Your potential web customers will take the first step to use Google to search what they want. In the search bar they will type in keywords that correspond to what they are looking for, and these keywords are what you need to discover to maximise traffic coming into your website. This is why keyword research is important.

Using Google’s keyword planner

The keyword planner made by Google is a powerful tool that you can use to discover keywords that matter to your online store. A basic requirement for using it is to have a Google account to sign into AdWords. You probably already have a Google account but if you don’t you’ll have to create one before you can proceed to https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner.

Once you’re on the keyword planner, you’ll be seeing a screen very similar to the one above. There are 3 methods to finding new keywords but we’ll be using the first option which is to “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category”.

Upon clicking on it will present a form that you can enter your product or service that you are selling (or want to sell). For this example, let’s use ‘yoga pants’. Hit ‘Get ideas’ to move on to the next step.

Because you’re searching for yoga pants as a product, you can start to see which keywords are relevant towards it. For example, here are some keyword strings that people use on Google to look for yoga pants.

• yoga shorts
• yoga clothes
• yoga pants for women
• yoga tops

You can start clicking on keywords that you can capitalise on and it’ll be moved to the side-menu on the right. Don’t worry about bidding for the keyword, all we’re doing is creating a list of keyword strings that you can use for new product ideas, meta-tagging, content writing, etc.

Next thing to do is to copy that list into a spreadsheet like Excel or Google Spreadsheets and list it down like the above. What you can do now is, determine what you want to do with these newfound keywords. Are you going to retag some of your pages? Are you going to create a new product line? How about a consolidated category list?

To recap, the motive to keyword research is to find out what users are searching for, in order to get to the products they want. For more e-commerce related content, do check out our other posts.

The post Using Keyword Research to Improve Your Online Store appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

What is energy?

Energy can be thought of as a resource needed for constant physical or mental activities. Like many other resources, energy is finite, meaning that it will deplete throughout your day.

Keep yourself nourished

At all times, you need to keep yourself fed because food is a direct source of energy. In most work places, we are given an hour for lunch to unwind and nourish our bodies.

But when times are hectic and deadlines are crucial, have you ever felt a sense of guilt when it’s time for lunch? Sometimes you just choose to skip it and dedicate that time to completing your work. The truth is that, in the long run, this type of behavior is not sustainable. You will eventually become tired and frustrated, and eventually lose the will to work.

So make sure you make the best of your break time. Eat, socialize and take your mind off work.

Get enough sleep

While sleeping is the most common way to recharge, some of us neglect it in order to get more done in a day. Sleep plays an important role by allowing your body to go into downtime while it repairs itself. Depriving yourself from quality sleep not only affects your energy but also your health. People with insufficient sleep are at a higher risk for high blood pressure, stroke, and diabetes. Also, not getting enough quality sleep also leads to a decrease in attention span and an increase in risk of accidents and injuries.

That being said, too much sleep is also a bad thing. The side-effects are similar to the deprivation of sleep. When you wake up after having a good number of hours of sleep, try to get yourself up slowly and not fall into the trap of napping. Follow a fixed sleeping schedule and stick to it. Doing so will cement your biological clock making you feel sleepy just before your sleep time and getting up naturally after hours of rest.

Master your mood

We’ve all been there. Getting stuck in a traffic jam, having a minor disagreement with a loved one, or even just getting up on the wrong side of the bed. All of these happening before work even begins. Not the best way to start the day, but one that is fairly common time to time. While events and people can bring us down, the final decider of your mood is still your own self.

It’s convenient to get swept up by everything and getting down with all that has happened. You need to be self-aware that you can indeed control how your outlook is, even if it’s for a span of time. When you’re all bummed out, the likelihood of you wanting to do anything has severely plummeted. This kind of negative behavior affects your energy as dealing with these emotions will slowly sap it all away and nothing will get done.

We’ve all been there. Getting stuck in a traffic jam, having a minor disagreement with a loved one, or even just getting up on the wrong side of the bed.

What you can do is to always keep in mind that you are the master of your own emotions; your mood. This isn’t as simple as it sounds as each of us have our own thresholds for dealing with stress. Try to think positively and keep solving problems in your mind. Eventually, the tension from all those problems will feel insignificant and you can easily brush it aside.

Quality over quantity

It’s not all just about the amount of time we work though, as quality matters just as much. What it means is that our effectiveness matters even more, and is largely influenced by our energy levels. We need to create opportunities to create more energy throughout the day.

Instead of stacking more things to do in the free-ish slots in your day, it is better to use that time to accomplish what we’ve gone through so far; staying nourished, getting enough sleep and mastering your mood. Always remember that your energy is finite, and that you can only accomplish so many things in a day.

Always remember that your energy is finite, and that you can only accomplish so many things in a day.

Prioritize the tasks that are important, that are time-sensitive, that are creating a bottleneck for others. When you have done so, stack the less important items at the end of every day, spread out during the week. By doing so allows us to focus on quality productivity instead of burning more hours trying to complete everything.

The remote side of things

If you’re a reader of our blog (thanks!), then you probably know that the team at Stampede work from various locations around Malaysia and the rest of the world. The act of managing your energy when you don’t have a physical office can be tricky. ‘Our offices’ are always at our fingertips and this means that we can move in and out of work fairly quickly.

While having flexible hours is a great, it also means drawing the line between work and personal time can be a challenge. Sometimes we get called in out of our usual work hours to get certain tasks completed due to time-sensitivity and urgency.

Thankfully this doesn’t happen very often, and the times it does is when there is a major issue, like a website going down. If we worked in a physical office, we’d have to ask one of our developers to drive into the office and problem solve the issue there and then.

We hope this article sheds some light on why you should focus on managing your energy instead of just solely managing your time. If you have something to share with us, or just want to say hi, drop us a comment down below and we’ll be glad to respond.

The post Manage Your Energy, Not Just Your Time appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

The online shopping experience has also gone through a similar story as users become more accustomed to shopping online. Features such as a product gallery or a shopping cart become essentials to an e-commerce platform. Online retailers are going out of their way to make users have a pleasant time on their website, hoping to entice them to stay longer, purchase products, and come back again in the future.

There is strong evidence everywhere that personalization creates a better shopping experience for online shoppers. Here are some methods that businesses use to achieve this.

Featured products

Example of a product focused homepage Seattle Cider Company.

The homepage on your website is the largest piece of real estate that the user will land on. Making good use of this space is essential to creating a good first impression, and also to showcase certain products or services on your website. By default, many users prefer entering a website by its default domain. Because of this, you have a few seconds to convince them to stay before they hit ‘back’.

Start by selecting the products that are most important to your business, but also to your customers. If your online business sells scented soap bars, then you’d want to have that up front because your users came to your site looking for these. Make sure that these recommended products have been reviewed to ensure that your site is pushing sales for a high quality product. You don’t want angry customers as their foul experience can influence other users.

Read seasonal patterns. If winter is around the corner, maybe it’d be best to push heavy coats or Christmas ornaments. By matching your products to holidays and seasons, your users are likely to find what they are looking for.

User generated content

Amazon products have a ton of reviews on their products.

User generated content is a thing that most of us do without realizing. For instance, when you take a picture and upload to Instagram, you are actually creating content on that platform. Social media websites like Facebook has the post and comment features that give users the ability to create and share content on the fly.

For your online store, user generated content can come in the form of product reviews. Customers who have a strong opinion about a product, whether good or bad, would write about it if a review section is available to them. If the review is positive, other users will see the product as a good, safe and high-quality. On the other hand, products with bad reviews, can flag you in advance on what to do with it. There’s likely a reason why customers don’t think that it’s good and this is a good way of finding out. So all in all, both customers and the business can benefit from user reviews.

Easy social media sharing

Sharing is caring. Here’s what we use on Stampede Blog to share articles.

Sharing is a big part of social media. As people, we often share things that we think may be interesting to others along with ourselves. We share links, videos, blog articles and even products asking others on their opinion about it. There is a strong validation when it comes from others.

The content on your website should be easily shared. No one likes to copy a page’s URL and paste it into Facebook if they can’t help it. Your core pages like the homepage, landing pages and content pages should have an area which houses links to share on various social media platforms. Common ones are Facebook, Twitter and Google +. Make sure the meta data has been inserted so that when users share the content, they don’t have to go out of their way to describe the product.

It doesn’t have to be just products alone though. If you have a company blog, you can also allow readers to share content from there, and it will indirectly create traffic to your site. Take some time to analyze your online store and figure out what pages you’d want to share with others, then implement social link sharing on those pages.

Personalized newsletters

At Stampede, our newsletters are actually catered to three distinct groups of subscribers. You can do the same with your own.

Newsletters have always been used in the past for brands to advertise their wares. The same could be said about electronic newsletters, better known as EDMs (Electronic Direct Mail) on the web. By utilizing the data collected from your users accessing your website, you can tailor the type of content they see on your newsletters. Some advanced email marketing platforms can even change portions of a single EDM template to suit the content to a specific target market that’s on the subscriber list.

As an online store, you probably have some form of registration on it. During this process, you can nudge users to also subscribe to a newsletter detailing the newest products and recommendations. Specific data can be based off their account’s registered details and shopping history. When a user receives a personalized email, they are more likely to spend more time glancing at it.

Live chat and chatbots

An example of how Intercom looks like. When installed, it sits at the bottom of the screen and can be expanded when it is clicked on.

This is one of the best ways to engage with your customers. By allowing them to contact your support team directly, the customers will feel like there is always someone on standby, helping them out. In a brick and mortar store, store clerks are there to help customers in finding things and also answering related questions. Live chat is how this is done online.

A problem that stems out of this however is that you need to assign someone to this support chat who is both knowledgeable and is able to deal with the occasional difficult customer. To circumvent this, live chat services such as Intercom, have developed a way to prepare structured questions that will respond to the customer. The customer follows the answering format and the ‘AI’ act how it is programmed to lead the customer to their solution. This requires a lot of thought and set up, but the results will be worth it.

Conclusion and other tips

Personalization is not limited to targeted content marketing to users, but also how the website is built for the users. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly as more and more people are now shopping online via their mobile phones and tablets. Another thing you can do is to create a smooth checkout process that eases the user into making that confirmed payment instead of dropping out.

The key is to have emphathy to your users, understand what they want, give it to them, and make the experience a blast. Before that, you have to know who your users are and what they are looking for on your online store.

I hope this write-up has been helpful to you and make sure to check out our other e-commerce articles. If you have any questions regarding this topic, feel free to drop a comment down below and we’ll respond to you at the soonest. Thank you for reading.

The post How Personalization Helps the Online Shopping Experience appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

Last Friday (25th November 2016) marked the first time Stampede got together, physically at one place, and at the same time. If you didn’t know already, we at Stampede work remotely from various places around Malaysia along with other parts of the world. For instance, we have Viki from Hungary and Tony from Indonesia. Both flew down to KL just for this meet-up.

While we have met Tony before when he flew down last year, this marks the first time we were meeting Viki in person. She flew all the way from Budapest to meet us.

Viki arrives in Malaysia!

The reason for this get-together was to attend the JomLaunch 4 in Kuala Lumpur along with having Stampede-related meetings and just plain having fun together. Stampede was invited to JomLaunch 4 because of the voluntary work we did for the JomLaunch team. We designed and build the entire website.

The first thing we did as a team was to have dinner, which we did at Bangsar, KL. We ordered a variety of dishes and everyone dug in to their heart’s content. The tom yam soup was particularly good.

Stampede Dinner with Thai Food!

Once we had our fill, we proceeded to the condo that Shaza booked for us via Airbnb. This location was in the heart of KL and you could see some great sights at the height we were at, floor 41. We dropped off our luggage and got the needed rest for the following day’s event.

One the highlights of that night were the fresh shrimps that Iwan caught himself and prepared for us. You won’t find it any fresher and more delicious than this. It was definitely a great snack to have to produce great dreams that night.

Fresh cooked shrimps by Chef Iwan / Viki taking that honorary food pic

Event day, JomLaunch 4

Saturday happened, and we woke up extra early so that we could get first pick of our seats before the crowd moved in. The sun rose earlier that day and we could see it glowing behind the tall buildings of the city. It was a great sight.

We woke up to this the next morning!

Hopping into two separate vehicles we arrived at the venue earlier than expected. The event staff were still setting up so we had a moment for a quick breather to look around. When the event opened, there was an influx of people getting themselves registered to collect their goodie bags. We noticed that the JomLaunch team had their hands full, so we decided to help them out for a bit.

Shaza & Viki helping out at the reception

Once the crowd had finished moving into the event hall, we followed suit and took our seats. Here’s a quick explanation on what JomLaunch is about. It is an event where participants showcase their awesome ICT (information and communications technology) idea. This can be an explanation of how their system works but most participants brought working prototypes to the event itself. Some of these were ready for public usage. In total, this year JomLaunch 4 had 18 participants. The event started at 8.30 AM and completed by 5.30 PM.

The crowd at JomLaunch 4. Can you spot the Stampede team?

The presentations from each team varied from malware protection to a 3D education game. Here’s a list of what was presented during JomLaunch 4.

1. Eraxen Endpoint Protection – malware protection
2. MMS – motorsport / cub management system
3. RunCloud.io – competitor to ServerPilot.my
4. Bytetuta – AI bot for muslim lifestyle
5. Mytix – venue ticket sales management
6. MyClinic2U – clinic management
7. Ninja iDempiere – plugin for Idempiere
8. Splate – Laravel SaaS boilerplate
9. Soding – talent search and headhunting
10. WhatsTivity – social media platform
11. Telebuzz – telegram bot
12. CerdikApp – communication and monitoring tools for students, parents and teachers
13. MInD Automated Vehicle (MAV) – automated guided vehicle (manufacturing)
14. RobotJualan.com – bot for sales
15. EksploRazi – 3D education game
16. Terapi.my – Uber for home spa service
17. GO.my  – travel assistant
18. HireMe.my – platform to build and share resumes

In the end, the event was a success with every participant getting their time to showcase their ideas. The winner of this year’s JomLaunch was RunCloud.io who’s team built a platform for easy server setup. They were awarded RM 1,000 in the form of a check.

Meeting people

Another thing we like to do at these events is to meet up with other people from the industry. After a year or two, you’ll start to recognize many individuals, start-up founders and their key team members. Sometimes we bump into people who are fond of the work we do and want to get to know us better.

This is Fachrul (left), who got us together for a wefie

It’s really great to know we’re appreciated for the work we do as we put a lot of effort, thought and heart into our work culture.

Close-knit community

It never ceases to surprise us how close-knit the JomLaunch community is. The presentations of each team were well thought off and presented rather casually. This can be seen in the past 3 JomLaunches as well. The organizers did their best to brighten the atmosphere by inserting a joke or two in-between presentations. As the day was a long one, many present were feeling tired at the end of the day, but those jokes helped perk them up again.

Serious vs Freestyle

The closing night

After the event was over, we were very hungry and on our way to dinner. That was when the JomLaunch team caught us off-guard by inviting us out for steamboat. We replenished our tummies and shared a bunch of conversations with one another. Thanks JomLaunch, we look forward to what’s in store for next year!

JomLaunch and Stampede having an awesome dinner

The post Stampede Get-together & JomLaunch 4 appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

What we had to learn

For example, our UX team has worked with a fashion-based company and it was a welcome climb for us. We were initially confused about their terminology and struggled a bit. However, the exposure helped us understand the client and made the rest of the workshop a smooth sail. To paint a better picture, here are some examples of what we had to learn:

• Principals: People who own the brands
• High Street: Young fashionable brands like Uniqlo and Zara

If you read these out of context, you’d probably link principal to your school’s principal, and high street to expensive brands. These are some of the terms that we learned during the workshop and had to get adjusted to.

How a typical Stampede UX workshop runs.

I don’t fancy myself as a fashionable guy, nor do I engage in finding out the latest trends, so an industry like fashion was a huge hurdle for me to leap over. What I learned from that workshop was that, depending on our interests and experience, certain industries can be easily understood while others can be alien. Learning your client’s language is not easy, but is necessary for UX.

What we had to do

If  you’re still with me, I thank you for reading thus far. At this point you’re probably interested in knowing what you need to do to better understand your client? There are a few points that I’d like to share with you from what the UX team learned as a whole.

Step 1: Be prepared

This goes without saying. In a workshop, your client expects you to lead it, and lead it well you must. As the UX facilitator, you’ll need to guide them along the agenda and be able to answer questions that are part of the UX process. While being able to answer these questions effectively on the fly is great, not all of us are gifted with this talent. Here are some tips on how to be prepared.

We bring a LOT of Post-it notes.

1. Learn the industry. This goes without saying. Start by doing research on your client, and then follow-up with their competitors. Identify what terms seem to be strange to you, but are used by the client and their competitors.
2. Have the agenda shown visibly in the room. You and your clients can refer to this to know where the workshop is presently at. Instead of this being part of your slides, have it visibly shown on a whiteboard or a signage that you can put up somewhere.
3. Make sure your materials are ready. At Stampede, we prefer to use large sheets of paper to draw our diagrams. So we always bring extra rolls of paper, markers and post-its.
4. Bring along some sweet delights. What I mean by this is to prepare a bowl of candy for both your team and the client. The sugar in these will perk the person up and also prevent them from dozing off.
5. Do a quick rehearsal of the workshop. This is especially important if you are new to running a UX workshop. Work with your team and run the workshop internally before you face the client. By doing so, you can also pick up on areas where you can improve or omit from the workshop.

Once your client sees that you are fully prepared, it puts away some of their uneasiness and allows them to open up and speak freely. This leads to their use of industry jargon.

Step 2: Listen first

The purpose of the workshop is to learn your client’s problems and to also figure out who their customers are. The workshop will go smoothly when both parties are engaged with one another, and this doesn’t happen when both sides are trying to speak. Be the listener and respond promptly. Some areas that you should focus your listening attention are:

• The problem. To fix a problem, you need to fully understand what is causing it in the first place.
• Goal of the business. By learning the client’s goal, it will be easier for you to understand their expectations.
• Who are their customers. This part is essential for creating user personas, and who better than the client to describe the customers.
• Pick up the jargon. If a word seems to be used in a way that is not common to you, chances are it is being used differently by the client. Make a physical or mental note on this.

Step 3: Speak out

What better way to understand the client’s tongue, than to speak their lingo. The second step is a crucial pre-requisite to this step, as it takes whatever you have passively learned by listening, to actively learn the language. Now some of us don’t like making mistakes, but being able to owe up to it shows that you are willing to learn. This in turn leads to the client being aware of your situation that you aren’t familiar with their world.

Client participation goes hand-in-hand with communication.

Start by using the industry terms when talking to the client, chances are you might nail it’s usage or get it wrong completely. Don’t worry, nothing bad will come out of it. Instead the client will likely correct you and give you a clearer definition of the term. While you are speaking, make sure you don’t neglect the listening part as it never really ends until the workshop is over.

Practice, practice, practice

Like learning an actual language, practice and experience will improve this skill over the number of sessions. Once you get the hang of it, you can start to dive into more varied industries that widens the types of projects that you and your company can take on.

Have you come across a client, where you had trouble understanding due to their use of jargon? Do share your experiences with us. We’d love to know more about it and in turn, learn from it.

The post Tales from the UX Workshop: Learning to Speak your Client’s Tongue appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

Eventually, I got used to it after increased usage of the analytics platform along with understanding what each metric meant. I still do run into the issue whenever I am tasked on making sense of a client’s web analytics.

So the main question is, “How do I overcome my fear of analytics?”. I figured the best way to deal with it is to get to the root of the problem: to understand why this fear happens in the first place.

Different strokes for different folks

For most analytics services, the data collected is unrefined; a large amount of data to make sense of. This is because the data collected is catered to different groups of people. You have your team at marketing who want to know what age group is coming to the website so that they can target these users with relevant ads. The tech team on the other hand wants to know the actual number of people accessing the site on a monthly basis so that they can cut down on the service bandwidth subscription to save costs.

…the struggle is how you define which data is important for which group.

Every group has their own needs, and being the person in charge of analytics, the struggle is how you define which data is important for which group. Take the time to get in contact with the relevant party and understand their needs.

Learning the lingo

Sessions, page views, and bounce rates; what do these mean? These are some of the common names of metrics that are used in the majority of analytical tools and it is also a hurdle for most people to get past. These are terms are unfamiliar to those who have not used the analytics platform itself. At the beginning, none of these will make sense to you but taking the time to read and understand what each metric does is a great way to alleviate the problem.

Like many things that can be learned, try taking small steps to get yourself accustomed to these terms.

Like many things that can be learned, try taking small steps to get yourself accustomed to these terms. Here’s an article you can read later, which explains the more important metrics that are found in Google Analytics and also other analytics tools like Kissmetrics and Adobe Analytics. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step after all.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew

Big data, as you’ve guessed it, are large data sets. As with many large undertakings, it is best to start small. While you may be eager to get into it at the get go, understand that dealing with analytical data will take time and experience to get accustomed to. If you start with a large pool of data, you may feel overwhelmed and eventually give up.

Even if the traffic is small, this is still data that you can work with.

You can try it out my implementing Google Analytics to a small site and collect data. If you’re a blogging sort of person, perhaps you could start a blog about your interests and share it with interested parties. Even if the traffic is small, this is still data that you can work with. I was blessed because I was given the opportunity here at Stampede to conduct analytical findings on its already existing websites such as Stampede Blog, Stampede Constructs and Stampede Curated.

As complex is it may seem at first, analytics is definitely something that can be learned, but developing the mindset to tackling it must be set first. I hope these points have helped you determine why people fear big data and how you can overcome it with a little effort.

Is analytics something that you’ve always wanted to try, or are you already involved into it to some degree? Let us know at the comments down below, we’d love to know.

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Tell me about how you got to where you are now. I was born in Kajang, Selangor. My father was a lecturer at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). His career required him to be at different places for a length of time, and we moved a lot because of this.

Growing up, I lived around Malaysia in places such as Johor and Sabah, while also spending my youth at Leeds, in the United Kingdom. When I returned to Malaysia, I entered a local high school and also briefly attended Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP).

I found myself working as a programmer over the next few years. Initially I started out as a PHP developer but found myself liking front-end work over time. It was then I decided to just go with both front-end and back-end development under belt.

What do you think got you nominated as “Developer Hero” in the Rice Bowl Awards 2016? During my days as a programmer, I stumbled upon JomWeb; a community of like-minded developers located in Malaysia. Like any developer group, people were asking questions on how they could achieve certain things in regards to programming. I started out as a regular developer in the group but did my best to answer and help them as much as I could.

This pattern led me to create open-source libraries for both PHP and Laravel which helped out the others who needed a solution to their problems. CastMyCode, a pet project of mine was built for teaching others. When I teach others on coding, some of them have errors in their code because they’d have to type out the code by hand. What CastMyCode does is share the learning files on the server so that it is usable on the web. Those who I am teaching at that moment can just access it right away. Most people in my programming classes are beginners, so this helps them out a lot.

I believe that if you are good at something, you should contribute back to the community wherever possible. If you spend the time teaching others, it won’t lessen your knowledge or waste your time. Instead, it will help you more because if you are able to teach something, it means that you have a good grasp of that knowledge. I probably inherited the love of teaching from my father, who I have mentioned, was a lecturer. From there on, I was being blogged about and featured in a number of online articles. The recognition probably came from there. Me being awarded the title of “Developer Hero” also helps me validate myself and my efforts.

How do you find time with your family as a busy developer?This is made possible thanks to my wife who has been supportive of my career. In a word, she is a ‘superwoman’, being able to take care of the kids while progressing her own career as a teacher. My wife has been with me long before we got married so she understands my situation. At home, the kids are being taken care by her. Every work day, I spend around 1-2 hours with my family during dinner. Out of the work days, I spend even more time with the family.

I believe that some people are too focused on their work. I do my best to get home by 6 PM, so I can spend those precious hours with my family. Even if there is a crunch time, I would be at home coding anyway. This way I will know if anything happens because they can always reach out to me since I’m physically there.

What are your thoughts on AngularJS for those who are starting out in it? To those who are learning AngularJS for the first time, they would need more training to understand the framework. My advice would be to read up as much as possible on it and also get a mentor who can guide you what you need to cover and learn.It is best to go to someone who actually does it. Also, Angular’s GitHub is a source of information that is great for reference.

When I was teaching the Stampede developers on AngularJS, I taught them Angular 1 instead of Angular 2. The reason for this is because, if you are a normal front-end developer, and suddenly make a jump to Angular 2, you will have a hard time. This is because Angular 2 is written in typescript, an enhanced version of JavaScript. You will need to get familiar with developer tools such as Gulp which takes in typescript and converts it into JavaScript so that websites can read it. Definitely not a straightforward process and a lot of preparation is needed beforehand. Also Angular 2 is currently still in beta, which means that a lot of Angular 1’s libraries have not been fully ported over to Angular 2. It will likely take around 1 to 2 years for the ecosystem surrounding Angular 2 to mature.

…to be truly good at something, you need to spend 20% of your time learning and 80% of the time doing it.

Do you have any advice for those who are interested in coding? If you are starting out fresh, you will definitely hit many brick walls – don’t be discouraged by it. If you have any questions on how to do things, reach out to the developer community. You will find plenty of folks who are willing to guide you. However, your best bet is to find a mentor who can set a learning path for you so that you don’t go astray.

My best piece of advice is, to be truly good at something, you need to spend 20% of your time learning and 80% of the time doing it. Coding is a skill, and like other skills, the more you do it, the better you will become.

The post Being a Developer Hero: An Interview with Zulfa Juniadi appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

Avengers Stampede Assemble!

What is The Blitz?

The Blitz is the official name for Stampede’s version of a stand-up meeting, and it occurs every weekday at 1PM (GMT+8) over voice chat using Slack’s voice call feature. During every Blitz, a single person is given the responsibility of the Blitz Master. This person is responsible for facilitating the flow of a Blitz and keeping track of every project’s progress. For every project, there is a team member assigned to it, and the Blitz Master will ask each person on the project(s) they are leading.

What the Blitz Master will ask specifically about each project is the status of each project and its current ETA and percentage of completion. As to not waste any time during the meeting, everyone is expected to be prepared with their project updates. This makes for a rapid discussion that wraps up quickly and cleanly.

This goes in a round-robin fashion until the Blitz Master has taken note of every project. When our usual Blitz Master, Iwan is off for the day, someone else will take over his role and continue meeting as normal.

Blitz Master Iwan in the house! Taken during our Hari Raya Blitz Meeting.

Once the main work-related portion of a Blitz is done, an inspirational quote will be pulled from our quote bank. Among the attendees of a Blitz, one of us will be chosen to best explain the quote. By doing so, we become motivated for the day and everyone learns a new lesson. Here are two examples of quotes that we have shared recently.

Everyone at Stampede is expected to participate in a Blitz unless they are on leave, or have a reason for not being able to attend. In which case, they must inform the Blitz Master, in advance on why they cannot attend.

Why do we do it?

Compared to most companies, the way we manage projects is unique. At Stampede, the role of project manager is shared among all team members. It empowers our team by giving designers and developers the opportunity to learn and practice project management skills.

At a functional level, it is also meant to update the management so that they know what is going on in the company. In addition, team members can know when to jump in and help out on other projects that need extra support.

A glimpse of how it looks like

It will be much easier for you as the reader to understand how a Blitz is run by showing you an everyday example of how it’s done. Iwan is the Blitz Master this round.

• 

  Good day everyone, Happy Monday! Let’ start off today’s Blitz with a few good news! We have confirmation that Telaga Terminal redesign is about to kick-off and the client is excited to see our scheduling. On another note, we also have an RFP request for an e-commerce project and a potential v2 of an Australian project we worked on last year. Shaza will take care of both and will advise us once we have the go-ahead to proceed.

  We shall move on to all the project leads now.

  Jared, how is Constructs doing today?

• 

  We published another article for Angular beginners yesterday and it was shared on a few Facebook groups. I have also asked Zana to give more social media exposure to this particular article because I think it’s something very helpful for people who are interested in Angular.

• 

  Already done. I am watching the number of shares right now across all social media channels. Tony, you have Google Analytics covered?

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  Yes, I have already prepared the report and will send it over after this.

• 

  Okay, sounds good. Jared, what about Constructs UX improvements? We were at 60% yesterday. Does the ETA this Friday hold?

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  We’re planning to finish up the rest of the improvements as planned on Trello. ETA holds.

• 

  Awesome, thank you Jared! Hakim, how are we doing on Agile training?

This pattern continues one-by-one with each person, and can quickly wrap this up within 20 minutes.

It’s always evolving

The Blitz is an ongoing process to find the best way to run a quick but productive daily meeting at Stampede. It must be able to enable sharing of updates for all projects and to also fit the needs of the current team. In the past we used Skype for conducting our Blitz but have moved over to Slack voice calls ever since. Slack is great for us because we use it as our main working platform, for both internal and external communications.

At its core, we are constantly changing aspects of The Blitz to fit the needs of the current team.

One of the major changes to the Blitz was when we came across the ‘Daily Huddle’ concept. Its quick and rapid updates were perfect for Stampede and we were greatly inspired by its concept. In the past, each person would tell everyone else about what they were doing for the day and what they would be working on. Our current Blitz is tightly controlled, where the focus would be on project leads reporting on the status of their assigned projects. It is faster and more energetic, once again adding to the kick-start that we get at the start of each work day.

Consistency is the key

No matter how many times we change the format, what matters the most for a productive stand-up meeting is consistency. With every Blitz held on the same time every work day, it has become a habit for our team to attend. The Blitz Master doesn’t need to remind the team every time. The best time to hold the meeting however, depends on your team’s schedule.

The scrum is less about strict rules and more about maximizing productivity.

If your team assembles in the office early, then hold your meetings as the very first thing in the morning. If people enter in at different times, then run the stand-up at a time you know everyone is in. This also indirectly helps you identify late comers. But the Blitz is less about strict rules and more about maximizing productivity. Turning the daily or weekly meetings into a regular routine that fits your team’s unique schedule. It also helps ensure that it becomes an effective tool for your development team.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading this post on our culture at Stampede. We hope this has inspired you like how it has for us. How do you run team meetings at your workplace? We’d love to know your thoughts on The Blitz and how you think we can improve it. Drop us a comment and we’ll do our best to reply at the soonest. Again, thanks for reading!

For more Stampede culture and related content, please do consider liking us on Facebook and following us on our Twitter feed. Oh, and we can’t forget about Instagram, where Shaza and Zana posts some of the most amazing imagery ever.

The post The Stampede Way to Scrum: The Blitz appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

Even if the user has enjoyed the online store experience by browsing around and adding items to their cart, a faulty checkout process can abruptly cause a drop off from that point. While there are multiple reasons as to why users drop off during the checkout step, it boils down to this; the user was likely annoyed at something.

In this post, we’ll be delving into two areas; how to identify issues with the checkout process and fix it, and some recommendations & best practices that can further improve your online store’s checkout process.

What are the issues?

Because every online store’s checkout process is different, we’ll be following a common example seen below. From there on, we’ll be identifying issues that appear generically at certain points.

The sign up requirement

Your user has been browsing your website, seen a few interesting products and has clicked ‘add to cart’ a number of times. It is now time to checkout, and the screen of judgement now appears before the user. The only options are, to create a new account to proceed and login if you are a returning customer, that’s it. This is your first pain point on your checkout process. Some users may not feel like going through the sign up process because they might perceive it as lengthy or feel overwhelmed with the amount of fields to fill up.

The Fix? Offer a manual form. When I say manual I’m not saying a print form but rather a digital form that the user can fill up with delivery details etc. You’re probably thinking, what’s the point of doing that if it’s almost the exact same process as signing up? The fact of the matter is that some people just don’t like creating accounts on websites, and these people are also potential customers. Give users an additional option to continue without signing up using a bare bones form. This form should only contain details such as the recipient’s name and delivery address, enough for your business to send the package to the customer.

Costs that were not upfront earlier

Understand that your users are shopping online also to get better prices than a brick-and-mortar establishment. So when they are suddenly presented with an additional cost at the end such as ‘service fees’ or unmentioned shipping costs, they will likely drop off. While the majority of online shoppers are very aware of shipping costs, the fact that it wasn’t shown from the beginning leaves the potential buyer with feelings of being cheated.

The Fix? Make sure the information is upfront. If your business charges for shipping costs, let the user know right away at the product page itself. The best placement for this is before they click the ‘add to cart’ button. Link the user to a page showing estimated shipping costs so that they can evaluate whether it is worth spending time at your online store. Even if they do leave because of the costs, at least they left at their own choice and well-informed.

Confusing process and user interface

Unlike a brick and mortar establishment that requires visitors to physically travel there, online stores can be easily accessed and exited with just a mouse click or a tap. That being said, you want your user to have an easy time going about your website and this of course includes your checkout process. Having too many steps, badly placed buttons, and broken links are some of the many things that can go wrong with the checkout process. If this is the main issue causing your users to drop off, then your website has a very big problem.

The Fix? Keep things simple, and design a user friendly interface. Sometimes it could be the e-commerce platform that you are using that adds too many additional steps in the checkout process. Consider modifying the flow to cut down on unnecessary steps and page loads. Also, consider applying the ‘three-click-rule‘ to your process. A good checkout process has a single page for customers to check their orders and enter their billing and shipping info, and a confirmation page before they submit their order.

Unsatisfactory payment options

Each of your customers have a preferred paying method. While the majority of online shoppers would be fine paying directly using a credit card, there are also those who prefer going through secured payment gateways such as PayPal. Just before the payment step in the checkout process, if the user does not see the preferred option, that user will likely drop off.

The Fix? Have multiple payment options. While payment via credit cards are a must, consider signing your business up with payment gateways. If your customers are mainly local, getting in contact with the local banks to enable direct bank in as a payment option would be beneficial. This allows users without credit cards to become potential customers to your business.

Desktop vs mobile interfaces

With so many users owning multiple mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, surfing on the go has become a norm in modern society. If your online store has been built for responsive, don’t be surprised that your visitors are making actual purchases using their devices. It’s convenient and doesn’t require the user to be in front of a computer to do so.

Now the issue lies with how your checkout system is designed on both views (desktop vs mobile). If the desktop interface was designed first and adapted to the mobile, there might be a problem with how it is being shown on the user’s mobile device. One common action, is that users need to scroll down to see more content, and this also affects your checkout interface. Know that having the user scroll down too much during the checkout phase can affect them negatively. It becomes difficult for the customer to see the overview of items in the cart.

The Fix? Design mobile first, then expand to desktop. If you have an existing online store, then this method might be difficult for you to apply on the website. What can still be done however is to design a new mobile interface first and adapt it to a desktop view. After that, the changes can be applied to the existing website. Smashing Magazine has a fantastic article on how you can design the checkout process for mobile.

Non-secured transaction

Hackers these days are known for stealing credit card information and identity theft, and online users are very aware of these cases. Website security is no longer a feature for your customers but rather a necessity for the industry. Many registered online retail businesses are imposed by their respective governments to implement basic encryption on how their website handles sensitive information. On your browser web address bar, you may have noticed a green padlock on some websites that you have visited, and it is commonly seen on bank websites. This flags the website as SSL compliant, and that the information you share on the website is secured with proper encryption. Websites that are SSL compliant also have HTTPS in it’s web address. To learn more about HTTPS, check out this post on Wired.

The Fix? Get an SSL certificate. There are many vendors on the Internet that you can order an SSL certificate from. There are both free and paid options, but for reliability and respect for your customers, we highly advise you to get a paid SSL certificate. Once obtained, implement it on your online store and you’ll start to see a green padlock on the web address bar that proves it has been installed. We won’t go into the detailed aspect of how this is done, a simple Google search can reveal multiple ways and guides to secure an SSL certificate.

How to further improve the checkout process?

Now that the issues and fixes have been identified, we’ll move on to some suggestions and best practices to further improve your online store’s checkout process. Here are some general tips on creating a good checkout process.

1. Consider placing the ‘next’ button in the same location on every page load.
2. Have a progress indicator to show the user how many steps are left in the process.
3. Make sure your call-to-action (CTA) buttons that progress the flow can be seen clearly.
4. Show all costs up front, this also includes shipping costs. Tally the total cost that the user needs to pay at the end.
5. Do not promote or cross-sell during the checkout process. This will only cause the user to be more frustrated and have second thoughts. Feel free to promote after they have paid.
6. Learn from examples. Websites like Apple, BeautyPro and Crate and Barrel are just but some great examples to name a few.

Conclusion

The checkout process is but one of many steps in your users’ journey. While it is very important, other aspects of your online store can make or break its success as well, so do not neglect those.

We hope that you have learnt something from this post, and if you have any comments or just want to say ‘hi’, drop us a reply in the comments. If you liked this article, do check out some of our other e-commerce related articles which may be of interest to you.

The post Improving Your E-Commerce Checkout Process appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

• 

  Hi Iwan and Tony! Thank you for taking the time to sit down for this interview which only both of you are qualified. We know that you guys have different routines to do your job well. Can both of you share your experience before and after being a father?

• 

  I’ve been working remotely even before my daughter was born. So back then I could focus myself solely on work. It was only after my first child was born did I have to change the way I work. So instead of working on a task for a long period, I have to portion it out into shorter work sprints.

  For example if my daughter starts to cry and if no one can attend to her, I’ll comfort her. Once she’s off to dreamland, I’ll take around 30 minutes to re-focus myself for the task at hand. This is a big difference before and after having a kid.

  Now with my kids around, I have rescheduled my hours to begin work at 8 AM and continue until 5 PM. In the past I’ve tried several different work hours, but so far this is the best arrangement for me.

• 

  Before Nauly (my daughter) came into my life, I was working at an office in Jakarta. My usual mornings involve me having breakfast made by my wife and getting to work by 8 AM. On the seventh month of my wife’s pregnancy, we decided to move back to Surabaya, her hometown. I made a request with my employer at the time to work remotely. From then on, I’d be working from my living room.

  After that, I joined Stampede and started working remotely full time. When I wake up early in the morning, the first thing I do is taking care of housework such as washing the dishes and preparing hot water. My wife takes over the rest when she wakes up. Once I log in at work, it’s hard to do anything else. So I do these things before I start work.

  At the start it wasn’t much trouble because Nauly slept around 20 hours a day on average and this went on for another 4 months. My wife is a homemaker, but there are times when she needs help with taking care of my daughter. At the home where I live and work, my wife’s siblings are around, but they are too young to properly care for Nauly. The times where I actually have to step out of the work cycle and do emergency parenting are the times when my wife is sick.

Nur Ainina HusnaIwan’s daughter, affectionately nicknamed Cuna.

Nauly SanjayaSay hi to Nauly, Tony’s daughter.

• 

  I understand that taking care of kids is really a full time job. So when you find the time to sit down and start work, what time is the most productive for you?

• 

  I adjusted my biological clock to work in the morning. Before this the best time  for me was at night, because there were no distractions, talking and ambient sounds from outside. When my baby came around, I had to change my time to look after her. After testing a few different time ranges, I found that early mornings gave me similar results. The temperature was still cool without the glaring sunlight and the noise was still quite minimal.

• 

  For me, the most productive times for working is when my daughter is asleep, or is being looked after by her mom. During this time, I can completely focus on my work since there are no distractions. In the mornings, I am already busy with household chores and baby stuff so my most productive moments tend to be only after that time.

• 

  What kind of task is suited to the situation where you are multitasking work and looking after the baby?

• 

  The time where I can really focus is when Cuna is not around. So in the morning I leave her to my wife so that I can focus on work. Once she goes to work, I will take care of the baby. So the multitasking part comes in when I’m looking after the baby. Meetings and discussions which aren’t as taxing when compared to coding and can be done while looking after the baby. One more thing I use to my advantage is my daughter. Whenever I’m feeling down or stuck on something, I’d just spend some time with her and somehow everything feels better.

• 

  Whenever I’m working, my daughter is usually not around me. When she is however, she’ll be pulling at me and making babble sounds. I can handle both work and my daughter’s antics for lighter work, but if it’s serious work, I need to focus on it alone. Instead of multitasking, if there is an emergency, I’ll put my work down for a bit and attend to it.

• 

  There is some common understanding that some men, when they become dads, they leave it solely to the wife. You guys are rare. How do you do it?

• 

  Working remotely helped me become this way. I feel that I experience what most fathers don’t because I’m around to see my kids beside me. It is definitely life changing for me.

• 

  When my wife is tired and I noticed that, I try to help out wherever I can. At times working remotely in your home can become a bit stressful, because there will be times when the baby will start crying during work hours. Also every now and then, my wife will have her ‘alone time’, for example going to the salon, and this is the time where I will take over. When my wife is not stressed out, then I can do work more effectively. As Shaza puts it, “A happy wife makes a happy life”.

Tony on break with Nauly

• 

  What are the pros that both of you benefit from this setup, working and also parenting?

• 

  One of it is that I get to spend more time with the kids. Most importantly I do not have to get my baby looked after by a nanny as there have been issues recently and also can be pretty costly. Fortunately my wife is only working 4 hours a day and we take turns looking after the baby.

• 

  One of the pros is that I can help my wife to take care of Nauly. Before getting married, me and my wife agreed that she didn’t have to work and instead look after the household and the baby. So now we both take turns parenting. Taking care of children is not easy as it looks. You need much patience and a lot of willpower. I’ll try to lighten my wife’s tasks wherever I can.

• 

  How supportive has the company and Stampede team been to your setup?

• 

  Stampede is very supportive and they love kids, so this helps a lot. This flexibility makes me feel comfortable with Stampede, sure you can get flexibility elsewhere but not at Stampede’s level. My colleagues have no issues whenever I need to take a break and they love to see my kids. Indirectly they have made me what I am today, an awesome dad.

• 

  To me Stampede is very supportive. As long as I complete my work tasks, the team supports me. If I’m falling behind a bit, they’ll be concerned and ask me if anything is wrong. Other places may say that, if work is not finished it is because my baby is distracting me..

• 

  Is there any advice or something you guys want to share with other dads who might want to work remotely?

• 

  Plan your time for work before doing any parenting. Clear all the important tasks before the period because trust me, you won’t be able to focus much. For example, feed the baby and make her fall asleep before a meeting begins. Raising children is a handful but don’t see it as a negative. Find a way to take advantage of your situation like how I use Cuna as a stress reliever.

• 

  Manage your time well and be responsible for your work. You will want to work out a plan with the wife. This way you know when to focus on work and when to focus on the baby. Lots of commitment needed and most importantly be there for the family.

Cuna at Work

• 

  Are there any particular apps that you use for your setup?

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  My wife uses a baby feeding app to track Cuna’s feeding schedule. I myself use an in-built feature in my Samsung smartphone which can test someone’s stress level by putting the finger onto the phone. I use it to gauge the mood of my baby to check how she’s doing.

• 

  I use a baby log app called Baby Daybook. When the baby drinks I will log it down, and this also includes things like when she poops. This is so that I can review what she did for that day. This acts as an early indicator because if a baby doesn’t pass motion consistently, something might be wrong with her.

Thank you dads of Stampede (probably good for a band name). So how about a little verdict? When you’re working remotely and have to keep an eye on the kids, anything is possible with a little bit of time management and prioritization. At the same time, working out a schedule with your significant other gives you the time to focus on your work without neglecting your child.

For constant updates, head over to our Facebook and Twitter channels. Also, we have our very own Instagram account now, so be sure to check that out.

Are you also a remote-working parent like Tony and Iwan? If yes, how do you handle parenting and working at the same time? Share your own experiences here!

The post Dads of Stampede: Parenting and Remote Work appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.