Category Archives: Innovations

The Best Way Data Management Can Boost Your Startup

The modern business world is heavily relying on data. Businesses from various industries and fields use data daily not only to help them work towards their goals but also to monitor their performance.

That being said, all of the raw data gathered won’t really do much good, as sifting through it in search of particular information may be overwhelming. Instead, businesses need to incorporate good data management practices to ensure proper data analysis. Data management will come in particularly handy when it comes to analyzing the performance of various campaigns and strategies.

Another issue businesses that don’t use proper data management may also come across is related to data security. In such a data-driven age, data security should be everyone’s top priority, even more so if a business is handling other people’s data – such as their business partners’, clients’, etc. In such an instance, data breach or theft may have even more detrimental consequences.

Every modern-day business needs to find a way to collect clean, reliable and quality data. 

On top of that, they need to look for solutions that will help them organize that data for better use. By doing so, businesses will get a better insight into the performance of their campaigns, strategies and automation, which will result in overall better operations. 

Needless to say, this is particularly important for startups, as the early days of every business are the most crucial ones.

With that in mind, here are just some examples of how data management can help your startup.

Outline your business goals

One of the most obvious ways in which data management can help your startup is by using it to determine what your business goals are. 

Every business needs to have clearly determined business goals. Without them, it would be nearly impossible to work towards something if you don’t know what that something is.

If a business is overwhelmed with various data, most of which they may not even have use for, it will require lots of time and resources to go through all of it. This may waste plenty of resources without bringing any return on investment. 

So, knowing exactly what you will do with the data gathered will help you focus only on gathering the right type of data that’s relevant for your startup. 

Of course, you need to make sure that the data you manage to gather is well-organized so that it offers better and more easily manageable insight.

Therefore, by determining your business goals, you’ll get a clearer picture of the data you need to gather to help you achieve those goals. 

For instance, pay attention to your decision-making and gather data that will help you determine whether or not it needs improvement. Data management can also help you identify and assess your customer behavior, which will make determining your ideal buyer persona significantly easier.

Prioritize security

As mentioned earlier, data security needs to be your top priority. This is particularly true if you collect your customers’ data. You need to ensure that all of the data gathered is absolutely safe and protected against any unauthorized third-party breaches. 

A breach or data theft will not only put your entire business on the line, but it will also make your customers lose any trust you’ve worked so hard to build.

Depending on the region your business operates in, there will be certain data security regulations you’ll need to make sure you comply with. Additionally, you need to make sure that you provide access to data only to the right people within your organization, but more on this later.

Aside from all of this, do know that unexpected things can – and probably will – happen. So, you also need to make sure you have a strategy in place that will allow you to bounce back and recover in case anything happens to go wrong, despite your best efforts.

Visualize your data

Since people are visual creatures, it only makes sense that you should find a way to represent all the data you’ve managed to gather visually. Data visualization will help you get a better picture of the data you’ve gathered, and it will be easier to draw results and conclusions.

By using reliable business intelligence tools, such as Couranto software, you’ll be able to organize your data and provide easier access to it visually. This will not only enable your employees to access and analyze the data more easily, but it will also prove to be quite helpful in case you need to present your data to potential investors, shareholders or business partners.

Even though some of these tools and software solutions do come with a slight learning curve, they will greatly benefit your startup. As mentioned earlier, the more organized and clear-cut your data is, the easier it will be to use it to your advantage.

Backup your data

It is extremely important to gather the right type of data, organize it well, secure it properly and make it visually more easily digestible; it’s also important to have it backed up. 

Unfortunately, even though modern technology is so advanced, to the point that it seems like there are no new breakthroughs to be made, things can still go astray.

The last thing you want is to lose all of your data due to a system hiccup. Therefore, make sure all of your data is backed up. You also need to find solutions that will enable you to recover and restore any data you might have accidentally lost.

But be sure to be extra vigilant when choosing where you want to store your data. Not all providers offer the same dose of security, so you need to make sure you choose only the best of the best. 

Cloud storage is becoming increasingly popular, so you might want to look it up.

Improve but limit accessibility

To return to a previously-mentioned point, you need to make your data accessible. But you also need to make sure that you limit that accessibility to only a certain group of people. Not all of your employees will need access to all of the data you have gathered.

By improving but limiting accessibility, you’ll only further protect the data you’ve gathered from any breach. You can easily do this by investing in reliable data management software that will allow you to set custom permissions and authorizations depending on your employees’ roles.

For instance, data-reliant departments will need to be able to access relevant data quickly and easily, but that doesn’t mean that all of your employees need to have access to all the data. So, make sure you limit accessibility with top performance in mind.

In the end, these are just some of the best ways in which data management can help your startup. 

While data gathering is crucial, you need to pay attention to gathering only the right and useful types of data. On top of that, you need to find a way to manage that data the right way, which will help you clearly determine the areas of your business that require your undivided attention. 

Otherwise, you’ll be stretching your resources too thin, which may prove to be quite detrimental for your startup.  

Are web browsers the future of gaming?

Quality gaming has been synonymous with gaming consoles for a long time now. They have in fact dominated the gaming industry for the past four decades. The evolution of video gaming has taken place on consoles, growing from the laggy games with patchy graphics of yesteryear to the incredibly life-like virtual reality games available today. Although next-generation consoles, such as the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Wii U remain hugely popular, the future of gaming is set to change thanks to the Internet.

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Image via pixabay.com

If you are a hardcore gamer, you no doubt regard gaming on smartphones, mobile devices and browsers to be infinitely inferior to gaming on a console. That is understandable; however, technological innovations, faster domestic Internet speeds, changing consumer preferences and changing web developer strategies may make consoles obsolete in the near future.

Impact of the Internet on modern gaming

The Internet has already revolutionized gaming and has grown to become the foundation of the modern gaming industry. These days you and your friends can easily play one of the many multiplayer online role-playing games available. You can also use the Internet to chat during game play, comparing techniques, exchanging strategies and even bragging about your scores and progress on social media.

Furthermore, you can download and run games through services such as Steam. In fact, Steam occupies a key place in PC gaming and is positioning itself as a hardware and software company. In future you will buy a game on the website then play it using Steam’s approved hardware, much the same way you would buy games through the PlayStation Store.

Increasing popularity of browser gaming

If you have been watching the world of gaming you will have realized that browser gaming has been increasing in popularity for a while now. We are not talking about playing basic games such as Peggle, Bejeweled or the slew of Facebook favorites, such as Farmville. We are referring to games that are advanced and sophisticated enough to appeal to serious hardcore gamers.

A good example is World of Warcraft, which has grown into a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) since its creation in 2004. This game is considered one of the flagship titles that brought gaming on the web into the mainstream. Led by visionary CEO Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard – the company behind World of Warcraft – was a pioneer in browser gaming. The game moved beyond the traditional RTS genre to offer players an amazing gaming experience from their browsers. Bobby Kotick has been at the helm of this company as it brought to the world popular franchises such as Call of Duty, Skylanders and Guitar Hero, among others.

Although currently web browsers may not be good enough to power high-end, top-quality games, developers, gaming companies and gamers are slowly realizing that they have the potential to become the next big thing in gaming.

You only need to look at what Mozilla has accomplished through its browser, Firefox. In March 2015, Mozilla used its booth at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco to showcase a game demo powered by the Unreal Engine that can be played through Firefox on a typical PC. The Unreal Engine is the same powerhouse graphics engine behind Infinity Blade on iOS and Gears of War on consoles, among other games. Mozilla’s demo relied on JavaScript instead of Adobe’s Flash to render its graphics, providing an experience that nears the performance of consoles.

For more proof that web browsers are providing
stiff competition to consoles, consider the fact that technology such as HTML5, WebGL and Canvas Programming is already providing web developers with the playground to create fully-fledged gaming solutions that can run in the browser. With more work and collaboration between developers in the world of technology and the internet, web browsers may soon tempt gamers away from their gaming consoles.

Benefits of browser gaming

Some of the advantages offered by browser gaming are not available on consoles. The browser is a piece of software that is truly multi-platform in nature. You can access your games on Google Chrome or Firefox on whichever device you have from the PC to Android and iOS devices.

Furthermore, with web browser gaming, there is nothing extra to download. All you have to do is log on to your device to start playing. If you want to invite a friend to join you, simply open a new tab and connect with them on social media. This convenience cannot be overlooked.

The switch from consoles to browser gaming still has a long way to go. However, browsers are already an integral part of the modern gaming experience. It is only a matter of time before the battle between gaming consoles and web browsers tips in the latter’s favor.

Is It Time You Created Your Own E-Commerce Store Instead of Selling on Other Platforms?

If you run a business that involves selling products you make or source, whether they are your own designs or crafts, digital products you’ve created like software or e-books, or specialist products you supply as a niche retailer, you may find you can do pretty well just by having a store on another platform like eBay, Amazon or Etsy. However, if you want your business to grow as a brand, as well as receive more traffic from search engines, you may be thinking that you now have a need for your own online store, either instead of or as well as your current strategy using these platforms.

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Photo by Stuart Miles at freedigitalphotos.net

E-Commerce

There are pros and cons to having your own store versus using a major existing platform, which we’ll go on to look at here, however in most cases the pros do outweigh the cons and if you are already thinking about it, it is probably a good indication that you are ready to do it!

The Pros of Running Your Own E-Commerce Store on the Web

Here are some of the reasons your business can grow and you can make more sales if you have your own site people can buy from rather than just using other platforms:

  • It can be easy and inexpensive to create and manage your own web store using an e-commerce platform like Magento ecommerce. There are lots of themes available to make designing your front end easy without professional web design assistance.
  • You can brand your store much more effectively when it is your own site than when it belongs on somewhere like eBay, who will always want their own branding to be most prominent.
  • It is much easier to decide where you can ship products to, and modify prices to create offers and deals on the fly.
  • Marketing is far easier, as you can use effective SEO and social media marketing methods like guest blogging to drive traffic to your e-commerce store.
  • You have more visibility of the behaviour of your users through the analytics for your own site, making it easier to gauge the effectiveness of different sales approaches.

The Cons of Running Your Own E-Commerce Site

The cons are not so much drawbacks, but extra things you will have to do or take responsibility for when running your own site.  These include:

  • You’ll need to do some marketing – you can’t rely on people finding your store through already being on Amazon or eBay and searching.
  • You’ll need to decide and set up your own policies, for example what payments you’ll accept, and take responsibility for this.
  • You’ll need to create a proper brand that’ll be reflected in your store’s design, not just a name or logo you can stick up on your eBay pages.

Setting up an e-commerce store is perhaps a little more work, but far easier than you may have thought, and for most retail businesses, is well worth doing.

45 Beautifully Designed Websites with Scrolling Effect

Scrolling effects are the newest trend in the graphic designing industry. It can be created by using specialized programs. Use of these modern techniques not only makes the design appear alluring, but also makes the website clutter free. The scrolling effect on the website helps in getting three dimensional effects on screen which will add depth to the website’s design.

In this style of web designing, the graphics are multilayered. Therefore, the viewers can see graphics present in a website in different colors which keep on changing at different speed. Designing a creative, engaging yet alluring modern website is one of the prime requirements of the professional web designers. Thus they need to keep experimenting with new techniques to make the best use of the online marketing techniques. The three dimensional effects on graphics that is achieved through the application of scrolling techniques will surely enhance the look of the website and increase the traffic as well.

1. Q Music

BDWSE 01

2. Weight and Things

BDWSE 02

3. Indo Folio

BDWSE 03

4. Pixel Backer

BDWSE 04

5. Guide to the App Gallery

BDWSE 05

6. Solinoir

BDWSE 06

7. The Great Bearded Reef

BDWSE 07

8. Why Interactive

BDWSE 08

9. Curious Generation Group

BDWSE 09

10. Art of Light Movie

BDWSE 10

11. Posta

BDWSE 11

12. Super Chemical

BDWSE 12

13. Cheese Please Game

BDWSE 13

14. Play Mogul

BDWSE 14

15. Put Zengel

BDWSE 15

16. Atanai Plus

BDWSE 16

7. Fishy

BDWSE 17

18. 2PO2

BDWSE 18

19. Beetle

BDWSE 19

20. Dangers of Fracking

BDWSE 20

21. Nintendo

BDWSE 21

22. Inception Explained

BDWSE 22

23. Worlds Highest Website

BDWSE 23

24. Cultural Solutions

BDWSE 24

25. Head 2 Heart

BDWSE 25

26. Ana Safroncik

BDWSE 26

27. Unfold

BDWSE 27

28. Phase 2 Technology

BDWSE 28

29. Yebo Creative

BDWSE 29

30. Ala

BDWSE 30

31. Tokio Lab

BDWSE 31

32. Bagigia

BDWSE 32

33. Air Jordan

BDWSE 33

34. Saucony

BDWSE 34

35. Lois Jeans

BDWSE 35

36. Lucia Soto

BDWSE 36

37. Zen Sorium

BDWSE 37

38. Lost World’s Fair

BDWSE 38

39. White Board

BDWSE 39

40. Bomb Girls

BDWSE 40

41. Marcus Thomas LLC

BDWSE 41

42. inTacto 10 Years

BDWSE 42

43. Camping Nordsud

BDWSE 43

44. 360 Langstrasse

BDWSE 44

45. Malaga Creations

BDWSE 45

We have handpicked some of the awesome looking website in which the scrolling technique has been used from the internet. If you have never experimented with this particular style, then you can study some of the best scrolling effect websites present in this post to get some idea on the subject. Forty five precise scrolling effect websites have been listed in this editorial which you can use to draw inspiration on this particular subject which will aid you in coming up with a unique creation of your own. Share your opinion with us as it will be helpful for the community as a whole.

Author Bio: Jackson is an editor at DesignCrowd UK where he researches design trends.