Last week, WP Engine employees from all over the U.S. came together at our Austin headquarters for the first biannual All-Hands event of 2019. All Hands is a two-day event in which employees from other offices and teams around the country get the chance to collaborate and strategize with one another. This year’s theme was “Boldly Go” in honor of the famous sci-fi saga Star Trek. This event agenda was full of events to help nurture growth at both the individual level as well as company-wide. Not to mention, we got to have some fun!
Events on the agenda included team lunches, information sessions, inspirational speeches, a Hackathon, advice panels, trivia, and...
The annual Greater Austin Business Awards competition, presented by The Austin Chamber of Commerce, is designed to honor excellence in all aspects of business. In order to promote awareness and perpetuate good practices, the Awards recognize companies and organization in the Austin region for
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
Using the new Gutenberg post editor with Revolution Pro, developers and designers are able to create custom, reusable modules for design and content. As we continue to release new block-based themes, we hope users will find it easier to dive into their creative projects more quickly and build
Businesses Broke Ground on Blockchain. What Can Civic Groups Learn?
Although JPMorgan Chase scaled up its blockchain-based interbank exchange this past September to include 80 global banks, it debuted the model last October with just a handful of participants. The financial giant’s goal is to reduce the time and number of middlemen involved in bank-to-bank
Can the blockchain and IoT solve international freight’s issues?
Dominik Schiener: Like with most people, it started in 2012 when I first heard and read about Bitcoin. The concept behind Bitcoin intrigued me and I wanted to get involved. I started out with mining but then moved on to create my own startups in Switzerland and the UK. For the past year I’ve been
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
Brand Is Experience in the Digital Age
Why is it important to understand the components of brand, and to differentiate brand from its common misinterpretation as simply a logo, a figurehead, or a website, among other things? Only when all three brand components — visuals, tone, and behaviors — are present and true to the core brand
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
Remote Ideation: Synchronous vs. Asynchronous
Asynchronous ideation avoids the tricky scheduling issues that synchronous sessions suffer from. People can share their ideas whenever they have time. That means each teammate can work around their own scheduling conflicts and deadlines, while still being able to contribute. Asynchronous ideation
10 Ways to Use Exit-Intent Popups for Good
This popup caught customers on their way out to let them know that the site had a price-match guarantee. Image source: https://www.barilliance.com/exit-intent-popups-increase-conversion-rates-cart-recovery-ability/ User-friendly policies such as price-match guarantees, money-back guarantees, free
Why Personas Fail
A failed persona effort is often the largest barrier to future success. Those who have seen them fall by the wayside without having any meaningful impact on a project often write them off as a silly waste of time for the rest of eternity. You will have to work hard to convince these skeptics that
Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking
Aggregated empathy maps represent a user segment, rather than one particular user. They are usually created by combining multiple individual empathy maps from users who exhibit similar behaviors and can be grouped into one segment. The aggregated empathy map synthesizes themes seen throughout that
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
‘Our Users Are Everyone’: Designing Mass-Market Products for Large User Audiences
Imagine you’re designing the website for a city-transportation system used by both local commuters and tourists. If you plan a usability study with 10 people and let anyone participate, you could easily end up with 9 commuters and 1 tourist. (Or even worse: 10 commuters, if you recruit a
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
Better Link Labels: 4Ss for Encouraging Clicks
Notice that this quality of good links is last in the list. Concision is important, but it must be balanced with the other priorities (specific, sincere, substantial) in link-label writing. There is no maximum word count for links. They can be as long as they need to be to achieve those other three
User Need Statements
User need statements, if properly crafted, have the added benefit of providing a metric for success prior to the onset of ideation, prototyping, and testing. Use the insight, or goal, and ask yourself: how will we know if we accomplish this? Then, as you create your needs statements, establish
Case Study: Iterative Design and Prototype Testing of the NN/g Homepage
We learned something new with each round. Feedback was categorized into four themes: copy, architecture, layout, and visual style. Depending on the feedback, we tweaked one or multiple aspects of the page. In some cases, we only needed to tweak a sentence or make something higher contrast; in other
Smart-TV Usability: Accessing Content is Key
Google Fiber, AT&T U-Verse, and Time Warner provide very similar solutions when it comes to the search feature itself. While entering text into the search field with a remote comes with the same challenges it always has, within these constraints, each service has created a usable search
Killing Off the Global Navigation: One Trend to Avoid | Nielsen Norman Group
For sites that have only a small number of global categories, hiding them in a drop-down menu doesn’t make sense. T-Mobile, for example, has placed all of their service offerings and devices within a drop-down menu labeled Shop. But the Shop menu has only 5 links, which could easily fit in a
The Top Futurist Speakers to Have at Your Conference
Marcus Buckingham is a leading authority on employee productivity, and also talks about leadership and management. He used to be a senior consultant with The Gallup Organization but now focuses on cultivating employees’ strengths. Futurist speakers often tell a business what the future is going
What to Consider When Leveraging File Sharing
For example, you may want to see who has looked at the file to ensure everyone is staying current on their responsibilities. If there is an issue related to the changes, it helps to see a version history so you know who made what changes and when in order to resolve those disputes. Or, you can make
Robotics and Big Data are Transforming Nursing: 4 Key Insights
These days, many healthcare institutions are using the power of technology to help patients stay in their homes and out of the hospital. Big data and the Internet of Things have advanced to allow remote monitoring for patients in their own homes. Entrepreneurs taking the helm of app building for
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
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
How to Upgrade Your Cyber Defenses to Protect Growth
Compounding the issue is the fact that, paradoxically, small tech companies may have fewer cyber defenses than companies in other industries. The tech ethos is to work lean and fast, focusing only on maximizing progress toward the most immediate milestones. In that kind of environment, it’s easy
E-Commerce Failures and Mistakes: Why do so Many Startups Fail?
I’m sure you are aware of the alarming rate at which E-commerce businesses shut down. If not, let me share with you the results of recent research about E-Commerce Startups. “90% of the E-Commerce Startups fail within their initial four years.” Are the reasons for startup failure the same as
WP Engine All Hands Spring 2019: US | Page Parking: Millennials' Multi-Tab Mania
Page Parking: Millennials' Multi-Tab Mania
Page-parking example from a product-research task: each circle indicates one new tab opened by the user. Bigger circles indicate tabs used for search engine queries (Q1–Q4). Note the parent–child relationship between many of the tabs, including “grandchildren,” as some of the destination
Page Parking: Millennials' Multi-Tab Mania
The following chart visualizes the tab-opening behavior during 5 minutes of a user researching a purchase. This user’s behavior was slightly unusual: firing off 3 different queries (Q1, Q2, and Q3 in the chart) in 3 new tabs in rapid succession, and then going straight to the 3rd SERP first (the
Direct Access vs. Sequential Access: UX Definition
Allow people to type 1–2 letters and offer suggestions based on those. Even though typing long words or phrases is painful, it’s not so bad just to enter the first character(s). People can still select, but now from a list that has been considerably narrowed down to only a few alternatives
