In an effort to help the WordPress community grow and prosper as well as expand and add value to the WP Engine Digital Experience platform, WP Engine recently acquired StudioPress. For our customers, this means, in addition to the Genesis framework, they’ll have access to 35 premium themes. All StudioPress themes are built using the Genesis Framework, are professionally designed, mobile-responsive, and built for seamless use, right out of the box.
Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to get readers to take action, investigate a product, or change a behavior. The success of your email marketing, however, comes from your email list. If you need to generate...
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
WP Engine was proud to take part in this event sponsored by the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion. Each company was encouraged to customize the events during the day according to the needs, nature, and geography of its workplace. At WP Engine, multiple company-wide workshops were held in
Texas’ economy is the second largest in the United States, a measure of success that’s only expected to continue; Texas ranks first for its growth prospects due to impressive growth forecasts and competitive employment rates across the state. To tap into this statewide success, however
A Tale of Two Bubbles: Why Cryptocurrency Isn’t the Next Dot-Com
Be able to effectively communicate your long-term value to shareholders. The blockchain is a brilliant invention, with applications we’re just beginning to discover, ranging from the financial space to healthcare, cybersecurity, retail, and beyond. It will transform the world as we know it
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
Can the blockchain and IoT solve international freight’s issues?
One example is cargo freight, an industry traditionally reliant on paperwork — typically in triplicate — including the physical couriering of documents as proof of purchase. As well as being incredibly wasteful such a process caused problems in document authentication, payments, time
Marking Required Fields in Forms
It is however dangerous to not mark the required fields in a registration form. Registration forms vary a lot across sites — different companies require different types of information when creating an account. If your registration form looks like a login form, it’s safe to leave the required
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Touch Targets on Touchscreens
Designing usable touch targets is the basis of all touchscreen (and therefore mobile) design. Ensure that all interactive elements are at least 1cm × 1cm (0.4in × 0.4in) in physical, rendered size and positioned with enough space from other competing touch targets to be easily and accurately
When and How to Create Customer Journey Maps
Journey maps should result in truthful narratives, not fairy tales. Start with gathering any existing research, but additional journey-based research is also needed to fill in the gaps that the existing research won’t cover. This is a qualitative-research process. While quantitative data can help
Mobile: Native Apps, Web Apps, and Hybrid Apps
As you can see, all these pages are the same, except for the top header, which is platform specific. The Back button on iOS is translated into a caret on Android; the logo is present on the web page, but not in the app. (The designers have correctly assumed that on the web people need the logo to
A Checklist for Designing Mobile Input Fields
Whether you're designing web pages, web-based applications (e.g., SaaS), or native mobile apps, one of the basic building blocks is the humble text-input field: a box where the user can enter some text. Uses of this widget are plenty and not the topic of this article. We should point out that there
Scrolling and Scrollbars
If you must make your own scrollbars, stay as close to user expectations as possible. Unless your scrollbars look like scrollbars, users might not notice them. Unless your scrollbars behave like scrollbars, users might not be able to bring the desired content into view. In either case, your
The Slow Tail: Time Lag Between Visiting and Buying
Dr. Alan Rimm-Kaufman from the Rimm-Kaufman Group recently tracked one million clicks on search ads on Google and Yahoo. These advertising clicks eventually translated into 41,377 conversions on the target websites. Although the clients in question must remain anonymous, they presumably have
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The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think
This is what level-2 people can do: “At this level, tasks typically require the use of both generic and more specific technology applications. For instance, the respondent may have to make use of a novel online form. Some navigation across pages and applications is required to solve the problem
Amazon: No Longer the Role Model for Ecommerce Design
Amazon's sign-in screen remains a model to be emulated, minimizing the common problem of new customers who try to log in without having registered. Amazon presents two questions in linear order: (1) "What is your email address?" and (2) "Do you have an Amazon.com password?" For the second question
The Magnifying-Glass Icon in Search Design: Pros and Cons
When used without an open-entry text field, the icon takes up less space. Visually, it’s less prominent and, therefore, less noticeable. We don’t recommend the icon-only pattern for desktop websites. Icon-only search makes sense on mobile devices, because there’s less screen space and fewer
Fight Against “Right-Rail Blindness”
The right-hand side of the page consumes maybe 20% of your available pixels: the most precious resource in computers. It can serve many significant and practical purposes. It’s a place to feature secondary content — to recommend or extend the user journey to other areas of your site. Not
Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking
If you feel that you need more detail or you have unique needs, adapt the map by including additional quadrants (like Goals the example below) or by increasing specificity to existing quadrants. Depending on the purpose of your empathy map, polish and digitize the output accordingly. Be sure to
The Internet of Things (IoT): Is your future secure?
We’re currently on the verge of the greatest human evolution possible. Where the shift is from Information Age to the Digital Age. Where intelligent devices can feel the presence of human and ask accordingly. This phenomenal shift is due to a person’s desire to create efficiency, specifically
Smart Hospitals: the Next Step in Healthcare IT
Yet, we already have countless apps and connected devices that collect information about our movements. With the ability to monitor everything from heart rate to the number of steps, blood pressure, and other vital signs, data healthcare providers can make more informed choices about treatment and
To Prevent Fraud, Healthcare Organizations Must Streamline Their Data Processes
The nature of the healthcare industry is what makes it particularly susceptible to fraud, waste, and abuse. Three key pillars within it (patients, hospital staff, and data management personnel) are often siloed. Even though they manage and interact with the same highly confidential data —
The Modern Shape and Trends of Employee Culture
Veronique James, CEO of the James Agency, an advertising, public relations, and digital marketing firm based in Scottsdale, Ariz., writes that there are things every executive can do on a granular level to ensure an upbeat environment. For example, her agency begins each week with a 15-minute
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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 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
StudioPress Theme Spotlight: Generate Pro | Are Chinese Websites Too Complex?
Are Chinese Websites Too Complex?
Insufficiently user-centric content didn’t address users’ key concerns. For example, one Chinese user said about Tsinghua University: “If I’m here on this site, I must be looking for things related to admission or other useful information. However, there are too many ads and clichés about
The Roots of Minimalism in Web Design
To better grasp and apply minimalist principles, we need to understand the origins of minimalism and its fundamental characteristics. We explore these topics in a series of two articles: In this first article we define minimalism and look at its history; in a second article we analyze in depth the
WeChat: China’s Integrated Internet User Experience
Palace Museum’s official account: users can interact with this account either by texting back one of the numbers 0–6, or by tapping the GUI menu button in the bottom left corner of the screen and selecting some of the available options. On some pages (but not in this case), the numeric options
