There’s the proactive and reactive approach, but as Daniel Snyder has learned, you can’t have it both ways. Grow Your Business, Not Your InboxStay informed and join our daily newsletter now! July 14, 2020 4 min read Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Like most long-standing professional sports leagues, the NFL hasn’t exactly been a model of inclusion or equality over the years. From 1934-’46, Black players weren’t even allowed on the field. And among the league’s more recent issues have been criticism of its pyramid scheme-esque compensation structure and gross mismanagement of league politics and public relations following Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the national anthem in 2016. Given that context, it’s hardly surprising that the Washington Redskins have stalled on changing their team name —widely regarded as a racial slur toward Native Americans — despite it being the subject of protest for literally decades. Seemingly, that era is now coming to a close, with the team having issued a statement saying that owner Dan Snyder and head coach Ron Rivera were “working closely to develop a new name and design approach that will enhance the standing of our proud, tradition rich franchise and inspire our sponsors, fans and community for the next 100 years.” Why Now?FedEx, PepsiCo and Bank of America, which are all major sponsors of the Redskins, have publicly supported a name change for the team. While these companies’ public statements have been mostly diplomatic, there’s been reporting to suggest that ultimatums have been given in private. In other words, the answer to, “Why now?” is, “Because money.” Now, you might believe that the whole controversy is overblown, and possibly point out that the current Redskins logo was actually designed by a collective of Native Americans who saw it as a positive representation of their history and values. You might argue that it’s an unpopular move with fans or that there are more important things to be worrying about. And you would undoubtedly find people who agree with you, even if I don’t. But the recent wave of social unrest and calls to action following George Floyd’s killing have hastened what was always an inevitable move away from such hurtful branding, no matter how fiercely Snyder protested over the years. Related: Washington Redskins To Change Official Name After Years of Protests A Missed Opportunity for Proactive LeadershipUltimately, an NFL team is a brand, and owning it is largely about making money by building the popularity of that brand. The Redskins have had two options in the face of persistent pushback: Change the name years ago, alienating some fans while earning the gratitude of others, or stand firm and insist it’s a matter of belief in what the Redskins iconography represents to fans and the city of Washington, D.C. Instead, Redskins management has consistently opted to take the one path that will destroy outside perceptions of leadership within the higher levels of any organization: throw in the towel in the middle of a fight. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad the name is being changed, but as someone who has made a career of studying and writing about great leadership, this situation exemplifies an ultimate absence of it. Related: Why the Best Entrepreneurs Have Employees Who Disagree With Them If you believe something is the morally right choice, then you should pursue it decisively and proactively, even if there will be a price to pay in the short run. But if you don’t share others’ objections, and have been vocal in your position, then you can’t simply about-face and acquiesce. That kind of in-between reluctance is a clear indicator of poor intuition and reactive management. Pardon the pun, but from a leadership perspective, Snyder and co.’s handling of this predicament from day one may go down as the biggest dropped ball in Redskins franchise history, and it’s something we all need to learn from. Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co Via http://www.scpie.org/the-washington-redskins-overdue-name-change-teaches-a-powerful-lesson-on-how-to-lead/
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July 14, 2020 13 min read This story originally appeared on PC Mag In a traditional year, your taxes would now be long overdue, but 2020 is as far from a normal year as possible. The COVID-19 pandemic has the weakest of silver linings. The federal government and all the states with income tax pushed back the filing deadline (even for extensions) to July 15, 2020. But that means you’ve only got a couple days left. According to AICPA tax filing guidance, some states have even later deadlines: Iowa is July 31 and Hawaii on July 20. However, a few states required filing in June (Idaho, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Washington; the latter two for business taxes), as well as Puerto Rico, so here’s hoping you didn’t forget. If you live in Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, or Wyoming, you don’t have to worry about state income tax at all. If you’re getting a refund, you should have filed months ago so you could get that money fast. Now, time’s up. Read on for everything you need to know to file fast. Hassle-Free FilingFiling doesn’t need to be a hassle. Today’s tax-prep software painlessly takes you through the steps needed to file a clean, correct return in a timely fashion. The software saves your work as you go, so start immediately and finish when you have all the documents you require. Legally, most tax documents such as W-2s, 1099s, etc., should be mailed with a postmark by Jan. 31, though there are a few exceptions, like 1099-S and 1099-B forms. But it’s July. You better have it all by now. Don’t file until you’re sure you’ve got all the forms. Not only does it put a bigger target on you for an audit, it means more paperwork later when you file an amendment (Form 1040-X; you’ve got three years from the original filing date to file an amendment to get a refund, and 1040-X cannot be e-filed, only snail mailed). Better to file an extension (see below). E-filing is the way to go. (If you don’t believe me, read How to Get a Bigger Refund with Tax Software.) Perhaps best of all, nine out of 10 e-filers receive refunds within 21 days, as opposed to six weeks for paper filers. Even the IRS prefers it. In 2015, there was a huge spike in refund theft—1.2 million fraudulent returns filed for $7.2 billion. The IRS and states cracked down on tax refund fraud, thus delaying refunds to verify IDs has become the norm, especially for those getting the Earned Income Tax Credit or Additional Child Tax Credit. Fraudsters love these refundable tax credits, since even a low-income return that owes nothing could qualify. The other reason refunds will be late: low staffing at the IRS. The IRS will only accept one return per Social Security number, so filing early means beating fraudsters to the punch. Getting a rejection on an e-filed return this late in the game is the first sign your ID may be compromised. Fixing that issue can be a true hassle, starting with a fraud report. All of which means, if it takes longer to get your refund, it may be for a good reason. The IRS fraud filters are more stringent, catching more legit filers in their claws. In 2015, 40 percent of the 4.8 million flagged by the IRS as fraudulent were not. By the end of 2018, fraud was down a full 72 percent, according to the IRS. In 2018, there was something else to worry about. The IRS issued a warning about fraudsters who deposited tax returns to your account even if you didn’t file. Sound great, but then the bad guys tried to trick you into handing the money over to them. It was a phishing+fraud+social engineering scheme, and it could still work. If you receive an erroneous refund, contact your bank and have them return the refund to the IRS, then call the IRS at 800-829-1040 for individuals, or 800-829-4933 for businesses, and explain what happened. You can read a lot more about this in Forbes. You can also read our expert’s take on How to Avoid Phishing Scams. Here’s a look at the 2020 list of “Dirty Dozen” top tax scams from the IRS. In 2015, scam calls from people/bots pretending to be the IRS demanding tax payments were on the rise, persisting into 2018. It is a scam: The IRS will never call you to demand an immediate payment. It certainly won’t ask for a credit or debit card number over the phone. The IRS’s first point of contact is always the mail, and you have the right to appeal before you pay a dime, even to the IRS. It’s all part of the Tax Payer Bill of Rights. If you get such a call, report it on the IRS Impersonation Scam Reporting form, or call 800-366-4484. Smartphone users should download the Hiya app (free on Android and iOS), which has built-in phone-spam detection specifically targeting such calls. If you report a call to Hiya, it adds any new numbers to the database to help others. Hopefully you’re past worrying about all this because you’ve already filed. But if that were they case, you wouldn’t be reading an article with a headline about last-minute e-filers. So read on for the overview of what you need to know. Determine the Best Tax Software for YouThere are big names and small in online tax preparation software, but this year only Intuit TurboTax Deluxe 2020 takes home the Editors’ Choice. The only other software with as high a rating is H&R Block DelUXe 2020. All range in price from free versions for federal filing to premium packages that include state filing and advanced scenarios. Each offers a variety of ways to claim refunds, provide recommendations to avoid an audit, and offer some form of an accuracy guarantee. If you need to file on your phone, these are our picks for Best Mobile Tax Apps (TurboTax wins again). If you’re a freelancer, our guide to filing taxes in the gig economy will help you determine the right tax software. Extensions, Penalties, and When to PayIf you know you’re owed a federal refund, you are allowed to file late. Yeah, even after July 15 this year. That’s because your typical punishment for filing late is giving up a percentage of your refund. In fact, the government would appreciate it if citizens getting a refund did file late. It prefers to collect money. It also likes to keep money, and if you wait long enough—three years—your refund becomes government property. This does not apply to the states, however. File state taxes on time, whether you’re paying or not. For the Luddites who fear electronic filing, there will likely be a number of USPS offices open until midnight on July 15—and you must have an 11:59:59 p.m. post mark or you’re late. Use the USPS.com Locations tool to find the office nearest to you that will be open, but call to make sure. Image credit: JJ Gouin/Shutterstock If you don’t file by July 15 (not even an extension), but you owe money, the monetary penalties are 5 percent of any unpaid taxes owed for each month you don’t file, up to 25 percent of the total owed. On top of that, you have to deal with the IRS, which is punishment enough. That’s just for filing late. Then there’s a penalty for paying late—another 0.5 percent per month. There’s no statute of limitations on lateness—the IRS will come after what you owe even in 80 years, if you last that long. The moral is, file even if you can’t pay what you owe. Strangely, the penalty for not filing is a lot worse than the penalty for not paying. You can always file an extension. Form 4868 (“Application for Automatic Extension of Time to File U.S. Individual Income Tax Return”) is part of your e-filing tax software. It also must be filed by July 15, just like a standard tax return. Doing so gives you an extra three months to do the federal paperwork, until October 15, 2020; for states it varies. There’s one problem. If you owe money, getting an extension doesn’t mean you get to pay later. You are required to pony up at least 90 percent of what you owe by July 15, 2020. (Remember, that beats paying the 5 percent per month penalty you receive if you don’t even file an extension.) Deductions, If PossibleThere’s a chance you’re going to be among the hundreds of thousands of citizens of the US this year who don’t even bother itemizing and claiming any deductions. That’s because the standard deduction for most has been increased so much—it’s nearly double—that itemizing deductions won’t be worth the hassle. You’ll be just as, if not more, likely to get a refund without doing the extra work. Plus, a lot of deductions went away under the so-called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2019, which has radically changed things for tax payers. There are no more deductions for: personal exemptions, SALT deductions, moving expenses, work expenses (until 2025), or even tax preparation fees. If you are still claiming deductions, here are a couple you can sandwich in at the last minute to help, even though the tax year 2019 is long over. Until July 15, 2020, because of the tax filing date change, you can contribute to a traditional or Roth IRA and deduct the amount from your income for 2019. You can contribute up to $6,000 or $7,000 if you’re over 50. That can save you $2,200 in taxes. You can still contribute to a Simplified Employee Pension IRA (SEP IRA) and/or Health Savings Account (HSA) for the 2019 calendar year. For the SEP-IRA the limit is $57,000 or 25 percent of your compensation, whichever comes first. For the HSA, don’t go over the maximum contribution of $3,550 for individuals or $7,100 for families. You can add $1,000 if you’re over age 55. Need to find more deductions? Try these:
Find Your Missing InfoWorried about a missing W-2 or 1099? Get a look at your full IRS transcript—that’s a list of all the income and wage information that was reported about you over the year. You’ll find it at the IRS page called Welcome to Get Transcript. You’ll need to provide your Social Security number or Individual Tax Identification number (ITIN), date of birth, filing status, and street address for an online transcript that’s suitable for printing. Know Your IP PIN (If Necessary!)For a select group of citizens—mainly those who may have a compromised Social Security number—the IRS will assign a six-digit Identity Protection personal identification number (IP PIN). It’s another extra-governmental identifier that might make privacy advocates apoplectic but helps the IRS in its constant battle against fraud. Including it provides government accountants extra assurance you are you. If you ever got one, even as part of a pilot program, it’s required for all future tax returns. If you can’t find your IP PIN (it comes on a CP01A notice; you’ll get a new one every year), go to the Get An Identity Protection PIN (IP PIN) page to retrieve it. If you’ve never received an IP PIN in your life, consider yourself lucky. But you can always opt in to get one. Don’t Sweat the AuditsA lot of people get stressed about an audit. That’s when the IRS comes in and goes over your records to make sure you’re not a big ol’ tax liar. Tax prep software like TurboTax will provide a rundown of why it believes you’re at risk of an audit or not. Audits have declined every year since 2010; As of 2019, it only screened 0.45 percent of individual tax returns, that’s half of what it screened a decade ago. That’s because of staffing. The IRS has lost 30,000 full-timers due to cuts since 2010. 31 percent more of them will retire by 2025. Filers who make over $10 million a year are statistically more likely to get inspected, no matter what—6.66 percent of returns on such high-income households get screened. Sorry, Richie Rich. There might be some random audits, but if you’ve never been audited before, it’s unlikely to happen now if you don’t throw any red flags in your filing. The biggest thing is, don’t stand out. The IRS is using algorithms just like everyone else to see who in your income bracket is unique, and unique gets noticed, and noticed gets checked. Amending your taxes is another red flag that increases audit risk, so use software to file accurately the first time. Other ways to get audited, according to Forbes: have off-shore accounts, make incredibly huge charitable deductions, publicly protest paying taxes (and then don’t pay!), have a business that’s always reporting losses, try to write-off your hobbies, or make a lot of math errors in your returns. That last one isn’t a problem if you use tax prep software. At least one accountant claims a good way to avoid audits is to always file for an extension and submit tax paperwork in the height of summer, because auditors like to vacation, too. But for 2020, filing in the summer is now the norm, so it shouldn’t count against you. We hope. Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co Via http://www.scpie.org/tax-tips-for-last-minute-e-filers/ Two lists for trending and most-listened shows will be updated regularly. Grow Your Business, Not Your InboxStay informed and join our daily newsletter now! July 14, 2020 2 min read This story originally appeared on Engadget Spotify has made a serious commitment to podcasts over the last few years, and today the streaming service is debuting its newest tool for listeners in 26 markets — including the US, UK, Mexico, Brazil, Sweden, Germany and Australia. Like the company does for music, Spotify will now offer charts that rank the most popular shows based on audience and the biggest trending selections. They’re called Top Podcasts and Trending Podcasts, and they’ll be easy to find under Browse > Podcasts > Podcast Charts on both iOS and Android. Top Podcasts will keep tabs on the “overall most popular podcasts” based on “recent listener numbers.” Spotify says it will update the list monthly so that it remains accurate. Trending Podcasts will be ranked by algorithms that facilitate “discovery of newly-launched shows.” Basically, it will compile the fast climbers to provide you with new shows to listen to. The company explains that the Top Podcasts charts will also be available for each category. For example, you’ll be able to see the most popular news or true crime podcasts ranked. Spotify will expand the charts feature for creators as well. Inside Spotify for Podcasters, the company will let users know when their show is charting. And of course, that status will be shareable across social channels. Update 10:58AM ET: This post has been updated to clarify the podcast charts will be available in 26 markets total. Spotify also explained that only the Top Podcasts charts will be available for each podcast topic/category inside the app. Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co Via http://www.scpie.org/spotify-debuts-podcast-charts-to-let-you-know-whats-popular/ About The AuthorRachel Andrew is not only Editor in Chief of Smashing Magazine, but also a web developer, writer and speaker. She is the author of a number of books, including … 2020 has been quite the year, and it’s only July. None of us can be certain what the rest of the year looks like, in particular for travel and events where lots of folks gather together. Given the uncertainty and the success of our online workshop series and Meets events, we’re taking all of our 2020 conferences online. How will that work? Read on to find out! All of our online conference events will take place on the Hopin platform. We roadtested this platform for our Smashing Meets, and we love the way it allows for social chat and side events alongside the main conference. It’s as close as we can get to an in-person experience.
First Up: The Rescheduled SmashingConf Live!We will be presenting SmashingConf Live on August 20th-21st. Two half-days, with four talks each day on UX, data visualization, CSS, and JavaScript. Meet other people in our chat or network on our event platform. Join in on our Design and Coding Tournament, or enjoy watching folks taking part. Join one of the many sessions! Listen to one of the fireside chats on privacy, web performance, and Machine Learning (ML). Get your website reviewed by one of our speakers. Take a look at the full schedule. If you have bought a ticket to the postponed SmashingConf Live, your ticket will still be valid. We still have tickets available: register here and we will see you at the event. We are still scheduling new workshops and repeats of our most popular workshops. Purchase a workshop with your conference ticket and save 100USD. Then, we have moved our in-person events online. These will be as close as possible to the in-person experience, with side-events, a mystery speaker, and all the fun you expect from a SmashingConf. September 7th–8th: SmashingConf Freiburg OnlineThe Freiburg conference is moving online on the original dates: September 7th–8th. One track, two days and 13 speakers, with all of the actionable insights you expect from SmashingConf. We’ll be running the event tied to the timezone in Germany — making this a great event for Europeans. Check out the schedule, and buy tickets here. October 13th–14th: SmashingConf Austin (and New York) OnlineWe have combined the programming for New York and Austin as these two events were so close together and similar to each other. We’ll be running this event in Central time, just as if we were all in Austin. Check out the schedule, and buy tickets here. We’d love to see you in October! November 10th–11th: SmashingConf San Francisco OnlineIn PST join us for a virtual San Francisco event on November 10th–11th. The schedule and tickets are online for you to take a look. We’ll be sure to have a great celebration for our final event of 2020! Existing TicketholdersWe have moved your in-person ticket to the 2021 edition of your chosen conference and in order that you don’t miss out this year, you are invited to the online version of the event you registered for. Two for the price of one as our thanks for your support. If that doesn’t work out for you, we do have options as explained in the email. Didn’t get the email? Drop the team a line at [email protected] and we will get back to you. Join Us!There are tickets now on sale for all of the above events — we are really looking forward to all of them! One thing we have learned with our online workshops is that taking events online means that lots of people can attend who can’t travel to conferences even in more usual times. That’s really exciting, and we look forward to sharing some days of learning and fun with you all!
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Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co Via http://www.scpie.org/smashingconf-fully-online-for-2020/ About The AuthorSuzanne Scacca is a former WordPress implementer, trainer and agency manager who now works as a freelance copywriter. She specializes in crafting marketing agency, web … I’m all for updating and upgrading mobile apps. I think if you’re not constantly looking at ways to improve the user experience, it’s just too easy to fall behind. That said, a redesign should be done for the right reasons. If it’s an existing app that’s already popular with users, any changes made to the design or content should be done in very small, incremental, strategic chunks through A/B testing. If your app is experiencing serious issues with user acquisition or retention, then a redesign is probably necessary. Just be careful. You could end up making things even worse than they were before. Let’s take a look at some recent redesign fails and review the lessons we can all learn from them. Lesson #1: Never Mess With A Classic Interface (Scrabble GO)Scrabble is one of the most profitable board games of all time, so it’s no surprise that EA decided to turn it into a mobile app. And it was well-received. However, that all changed in early 2020 when the app was sold to Scopely and it was redesigned as an ugly, confusing and overwhelming mess of its former self. Let me introduce you to Scrabble GO as it stands today. The splash screen introducing gamers into the app looks nice. Considering how classically simply and beautiful the board game is, this is a good sign. Until this happens: I don’t even know where to start with this, but I’m going to try:
Beyond the UI of the homescreen, the UI and UX within the game board have been altered, too. Take, for instance, this plea from @lageerdes on Twitter: It took Scrabble GO over a week to tell @lageerdes something that could’ve easily been spelled out in a game FAQ or Settings page. These aren’t the only classic features that the new app has either complicated or done away with. Now, Scopely took note of the negative comments from users and promised to revamp the app accordingly (which was promising). But rather than revert back to the old and much-loved design, it just added a new mode: You’d think that the mode switcher would be more prominently displayed — like in the menu bar. Instead, it’s buried under the “Profile Settings” tab and there’s no indication anywhere in the app that the classic mode even exists. Sadly, classic mode isn’t much of an improvement (classic is on the right): The colors are toned down, some of the elements in the top-half have been cut out or minimized, but it doesn’t address any of the users’ issues with the app or game play. Worse, many users are reporting the app crashes on them, as this complaint from Twitter user @monicamhere demonstrates: I suspect this is happening because the developers jammed a second overloaded mode into the app rather than simply refine the existing one based on user feedback. So, what’s the lesson here?
Listen to what your users have to say. It’s valuable feedback that could make a world of difference in the user experience. Lesson #2: Never Mislead Users At Checkout (Instacart)This is an interesting case because the people who objected to this particular Instacart UI update weren’t its primary users. Here’s why the change was an issue: Users go onto the Instacart website or mobile app and do their grocery shopping from the local store of their choice. It’s a pretty neat concept: Users quickly search for items and add them to their virtual shopping cart. In many cases, they have the option to either do curbside pickup or have the groceries delivered to their front doorstep. Either way, a dedicated “shopper” picks out the items and bags them up. When the user is done shopping, they get a chance to review their cart and make final changes before checking out. On the checkout page, users get to pick when they want their order fulfilled. Beneath this section, they find a high-level summary of their charges: At first glance, this all appears pretty-straightforward.
But before all that is a section called “Delivery Tip”. This is where Instacart’s shoppers take issue. They argued that this is a dark pattern. And it is. Let me explain: The first thing that’s wrong is that the Delivery Tip isn’t included with the rest of the line items. If it’s part of the calculation, it should be present down there and not separated out in its own section. The second thing that’s wrong is that the tip is automatically set at 5% or $2.00. This was the shoppers’ biggest grievance at the time. They believed that because the “(5.0%)” in the delivery tip line wasn’t there in 2018, users might’ve seen the amount and thought “That seems reasonable enough” and left it at that. Whereas if you spell out the percentage, users may be inclined to leave more money. For users who take the time to read through their charges and realize that they can leave a larger tip, this is what the tip update page looks like for small orders: It’s oddly organized as the pre-selected amount sits at the very bottom of the page. And then there’s a random $6 tip included as if the app creators didn’t want to calculate what 20% would be. That’s not how the tip is presented to users with larger orders though: It’s a strange choice to present users with a different tip page layout. It’s also strange that this one includes an open field to input a custom tip (under “Other amount”) when it’s not available on smaller orders. If Instacart wants to avoid angering its shoppers and users, there needs to be more transparency about what’s going on and they need to fix the checkout page.
If you’re building an app that provide users with delivery, pickup or personal shopper services (which is becoming increasingly more common), I’d recommend designing your checkout page like Grubhub’s: Users not only get a chance to see their items at the time of checkout, but the tip line is not deceptively designed or hidden. It sticks right there to the bottom of the page. What’s more, tips are displayed as percentage amounts instead of random dollars. For U.S. consumers that are used to tipping 20% for good service, this is a much better way to ensure they leave a worthwhile tip for service workers rather than assume the dollar amount is okay. And if they want to leave more or less, they can use the “Custom” option to input their own value. Lesson #3: Never Waver In Your Decision To Roll Back (YouTube)When the majority of your users speak up and say, “I really don’t like this new feature/update/design”, commit to whatever choice you make. If you agree that the new feature sucks, then roll it back. And keep it that way. If you don’t agree, then tweak it or just give it time until users get back on your side. Just don’t flip-flop. Here’s what happened when YouTube switched things up on its users… and then switched them again: In 2019, YouTube tested hiding its comments section beneath this icon: Before this test, comments appeared at the very bottom of the app, beneath the “Up next” video recommendations. With this update, however, they were moved behind this new button. Users would only see comments if they clicked it. The response to the redesign clearly wasn’t positive as YouTube rolled back the update. In 2020, YouTube decided to play around with the comments section again. Unlike the 2019 update, though, YouTube’s committed to this one (so far). Here’s where the comments appear now: They’re sandwiched between the “Subscribe” bar and the “Up next” section. If YouTube users go looking for the comments section in the old spot, they’re going to find this message now: This is a nice touch. Think about how many times you’ve had to redesign something in an app or on a website, but had no way of letting regular users know about it. Not only does this tell them there’s been a change, but “Go To Comments” takes them there. With this tooltip, YouTube doesn’t assume that users will zero in on the new section right away. It shows them where it is: I actually think this is a good redesign. YouTube might be a place for some users to mindlessly watch video after video, but it’s a social media platform as well. By hiding the comments section under a button or tucking them into the bottom of the page, does that really encourage socialization? Of course not. That said, users aren’t responding well to this change either, as Digital Information World reports. From what I can tell, the backlash is due to Google/YouTube disrupting the familiarity users have with the app’s layout. There’s really nothing here that suggests friction or disruption in their experience. It’s not even like the new section gets in the way or impedes users from binge-watching videos. This is a tricky one because I don’t believe that YouTube should roll this update back. There must be something in YouTube’s data that’s telling it that the bottom of the app is a bad place for comments, which is why it’s taking another stab at a redesign. It might be low engagement rates or people expressing annoyance at having to scroll so much to find them. As such, I think this is a case for a mobile app developer not to listen to its users. And, in order to restore their trust and satisfaction, YouTube will need to hold firm to its decision this time. Is A Mobile App Redesign The Best Idea For You?Honestly, it’s impossible to please everyone. However, your goal should be to please, at the very least, most of your users. So, if you’re planning to redesign your app, I’d suggest taking the safe approach and A/B testing it first to see what kind of feedback you get. That way, you’ll only push out data-backed updates that improve the overall user experience. And you won’t have to deal with rolling back the app or the negative press you get from media outlets, social media comments, or app store reviews. Further Reading on SmashingMag:
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Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co Via http://www.scpie.org/is-redesigning-your-mobile-app-a-bad-idea/ Today, we’re talking about Gatsby. What is it and how does it fit into your web development stack? Drew McLellan talks to expert Marcy Sutton to find out. Show NotesWeekly UpdateTranscriptDrew McLellan: She is the lead engineer on the Developer Relations team at Gatsby. Previously, she worked on the open source axe-core accessibility testing library, and has also worked as an accessibility engineer at Adobe. She’s passionate about improving the web for people with disabilities and often speaks about it at conferences. In 2016, O’Reilly gave her web platform award for a work in accessibility. Drew: She also co-leads the accessibility Seattle and NW Tech Women Meetups in a local region. So, we know she’s a skilled engineer and an accessibility expert. But did you know she wants to send it Angel Falls in a barrel? My smashing friends please welcome Marcy Sutton. Marcy Sutton: Hello. Drew: Hello. Marcy. How are you? Marcy: I’m smashing. How are you? Drew: I’m very good. Thank you. I wanted to talk to you today about Gatsby. Because it came up in a conversation I was having on a previous episode about learning React with Mina Markham. I realized I was in danger of doing the typical man on the internet thing of giving an opinion on something that I had no direct experience of. So that’s not how we do things at Smashing. Drew: And I want to make sure that we properly cover Gatsby. And what better way to do it than to talk somebody who knows it inside and out. So, presuming that perhaps I’ve heard the name Gatsby. But I’ve got no idea where it fits into the stack when building website. What exactly is Gatsby. Marcy: Gatsby is a website generator, it currently uses React. But it will create a static website for you that then will rehydrate into a full React web application. So you really get the best of both worlds with fast builds that you’re compiling HTML files that will load fast for users. And then you get all of this enhancement with JavaScript to make really interactive dynamic web apps. Marcy: So, it’s really exciting space to be in. And I’ve been working on the learning side with documentation and now on the Devrel team, I’m focused on making it as good as it can be, knowing accessibility challenges with JavaScript and just trying to fix it from the inside out. Drew: Many of us will be familiar, I guess, with the concept of a static site generator. And Gatsby seems to broadly fit into that role. But to me, it seems like it goes a lot further than the most SSG’s do. And most site generators are front-end code agnostic. It seems that with Gatsby, you end up with Gatsby code running as part of your site. Is that a fair assessment? And if so, what sort of things is Gatsby actually doing in your front-end? Marcy: Yes, I’d say the biggest piece of that is client side routing. So, Gatsby right now is using reach router under the hood. It does kind of its own implementation. But that is the piece that when you load your static site for the first time, there are HTML files there. So, if the user turns JavaScript off for some reason, your site should still be there, still have content. Marcy: But if JavaScript is enabled, that’s when this hydration step happens where, when you use links in your Gatsby site, it will go pre-fetch resources from that page, so it will load faster. So, that is all enabled with this JavaScript layer that Gatsby gives you. And so beyond that, it really depends kind of what you’re using in your site will end up in that JavaScript bundle. Marcy: But for things that use a lot of interactivity, like accessible interfaces, that’s a good place to be. For me, I really enjoy having JavaScript available to me at all times, and having my markup just be in a good spot. I know it’s a matter of preference, whether you want your HTML and your JavaScript and your CSS all kind of neatly coupled and there’s room for variations within building Gatsby Marcy: You don’t always have to use something like CSS and JS. But it’s really about getting the power of that dynamic JavaScript layer, available to you while you’re writing your website. It’s not like this add on in a separate file. Drew: When I think of how a static site generator usually works, I’m thinking of content in perhaps Markdown files. And the generator runs across that content and merges it with templates and creates 10s, hundreds, thousands of HTML files, which are the pages of your website. When I think of a React site or app, I’m thinking more about single page experience where the interfaces be created by React on the fly. So, you’re saying Gatsby does both of those? It’s creating all the pages and also enhancing it with JavaScript? Marcy: It is, yes. Gatsby will use Node.js at build time, it will go over your React components and compile them into HTML files. Which honestly, the first time I looked at Gatsby I wouldn’t turn JavaScript off and was like, “All right, are there other pages here, what is this?” And I was so happy that Gatsby works that way by default. It will create built files from your react components, which is awesome. Marcy: I have explored more progressive enhancement approaches since it’s in JavaScript. Like what if you want to output something progressively enhanced for users, where if they do have JavaScript turned off, you don’t want all this broken code that assumes JavaScript is there. So there are some quirks with it. But you can work around that kind of thing at least for your core user flows where you want someone to still be able to buy something, you might need to add some support and for those use cases. Marcy: But I’ve been pleasantly surprised that the way that Gatsby rolls that out by default. And so, it is a choice that they made to build sites that way, and we’re always evaluating it. Is it still the best way? What do we need to do to give our users what they’re asking for? So, we’re doing some explorations internally, ongoing just to make sure Gatsby is doing the best job it can at building a website. Marcy: So keeping bundle sizes small, and making sure that for making trade offs for what we say is performant code with pre-fetching. Like, do we have the data to back that up? That’s the kind of thing as a developer advocate that I’m super interested in, is making sure that what we’re packaging and bundling on websites is actually needed and will really make the best Gatsby site it can make. Drew: You mentioned performance there, and there’s a big focus on performance. It certainly seems from the way that Gatsby presents itself. Is that a true feature of Gatsby or is it just the nature of JAMstack websites? Marcy: I think it can be a nature of JAMstack websites. Ultimately, it’s going to come down to what you’re bundling on your website. So, no matter what framework or tool you’re using, we still have to be thoughtful in what we’re putting in those bundles for end users. But Gatsby really aims to give you good defaults. Not only for performance, but for accessibility as well. Marcy: But that always takes evaluation, we always have to make sure that if we’ve added something, that it’s still performant. But yeah, getting that initial payload of static files, they load fast. Much faster than classic WordPress site that I used to have. But then enhancing it with JavaScript. There are some trade offs there for sure. Marcy: But it works really well, lots of people, they really like their Gatsby sites. So, it’s been fun to get to work on it full time, and learn the ins and outs of a JavaScript framework like Gatsby. Drew: What sort of performance features just Gatsby actually put into place to speed up your sites? Marcy: Well, with the pre-fetching for links, this client said routing stuff, I’d say that’s probably the biggest one. Making it really easy to generate a progressive web app. So, having some offline capabilities, you can sort of pick and choose what you want in terms of offline and PWA type stuff. But they really make that part of the initial experience, like a lot of the starter example sites that you might start from have examples of using a manifest, and kind of making that modern version of your website. Marcy: Really, it’s like not shipping code that you don’t need. That’s a big part of it. Caching, that’s really the pre-fetching for links. That’s what I would say is the biggest piece of it. Drew: So this is where the site is actually anticipating where the user is going to go. Is it as intelligent as that or does it pre-fetch everything on the page or? Marcy: No, it’s based on user interaction. So, if the user scrolls down the View port, there’s something pre-fetching that happens there. If you hover over links, it will kind of estimate that there’s a pretty good chance that you might go to that page. We’ve been talking internally, well, I guess, open source to about whether that pre-fetching should happen on keyboard focus too, so that intersection of accessibility and performance is very interesting. Marcy: There’s some trade offs there like should a keyboard user who can’t use the mouse and is tabbing through every link to navigate, should that really be fetching content for every single one of those because a mouse user might be a bit more selective about where they put their mouse cursor. So, those conversations I find extremely fascinating. Marcy: And trying to think of what data do we need to validate these assumptions too. So yeah, it’s been super interesting to look at those defaults and what improvements can we make and really checking like how much data is that fetching? Is that really a good thing? Just to speed it up a little bit? Or is it fast enough without that? Are there alternative solutions that we could use as part of the fun of working on a framework because being able to evaluate all those trade offs. Drew: This is pre-fetching something that users just get for free in their site. So do they have to do any work to implement it? Marcy: You do get it for free using Gatsby link. So it’s a component that comes with Gatsby and when you use that, it outputs anchor tags. So your HTML is real HTML and you’ve leveraged the web platform in that way. But in your React components, you are working directly with the Gatsby link component. And that has all of those mechanisms for… It looks at whatever your future HREF will be, for that link of where you want to go to and it will go and grab resources from that link and preload them. Marcy: And it’s only internal to your site. So it’s not going off and trying to fetch things on other websites. But it seems to work pretty well. I know some users are actively looking for ways, like you actually have to opt out of some of these things. At least routing, not using the pre-fetching. You just use regular anchor tags. And then you don’t really get that functionality. It’s pretty easy to use something else. But some of the discussions we’re having are around client side routing, and how to make that the best it can be. And so, that’s a really interesting space too. Drew: How closely do you have to work within the Gatsby ecosystem in terms of if I wanted to have my own link component? Would that be completely fine, I wouldn’t be fighting against Gatsby to do that sort of thing? Marcy: No, you could slot in whatever components you want, as long as they work with the React runtime. That’s really the beauty of it. Anything you could put in a React app, you could put in a Gatsby app. There’s even a pre-React plugin. So, there are some alternatives to working with Gatsby. But I love how you can pull in whatever, off the shelf components that you want to use or write your own. Marcy: And I think that flexibility is what people really enjoy. There is the caveat of it uses the React runtime. And so, you have to be okay with using react or using this pre-React plugin. But personally, I really like react and JSX for working with accessibility and templates, especially with React hooks. So, being able to use the hut in my Gatsby site is just so cool. I really like it. Drew: And how’s the process of building a Gatsby site that’s presumably a node module that you can just install and you would do a build like you would with any other static site generator? Marcy: Yes. There is a CLI that you install globally. And I guess it’s whether you want to install it globally. That’s what we recommend, because then you can run it from any directory on your computer, but it will pull down whatever you need to build a Gatsby site. And then you can add on, say you wanted to use WordPress as a headless CMS or some other content source. Marcy: You can install packages, plugins to make that work, and then integrate it with your site. There’s also some starters and themes that you can use to get up and running quicker. I’ve used those if I want to test out something or start a site rapidly for a specific integration like Drupal or prismic or whichever CMS or eCommerce solution or something I want to use. Marcy: There’s lots of examples. So you’re not always tinkering with trial and error trying to figure it out, but it’s sort of these building blocks that you can piece together and create… It’s what we call the content mesh. And so, you can use these best in breed integrations to create a site instead of, if I had a classic WordPress site, the authoring experience and working with teams is really great. Marcy: But there were shortcomings in the front end, like how it would work on a mobile device. What else? If I wanted an eCommerce solution? I think there’re some things that are easier to do these days, but being able to pick whichever kind of best solutions you want for authentication, or whatever that modern thing is, you’re like, “I wish I could use that.” With Gatsby, you can pull a lot of these things together and make this content mesh way of building that’s pretty refreshing. Marcy: Especially when you can still use those integrations like WordPress and still work with teams. So, we’re pretty excited about this new way of working where you can pick all the technologies that you’ve like, or that work for your team. Drew: One of the big features that Gatsby has tout strongly is this ability to pull in data or content from a variety of different sources. You mentioned things like WordPress and Drupal, and what have you. Traditionally, if I was using something like Jekyll or Eleventy, or something like that, I would need to wire up that myself to interact with API’s, perhaps pull content down and write it into markdown files or JSON files, and then have the generator work with those files. Drew: So it would be a sort of two step process, could use something like source bit, which we covered on a previous episode that does that sort of thing? Do I understand rightly that Gatsby has just this native ability to consume different sources in a way that other static site generators, just don’t? Marcy: I think what makes Gatsby really strong in this area is its GraphQL data layer, and the plugin ecosystem. So, chances are someone has already written a plugin for whatever data source you’d be looking to build. And if not, there’s probably something close. But using GraphQL, is kind of the under workings of it. The layer that makes all of these integrations possible is using GraphQL. Marcy: And so, there’s lots of possibilities for what you could pull in and we try to make it easy to write plugins too. So it’s been really neat learning about how to write a plugin, and the AST or Abstract Syntax Tree that it creates and kind of learning about how all that works has been really cool. But yeah, I’d say, there are a lot of things off the shelf that you could pick up without having to write it all yourself, which is pretty awesome. Marcy: And it’s nice to have the flexibility to pull in markdown. Say your developers want to write their blog content markdown, but the marketing agency team is really not happy with that, you could combine content sources, and source them from multiple places. I’ve seen people sourcing things from other GitHub repos, and they use a get plugin to pull in markdown content that way. Lots of flexibility. Drew: And I guess you’ve got the option then of writing your own plugins to pull from a custom data source. Say you’ve got some legacy system and you want to put a nice, shiny new website on the front of it. You could write a plugin that would get the data out in whatever format that is needed and translate it into something that gets bigger than work with? Marcy: You could yes. And so, plugins enable that. And then there’s this abstraction on top of that, which we call Gatsby themes. And those are not only user interface code, but they could be GraphQL queries, configurations that set up a plugin, so it’s like a plugin with usage kind of bundled together. And you can distribute those themes on NPM. Marcy: And then, their version and you can pull them in. And that whole API is really interesting too for teams who say you have multiple repos, and you want to pull data into those, it would be very repetitive to have the same queries in all of these repos in the same code. So, to dry things up a bit and not repeat yourself so much. You can use these abstractions called themes, to sort of distribute around that logic or code that would enable that source plugin. So, there’s these kind of layers of abstractions that you can build on top of it that we’ve heard that teams are really getting a lot out of right now. Drew: So a theme in the Gatsby world isn’t a look and feel like it would be with CMS like WordPress. Marcy: Yeah, I mean, it can but that’s not all that it is. So, naming things is very hard. But themes I’ve really enjoyed learning about just the flexibility and being able to, yes, you could include some user interface code. But there could be some query language code that goes in there as well. But the fact that it’s kind of bundled together, makes it easy to distribute. Yeah, it’s been a really neat abstraction that it’s been cool to see what people are building and what themes they’re shipping, and all that. Drew: Yeah, I can imagine it would lead to some fairly innovative uses of Gatsby. Have you seen anything that’s been, in particular that caught your eye that customers are doing this particularly creative? Marcy: Yeah. Well, in terms of themes, I mean, one of the first ones I read about there’s a case study on the Gatsby blog, I think from Apollo. And they wrote a documentation site using Gatsby themes and that used a get source plugin. And so, it really kind of decouples your sourcing, and your content, making it so that teams can pull in a theme to use across multiple repos. Marcy: I’d say that’s the most interesting to me just because of what I can envision it enabling like, past teams I was on where we had to source content, we were just so like limited and where that code could live and how repeatable it could be. And so, seeing a solution now where teams are like, “Oh, this works great.” And that was even last summer, or like that was a case study a while ago. Marcy: So since then, API’s have been improving, and there’s a whole team working on Gatsby themes. And I know they are rolling out some big improvements in the next few weeks. So, I don’t want to steal their thunder, but there’s some neat stuff coming with themes. They’ve been overhauling some of the blog themes like the core themes that we offer from Gatsby. Marcy: I know they’re using it internally to build some of our own product announcement, or product improvements that will be announced here in the next couple of weeks. So, lots of cool stuff going on with Gatsby themes, and people selling their own themes and starters. I think that’s really interesting too. Drew: There’s a bit of a marketplace springing up around Gatsby. Marcy: There is, Yeah. Drew: Is there any sort of online training and those sorts of things if somebody wants… If somebody decided that they were really going to get into Gatsby and they needed to learn it quick? Are there run places they can go with that sort of information is available? Marcy: A ton of it? Yes. There’s definitely the Gatsby Doc’s site, which is gatsbyjs.org/doc’s. And we have tutorials, and I’ve been doing live streams almost every week for Gatsby stuff. There are a ton of educators who have Gatsby material on YouTube and various learning platforms. Egghead, I think some of my teammates from Gatsby have egghead videos as well. Marcy: So, there is a ton of stuff out there. I would say check the dates on it if you find something. We’re always actively updating the Gatsby Doc’s, some of the older third party videos and things that may, check the dates on those because we can’t monitor every single learning resource for update. It’s hard to keep up with our own staff. Marcy: Because there’s just so much with how many content sourcing options and use cases. It’s a very broad space. But there’s so much learning material out there, and a ton of ways to get started that you can sort of try and find things like depending on where you are on your learning spectrum. Are you at the beginning stages, are you coming from other technologies and you just need to learn about like what is this React thing. Marcy: You can sort of pick and choose which materials will work for you based on where you’re at. I’ve been doing a course recently through live streams called Gatsby Web Creators, where we went all the way from beginner HTML, CSS and JavaScript through to creating our first Gatsby site. We just completed that on Friday. And so, it’s been really neat to go all the way back to the beginning. Marcy: And because a lot of materials with Gatsby, it uses React. So, it’s a pretty big jump to get started with that. So, I really wanted to go back and take the steps to get all the way through to building things with React and Gatsby. So that was really neat. And I’m excited to continue on that route, so that there is more beginner material and more things to help people understand how to build a site with Gatsby because a lot of those skills are portable to other frameworks. Drew: One of the big questions that is going to come up for anybody who’s thinking about building sort of client project sites using Gatsby, one of the big questions that’s going to come up is about managing content and putting stuff in front of a client. You mentioned already how Gatsby can connect to different content management systems. Is that the primary method that you would put in place to deal with that question? Or does Gatsby have anything in its ecosystem that would enable people to edit content in any way? Marcy: Yeah, I would say having a CMS or something can make those team relationships work a lot better. I’ve been in those use cases where the dev teams like, “Just learn HTML.” And you see this glaze over from the client of like, “No, I can’t believe you just said that.” So having a system where people can do their best work in whatever ways suits them best, is super, super important. Marcy: Like you just can’t handle marketer GitHub, and might work some of the time but not all the time. And so, having like a preview and build infrastructure makes that better, and that’s where the Gatsby cloud product space kind of enters into the fray. There are ways to do preview. Without the paid cloud side and Gatsby cloud does have a free tier for personal projects, so it’s not all paid. Marcy: But we have this, like the open source and the product ecosystem kind of come together so that Gatsby can as a founding organization, make enough money to keep the open source framework, keep that healthy, and keep our community rolling along with that. So, that’s kind of where this open source commercial side comes together, and really enabling some of these workflows that teams need. Marcy: Some things like getting fast previews, getting builds out the door fast and deployed. And so, there are solutions on the Gatsby cloud side specifically, and then wherever there is an open source way to make Gatsby work like with a preview server or something, we try to document that and make sure our community knows what’s what and how to serve those team needs. Marcy: Yeah, I would say like, you need some way to preview your CMS changes because it’s like that instant gratification. You don’t want to be waiting an hour for a build to see some content. Drew: So that’s interesting. The Gatsby cloud service gives you that ability to use a headless CMS service, where you’re just working with the content, but you’ve got no visualization of what it would look like in your site enables you to get a preview of how that would work. Is that right? Marcy: It is, yeah. And so, it’s part of the trade off of decoupling, your headless CMS, which may have had, like WordPress, you could just look up the front end, but we’re giving it a new front end, and potentially pulling in other sources and other things that WordPress doesn’t know about. And so, decoupling it in that way makes sense. But you still, as a team member, you have to be able to do your work in the speed that you’re rapidly used to. Marcy: And so, that is where Gatsby preview, Gatsby builds come in to give that front end back to teams so they can collaborate, they can make decisions, get something shipped. So that has sprung up in the last year, getting more features and improvements in all the time and that we’ve heard from some teams that are really starting to see speed increases. Marcy: And as we figure out like, “Okay, if this build is going slow, why is that?” It’s usually because the site is really, really big. So we’ve been focused a lot on improvements for large sites, and really improving those team, collaborative workflows. It’s a big focus of the team right now. Drew: So Gatsby cloud is, I guess at its heart is a hosting service. Is it a CDN for deploying your Gatsby sites with a load of Gatsby specific functionality and features around it? Marcy: I would call it more of a continuous delivery product because it’s not an actual CDN. It integrates with CDNs like Fastly, Netlify. There’s a lot of different providers that you can hook up and some of them for free. You can do a lot for free, which is pretty awesome. I just did it the other day in our last Gatsby web creators session, we use Gatsby cloud and Netlify to build our site. Marcy: And it enables you to make Gatsby sites faster specifically, because it does have those improvements. It only has to build one type of site. So, there’re some improvements that Gatsby cloud can make, that no other platform can make because they are trying to like support all of these different types of websites and they do them all very well. Marcy: But for Gatsby, if that’s all you’re building, and there’s quite a few agencies, who are all in on Gatsby, and they want to make it as fast as they can. So, that’s where Gatsby cloud can make some performance improvements specifically for Gatsby, because it doesn’t have to worry about any other platforms. Drew: So, Gatsby cloud would do your build, and it would then just deploy it to something like Netlify or presumably a whole range of different places. Marcy: Yep. Yep, it will. And so, it’s the piece of Netlify that it would be using then as it’s uploading these built packages. Built files. It’s not using their builds, so the builds are happening on Gatsby clouds infrastructure, and that’s where some a lot of speed increases can happen. And then there’s still that upload step to get it out to a CDN, whichever one you’ve chosen. Marcy: But yeah, it seems like teams are really loving this ability to see. I mean, it’s functionality that you would have missed. And so, that’s a necessary thing to add back in, is to be able to do these collaborative previews and get sign offs and all of that. Drew: So, Gatsby cloud is provided as a service from Gatsby the company, and there’s Gatsby the open source project as well. Is this a similar sort of relationship to like WordPress and automatic have, where you’ve got a commercial entity developing an open source product? Marcy: I would say so yeah, like Drupal. There’s precedent in tech to have these founding organizations where it’s kind of a virtuous cycle. And we’re working on publishing some governance documentation right now to make sure that, that’s super clear to our community, how we make decisions. But the entire goal is to keep Gatsby sustainable, so that it can continue to be an open source project that people can use it with ever even getting into Gatsby cloud. Marcy: You could use other solutions with it if you want. And so, we need like enough business to sustain, like the people working on it. And so, I’m kind of in between, like I float in between the open source and commercial side and trying to make sure that we’re prioritizing things. I mean, as you could imagine, we’re juggling a lot of things with how broad the spaces like, we all have our niche use cases that we like, feel really strongly about, we need to do for our jobs. Marcy: That adds up to be a lot of niche use cases. So, we try to juggle and prioritize and really listen to our community about what hurts right now, what’s painful, what’s going well. And so, that’s been an interesting journey to get for me personally to get back into devREL and really be listening to the community about, how can we make us be even better? Drew: And is there a big community around Gatsby lots and lots of people using it? Marcy: There are a lot of people using it, a lot of contributors. So for a lot of folks, it might be their first time contributing to open source like coming over to our docks and joining us for Hacktoberfest and things like that. And so, it has been really neat to see what a big community Gatsby does have, especially with things like accessibility and trying to make sure that frameworks do all they can out of the box for free. Marcy: And so, there’s this, I don’t know, subset or intersection of accessibility and Gatsby and that’s my happy place. But the broader community, a lot of people learn React or learn web development through Gatsby. And so, that’s really neat to see a progression through our community, and hopefully we get people to come contribute, even if it’s an issue or something of like, “Hey, this link was broken or this part of the docks was confusing to me or it’s outdated.” Marcy: Like even just telling a framework or a project that you use, that something could be better is a great way to contribute, because you can help us gain insight into the things that could use improvement. So that’s a great way to contribute. Drew: You mentioned accessibility and of course, people will know you as being an accessibility expert. And they might be surprised to see you working with sort of fully featured front end framework like React, thinking that perhaps the two don’t really go together. Is that always the case at JavaScript heavy front ends are worth less accessible? Marcy: Well, I wish it weren’t the case. But I think the data has shown that a lot of websites that do use front end frameworks are less accessible than those that don’t. A project that comes to mind is the Web a Million. And actually, I have a blog post, I’m refreshing the Gatsby site to see if my blog post has launched yet. But webbing through the web a million this project, they used their automated wave tool to crawl the top 1 million home pages and evaluate them for some accessibility violations. Marcy: And it was really depressing results. Like they’ve run it twice now I think, and I think it got worse. So, it’s not great, but I don’t think you can really point to any one framework because there’s plenty of sites that don’t use frameworks that have lots of accessibility problems. So, it’s kind of a broader industry issue, a really society. Marcy: And so, for me working on a full featured web framework, I saw as an opportunity to try and get more accessibility awareness in the mainstream. And so, that was an intentional move on my part to go and try to make an impact on a lot of sites like working on one site is cool. You can solve some really interesting problems. For me, I wanted to advocate accessibility much more broadly and try to make frameworks the best they can be from the inside. Marcy: So even if something is rough right now, trying to play that long game of like, “Okay, what web standards things can we talk about? What framework improvements can we make so that if this is kind of rough, like not just give up on it.” So, even if I know it’s… I don’t know, JavaScript is some folks enemy I feel like I like it. You need some JavaScript to make accessible user interfaces, you just do. Marcy: So, I am trying to like straddle those viewpoints and do the right thing while listening to my activist colleagues and friends kind of out there like pushing us forward as an industry. And then on the inside, I can be the messenger and the person that could try and reconcile some of those huge trade offs and ethical questions about What are we building? Marcy: So, it’s challenging, but I really like it, because I have an impact to make on the web. And so, web framework. Lots of people are building Gatsby sites. So, seems like a good place to try and make an impact. Drew: You mentioned briefly that Gatsby uses React at the moment. Is there a possible future where Gatsby might work with other frameworks, might receive a view version of Gatsby? Marcy: I would love that. I’ve certainly talked about it. There is a pre React plug in, as I mentioned earlier. So you can swap that out. I think a big part of what we are talking about is sustainability of projects, trying to make the right call, these aren’t easy choices to make. It’s not just like rip it out and start over. There’s a lot of concerns that go along with that. It goes deep. Marcy: So, it’s something we’re actively talking about. And I don’t really have anything specific to share right now. But we do have some internal meetings coming up soon to talk about that sort of thing. So, it’s being discussed, and I would love to have a view flavor, that’d be amazing. But as you can imagine there’s some interesting challenges that come along with that, and we want to make sure it’s the right move so that we’re not like, I don’t know, going down a path and having it not work for whatever reason, then we’re maintaining two frameworks, like how do we make that actually realistic in terms of what we can maintain and make succeed for an open source community? Drew: So I’ve been learning all about Gatsby. What have you been learning about lately Marcy? Marcy: Well, I wish it was better but work life balance. I’ve been learning about, for me, unfortunately, I’m in like a burnout cycle. And so, I feel like I’m continually learning the lesson of how to be productive, especially this year in 2020. There’s just like one thing after another. So, trying to get really clear focus on where I want to go in my career, what makes me happy? Marcy: How can I sustain, and we’re talking about sustainability. Like how can I sustain my own life after a career of really pushing hard on accessibility in particular like, “Okay, how can I kind of take a little step back and make sure that what I am putting out there, what I am doing is meaningful, worth the energy.” See, a lot of my lessons have been kind of that intersection of work and life and trying to make the most of the time that’s been… I don’t know about you, but it’s been pretty stressful for a lot of people including me. Drew: It’s been very, very stressful. We are at very difficult times, isn’t it? Marcy: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have so much to be thankful for in this industry, having opportunities and skills that you can apply. Seeing a lot of layoffs in our industry, really trying to make decisions that reflect where we’re at and not just going through the motions. So that was a big motivator for Gatsby web creators was, “Wow, there’s a lot of school age kids not in school this year, it would be really cool to see an outcome of turning some kids’ eyes onto web development.” Marcy: Like when I was in seventh grade, and someone came to a class of mine to talk about photojournalism. I was like, “I want to be a photojournalist.” So that actually did work. I got some feedback from someone that said, “My seventh grader’s learning from you, and now they’re really excited about code.” So, that was a really good thing to spend some energy on, in a time where like, that wasn’t something I would have necessarily thought of before being in these circumstances in 2020. Marcy: So, really trying to be like nimble and make choices that kind of reflect where I want to go and what’s happening. Drew: If you the listener would like to hear more from Marcy, you can find her on Twitter where she’s @marcysutton and find all her latest goings on, on her personal website, marcysutton.com. And of course you can find out how to get started with Gatsby from Gatsbyjs.org. Thanks for joining us today Marcy, do you have any parting words? Marcy: Make the most of it wherever that might be.
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Edwin Toonen
Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine. Google is rapidly expanding the capabilities of Search Console — its must-have tool for site owners/managers. We’ve seen a lot of cool structured data reports appear. In this post, we’re examining an enhancement report dedicated to site speed. It’s important to have a fast site with a good user experience and Google’s new tool helps you monitor it and improve it. Here’s is a quick guide to its capabilities. What is the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console?The Core Web Vitals report gives you an idea of how fast or slow your pages load over any given time. It gives you insights that were almost impossible to get up until now. Running page speed analysis on your complete site is not something the average user can do. Testing a couple of pages in PageSpeed Insights, fine, but 1,000 pages? The new Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console gives you an idea of how your site loads. It puts all pages in buckets conveniently labeled poor, in need of improvement and good. As you know, site speed and user experience have been a hot topic for quite a while. Google even declared page speed a ranking factor as well as new ranking factor called page experience. The search engine is rolling out all sorts of initiatives to help visualize site speed and prioritize improvements, like PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse. Sometimes, Google also tries some outside the box changes like Chromes “speed badge of shame”. It is one of the indicators in the Chrome browser that helps users understand why a site may be loading slower. In reality, this is more a not so subtle jab at site owners to do something about their slow sites. This focus on site speed is understandable. Site speed is user experience and users expect fast. But in regards to all those pretty numbers and colors, it’s hard to know what to look for. But as our own SEO Company expert Jono Alderson loves to say: “Don’t optimize for scores — just make it faster.” Scores say a lot, but all that matters is the perception of speed by users. How quickly can you make your page feel ready? What does the Core Web Vitals report do?The Core Web Vitals report looks at the pages on your site, checks their scores in the Web Vitals data and puts these into buckets. There are mobile and desktop specific checks and these might differ. Due to hardware and network differences, it is harder to get a good score on mobile than it is on desktop. You’ll notice, though, that the same URLs are often troublesome both on mobile as well as desktop. They might load slightly faster due to changes in test setting, but they are a point of interest nonetheless. While not the end-all tool for measuring site speed, the Core Web Vitals report is a valuable addition. It helps you find problematic URLs which you can check in PageSpeed Insights to get a deeper understanding — plus ways of fixing it. This way, you can keep an eye on all speed-related things, spot trends, make improvements and keep track of the results of those changes. Where does it get its metrics?The cool thing about the Core Web Vitals report is that it uses data from the Chrome UX Report. The Chrome UX Report is a public data set of real user experience data collected from millions of opted-in users and websites. This way, Google collects loads of data — like connection type, type of device and much more — from real situations and used to give a better understanding of performance in the real world. Google uses this data in several speed-oriented Google tools, like PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse. What should I look for?When looking at site speed tools it is easy to focus on the wrong stuff. Many tools check site speed in particular circumstances, like a set location at one point in time, accessed from a specific device. There’s not enough context to make a decision based on this data. That’s why our advice in this has always been for you to look at a multitude of site speed tools. Combined these will give you a better handle on the problem. Google built the Search Console Core Web Vitals report around three metrics: FCP, FID and CLS. These three metrics form the Core Web Vitals. Here’s what these metrics mean: Reading the resultsThe results lead to an overview of pages that have good or poor scores, or are in need of improvement. The score of a URL is the lowest status assigned to it by a specific device. According to Google, the three metrics work together to come to a conclusion about the loading of the URL:
These insights give you a good idea of how your pages are performing. As said before, you probably need to run a couple of more tests to get the full picture. URL groupingInstead of showing a gazillion URLs and the corresponding results, Google uses aggregate scores and URL groups to make the results slightly less intimidating. For any issue, you’ll see a number of URLs getting the same score or issue. So it might be that from a specific URL, 70 other URLs suffer from the same performance issues. That makes it easier to uncover issues on a grander scale because all these pages probably have the same problems. Of course, you can do a deep-dive and check individual pages by clicking on the URL list and picking a URL to analyze using PageSpeed Insights. Aggregate scoresThe same goes for scoring. Grouping makes it easier to digest the results. The Core Web Vitals report in Search Console focuses mainly on FCP and FID, as mentioned above. It’s a good idea to keep an eye on PageSpeed Insights as well, as this has a multitude of other metrics, graphics of the loading process and suggestions to improve the results. In the Core Web Vitals report, Google calculates the FCP and FID from all the visits to those particular pages.
The calculation of these scores continues to fluctuate due to outside influences. That’s why you might see the trend line go up and down. Fixing issues and validating fixesThe Core Web Vitals report allows you to monitor your site for speed-related issues. It helps you find problems and prioritize their resolution. Once you or your developer have run through all the suggestions and improvements you can validate the fix. Google will then monitor the pages for 28 days to see if the issue is fixed for these URLs. Site speed resourcesThis post is not about telling you how to fix your site speed issues, but rather guiding you through the new Core Web Vitals report that might give you the insights you need. To get practical, you can start here: Last but not least, an incredible source of information: Jono’s slide deck on site speed from a talk at SMXL Milan. Via http://www.scpie.org/core-web-vitals-report-search-console-checks-site-speed/ On Friday, July 17, Search Engine Land Editor George Nguyen, will host a discussion on running an e-commerce site on Shopify and how to optimize your Shopify site for better search rankings. The coronavirus pandemic has shifted shopping behavior online and businesses have adapted by flocking to platforms like Shopify so that they can continue to serve customers. The surge in e-commerce retailers, however, also means increased competition for organic visibility and shoppers. In this episode of Live with Search Engine Land, we’ll discuss the challenges and opportunities inherent to running an e-commerce site on Shopify during these turbulent times as well as what store owners (and the SEO Companys that work with them) need to know about optimizing their Shopify sites for search. George’s guests will include:
The chat will take place at 1 p.m. EST this Friday. We will allow up to 100 people into the meeting to experience the discussion live and ask questions. We will then post the video of the meeting for the larger Search Engine Land audience to enjoy. If you would like to be part of the meeting please fill out this form. We will send confirmations to the first 100 people who sign up. We at Search Engine Land hope this series of live discussions, presentations, tutorials and meetups will help everyone stay sharp and up to date on tactics and best practices. If you have an idea for a session or would like to join a panel, email [email protected] or submit a pitch here. Watch a recent session session below and see the rest of the sessions on the Search Engine Land YouTube channel. About The AuthorWebsite Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co Via http://www.scpie.org/next-on-live-with-search-engine-land-the-ins-and-outs-of-shopify-seo/ Good morning, act like a developer, think like an SEO Company, That’s the focus of our special three-day SEO Company for Developers series. The livestreamed sessions will include discussions, coding demos and audience Q&A with the experts on July 22-24. Learn more and check out the speakers and sessions here. A quick and friendly reminder to take our short Event Participation Index survey to help us chart sentiment around attending in-person events through mid-next year. Thanks in advance. Now the news: Swirl, the 3D display ad format Google’s been testing since last year is now available globally for Display & Video 360 users. Higher engagement is the goal with interactive ads. With Swirl ads, users can rotate 3D product models, zoom in, touch hotspots, use a color picker and more in Swirl ads. Analytics on the ads include engagement time and type (rotation and expansion) metrics. Last week, Google announced an update to its Ads policy that will prohibit products and services “marketed with the express purpose of spying” on others without consent. That includes things like nanny cams, GPS trackers and phone monitoring tech. The first things I saw when I read the policy update and started looking at current ads are loopholes. (Boy is that SERP for “nanny cams” monetized now.) How is Google going to be able to keep up with advertisers that tweak their marketing agency copy around these things? It’s not a nanny cam, it’s a pet cam! We’ll see how this goes. The policy goes into effect August 11. Read on for a Pro Tip on evaluating content with deep learning. Ginny Marvin, Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co Via http://www.scpie.org/sel-20200713/ In the next interview I conducted at SMX West in early 2020, I sat down with the Senior Manager of Global Engagement at Microsoft Advertising, Purna Virji. Purna is one of the most loved and respected individuals in our industry and that is not just my opinion, she won the US Search Personality Award in 2019. She has a rich history in the SEM industry and speaking with her for several minutes was a lot of fun. The first topic we discussed was inclusion and accessibility in search marketing agency. Purna explained how thinking of inclusion and accessibility and making changes to your search campaigns and websites can lead to new revenue and customer acquisition opportunities. It also is just a good thing to do, the right thing to do. The next topic was on PPC automation and how using a metric called return on ad spend (ROAS) can help you with that automation. Purna also gave some PPC tips such as ad customizers, and more. Purna Virji can be followed on Twitter @purnavirji. Here is the video: I started this vlog series recently, and if you want to sign up to be interviewed, you can fill out this form on Search Engine Roundtable. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel by clicking here. About The Author
Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry’s personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.
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