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...
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
In April 2017, the UNICEF Somalia and East and Southern Africa Regional (ESARO) offices were looking for a new way to raise awareness about the drought affecting millions of people in Somalia. The crisis was getting worse by the day, with thousands of Somalis fleeing home in search of water
Admin Columns helps you to manage your content faster and better. It’s one of those plugins you didn’t know you were missing until you’ve started used it. It gives you perfect insight into your content and can drastically reduce the time you need to find, sort, filter, export, and
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Finally, Hathaway sees this as a unique opportunity for the United States to work with countries around the world, and with organizations on an extremely local level. “We cannot succeed if our government works in isolation,” she added. It requires “leading from the top” from
Cryptocurrency Fraud Is the Exception, Not the Rule
Pump-and-dump schemes aren’t new — nor are they limited to the cryptocurrency space (just ask Jordan Belfort). That said, the growing popularity of blockchain technology, combined with a lack of general public understanding, make the space a breeding ground for these types of ploys
5 Real Life Blockchain Implementations Outside of Cryptocurrency
Medicalchain aims to use blockchain technology to securely store medical records. Using a distributed ledger for healthcare is a godsend as it allows doctors, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacists, and health insurers to have more immediate access to health records, which could help save lives
Centered Logos Hurt Website Navigation
Madewell.com had a centered logo. Most users still clicked the logo to navigate to the homepage, but one user made 4 extra clicks before finally finding the homepage. Based on these observations, it’s clear that left-aligned logos are better than centered logos for supporting user navigation to
a look back at the 2018 wp engine summit
Centered Logos Hurt Website Navigation
It appears that other factors (such as the contrast, padding, and legibility of the brand name) affect brand recall more than the position in the center of the page versus the top left corner. For example, the Nolitan hotel websites had a background image behind the logo, which may have
Design Thinking 101
The packaged and accessible nature of design thinking makes it scalable. Organizations previously unable to shift their way of thinking now have a guide that can be comprehended regardless of expertise, mitigating the range of design talent while increasing the probability of success. This
Help People Create Passwords That They Can Actually Remember
Organizations and individuals want to protect their online privacy and information, and thus usually have some respect for their passwords. If there is a high commitment level to the website or application, people will tolerate some of the difficulties the accompany them. But it is better to so
The Anti-Mac User Interface (Don Gentner and Jakob Nielsen)
For example, the original text-based Unix user interface was very appropriate when it was designed. The command-line interface was suited for a user community dominated by programmers who had the expertise, interest, and time to understand how the many different system features could be combined
What the Erroneous Hawaiian Missile Alert Can Teach Us About Error Prevention
In the case of the mistaken missile alert, some news outlets have provided examples of the interface involved. The same system screen is used to deliver several different types of emergency alerts to the public including amber alerts, road closures, and high-surf warnings. There are 9 unique
UX Guidelines for Ecommerce Homepages, Category Pages, and Product Listing Pages
Another trend seen in this latest research is an increased amount of product information on product listing pages. As long as the information is well-curated and uncluttered, this trend allows users to make informed decisions about products without visiting each detail page. Especially on mobile
a look back at the 2018 wp engine summit
Infinite Scrolling is Not for Every Website
The success of infinite scrolling on social media sites such as Twitter have made this technique popular, but that doesn’t mean you should do it too. Continuous scrolling is advantageous for content that streams constantly and has a relatively flat structure, where each unit of content belongs at
Pricing information gives B2B sites a competitive advantage
Companies rationalize reasons for not revealing prices online: we don’t want our competitors to know, price varies for different customers, price constantly fluctuates, customized services have unique prices, and so on. These excuses are legitimate reasons in almost all cases, but they’re still
Design Charrettes & Team Sketching: ½ Inspiration, ½ Buy-In
In an intranet design, the HR representative sketches a section page with 90% of the above-fold space dedicated to the benefits of the open-enrollment period. When explaining her design, she says that this year there will be no print mailings to employees, and that people already get so many
Narrative Biases: When Storytelling HURTS User Experience
When faced with this choice, most people believe the first option is more likely. In fact, 54% of UX practitioners chose option A, because it tells a meaningful story with a cause to explain the observed effect. (Another bias may contribute to this answer choice — the availability bias, which
Parallel & Iterative Design + Competitive Testing = High Usability
Once you have all the parallel versions, subject them to user testing. Each test participant can test 2 or 3 versions. Any more and users get jaded and can't articulate the differences. Of course, you should alternate which version they test first, because users are only fresh on their first
5 Itchy Reasons Why You’re Blowing Your Advertising Budget
When it comes to advertising goods and services online, there’s no room to rest on your laurels. It truly does pay to keep moving, thinking, testing, and creating in the dynamic and ever-evolving world of marketing, and it’s pivotal that budgets are invested wisely. There are five itchy reasons
29% of Internet Users Have Bought Things From Spam Email?? Say It Aint So!
The announcement of the study concludes with these funny lines, from Anstis again: “The other way to look at this situation is from a spammer’s perspective. There are approximately 250 million people out there who are interested in these kinds of products and have made purchases from
Is Your Chief Security Officer Prepared for M&A?
In a perfect world, an organization would keep code signing certificates under lock and key – or in the IT world – in a hardware security module (HSM). Accordingly, businesses must implement policies and procedures to ensure only authorized persons or processes have access. Chances are
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
a look back at the 2018 wp engine summit
How Self-Service Technology Can Boost Startup Growth
People love it when they get things done from their comfort zone, and that seems to be from the mobile phone these days. Setting up a mobile app for your site or brand is one of the best customer services you can employ to ensure the best service. Before setting up a website or building an app, the
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Finally, Hathaway sees this as a unique opportunity for the United States to work with countries around the world, and with organizations on an extremely local level. “We cannot succeed if our government works in isolation,” she added. It requires “leading from the top” from
A Look Back at the 2018 WP Engine Summit | Website Response Times
Website Response Times
In a recent study for our work on Brand as Experience (now a full-day training course on branding and UX), we asked users what they thought about various websites they had used in the past. So, their responses were based not on immediate use (as in normal usability studies), but on whatever past
Scoped Search: Dangerous, but Sometimes Useful
Any time users must pause to consider the differences between categories, the interface is making them work too hard. When this happens, it’s often a symptom of bad navigation design or of structural issues with the information architecture of your entire site. Organizations with many divisions
Top 10 Web Design Mistakes of 2003
For example, the question of good or bad ALT text only arises for sites that care enough about accessibility to have any ALT text. Other top mistakes this year derive from sites that target fast downloads by reducing image size, that maintain good archives, or that have a broad product selection
