use AI to help segment and highly personalize your emails to customers, recommending the right time of day
Business Loan vs Equity Financing: How to Fund Your Startup
For startups, sometimes raising a large number of funds through loans is not possible. This is because many lending institutions have a cap on the maximum amount you can borrow. Also, startups generally do not have too many assets and lenders, on the other hand, ask for collateral as security. So
A Look Back at the 2018 WP Engine Summit | Login Walls Stop Users in Their Tracks
Login Walls Stop Users in Their Tracks
When we discuss login walls in our mobile-usability classes, we frequently get the comment “But it’s only for the first time; the next time we keep them logged in!” Guess what: there may be no next time. Users are utterly vexed to have to enter information before they get a taste of what is
Responsive Web Design (RWD) and User Experience
To truly assess the user experience of a responsive design, do not test your responsive designs only in the comfort of your own office, on your high-speed connection. Venture out into the wild with your smartphone— between tall buildings in a city, in interior conference rooms or basements, in
The Roots of Minimalism in Web Design
Many one-stop website-design and hosting services like Squarespace, Weebly, Wix, and Volusion now provide stock site templates that are almost entirely minimalist designs. These offerings are particularly significant because they often target people with no development or design experience—people
