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  • 13 Apps to Run Social Media Contests - Running a contest on social media can be a good way to build followers, create leads, and produce user-generated content. Here is a list of platforms to run contests on social media. Run sweepstakes and giveaways, quizzes, photo and video contests, hashtag contests, and more.
    Topics: media, run, sweepstakes, quizzes, facebook, apps, contest, platform, social, price, start, contests.
  • - If your computer is constantly cursed by the spinning wheel of death, or you feel like you’re using a 90’s Netscape browser to surf the web, fear not -- it doesn’t necessarily mean you need a new computer.
    Topics: hard, delete, nontechnical, ways, click, computer, run, space, disk, faster, remove, dont, programs, unused.
  • 4 Simple, Low-Cost Ways to Run a More Sustainable Business - Companies can thrive while also contributing to positive environmental change. But getting started can be daunting—which is why we’re simplifying it with four of the most impactful ways to make your business more sustainable.More
    Topics: emissions, lowcost, packaging, planet, carbon, ways, business, sustainable, simple, shopify, offset, climate, neutral, run.
  • 5 Steps to Run a Project Post-Mortem Meeting [+ Key Questions to Ask] - No project is an unmitigated success or failure.
    Topics: questions, questionnaire, postmortem, meeting, identify, help, project, ask, steps, projects, agenda, team, run, key.
  • 5 Ways You Can Run More Effective International Meetings - Global teams bring perspectives from various cultures and mindsets, but they also bring obvious challenges: different time zones, language barriers, social norm differences, and communication styles.
    Topics: run, international, work, ways, team, bonding, office, try, effective, vacation, meeting, global, teams, meetings.
  • 6 Tips to Ensure You Never Run Out of T-Shirt Design Ideas - More beautiful t-shirt design ideas are just a couple of clicks away! Try out these 6 tips to create better t-shirt designs your customers will love.
    Topics: tshirt, designs, dont, custom, know, ideas, youre, help, run, tips, tshirts, design, ensure.
  • 8 Holiday Giveaway Ideas To Boost Revenue - The holidays are right around the corner, so companies everywhere are gearing up to run fun holiday deals and giveaways. You're in luck if you need fresh ideas for your holiday giveaways. I've put together 8 holiday giveaways to spark joy in your customers and simultaneously boost revenue.
    Topics: ideas, run, holiday, revenue, example, giveaways, customers, social, gift, free, media, giveaway, boost.
  • Adobe could be the next $10 billion software company - Adobe reported its Q2 FY’18 earnings yesterday and the news was quite good. The company announced $2.2 billion in revenue for the quarter up 24 percent year over year. That puts them on an impressive $8.8 billion run rate, within reach of becoming the next $10 billion software company (or at least on a run […]
    Topics: adobe, revenue, cloud, company, magento, marketing, salesforce, creative, billion, software, run.
  • - An automated Alibaba hotel is set to open in Hangzhou.
    Topics: robots, similar, alibaba, hospitality, company, alibabas, run, features, guests, smart, automated, hotel.
  • Allbirds prices IPO above range, putting more points on the board for DTC startups - Allbirds' IPO pricing backs up our view that tech-enabled unicorns going public can hope for an upper-single-digit revenue multiple provided they can make a good case to public market investors.
    Topics: dtc, allbirds, rate, company, worth, putting, shares, share, prices, techenabled, points, unicorns, techcrunch, run, ipo, startups, range, board.
  • Amazon confirms Prime Day delay in US, will run Prime Day in India on Aug 6-7 - Amazon’s annual sales holiday, Prime Day, has typically been a global event — one so big, it often crashes the Amazon retail website. This year, however, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the retailer’s plans. Today, Amazon officially confirmed reports that it will delay Prime Day in the U.S. until sometime later this year. It will […]
    Topics: event, members, pandemic, markets, techcrunch, amazon, later, india, delay, sales, confirms, prime, aug, day, run.
  • Amazon confirms Prime Day will run June 21-22, an earlier than usual start - Amazon confirmed its annual sales event known as Prime Day will be held on Monday, June 21 and Tuesday, June 22. Bloomberg had previously reported these same dates, citing leaked records. The once-a-year mega sale had typically been held in July, when the shopping season goes through its usual lull. But due to the COVID-19 […]
    Topics: start, small, usual, confirms, earlier, sellers, prime, run, day, businesses, techcrunch, amazon, including, business, amazons, selling.
  • B2B Ecommerce: Walk First, Then Run - B2B ecommerce is expanding rapidly with innovative new services and marketing strategies. Much of the innovation focuses on improving personalization. However, that is typically the last step. There are prerequisites to address first.
    Topics: ecommerce, companies, stage, run, b2b, customer, support, data, walk, processes, digital, customers.
  • Bayesian A/B Testing: A More Calculated Approach to an A/B Test - What are some of the reasons you run an A/B test?
    Topics: approach, data, bayesian, metric, variant, ab, ad, tests, testing, run, test, calculated.
  • Can I Run Multiple Digital Business Models With One Commerce Platform? - Over the last year at Elastic Path, we have seen more and more brands who need to run digital commerce for multiple business models. Whether they are a B2B business launching D2C for the first time, or a D2C brand getting into B2B2C for the first time, more and more companies are looking for solutions to help them power all routes-to-market. In this post we will: Explore this trend Discuss why Salesforce Commerce Cloud struggles to support multiple business Explain how we support all routes-to-market with one platform at Elastic Path The State of the Market: Majority of Brands Power Multiple Models And we aren’t the only ones witnessing this trend. In Gartner’s latest “Survey Analysis: Digital Commerce Revenue Skyrockets With B2B Surpassing B2C” report, they share the same phenomenon. According to their analysis: 67% of respondents are doing both B2B & B2C in some capacity.   What Is Causing This Shift? Based on what we have seen and industry analysis, I think there are a few reasons why brands are embracing multiple business models: Opportunity to Drive Revenue: If you are able to successfully launch and manage multiple digital business models at once, your total addressable market increases. This means you have more people to sell to and therefore more revenue to collect. Of course, running multiple models will increase your total cost, but if done correctly, your margin will increase too.   Increased Acceptance of Digital: I sound like a broken record but, the Pandemic encouraged plenty of buyers and customers to come online for the first time ever. This is especially true for many B2B businesses who previously never had digital channels. With the onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic more B2B brands were forced into figuring out digital commerce since it was the only way to connect with their buyers. Since then, we have seen many of these brands updating or enhancing their eCommerce technology to meet new needs.   Ability to Leverage Existing Resources: While adding a new business model to your digital commerce strategy will always involve some effort, you have the benefit of being able to maximize existing resources. This includes everything from your existing supply chain to the technology that you have invested in and implemented. More often than not, these resources can be repurposed in some way when adding a new business model.     What is the Difference Between Salesforce Commerce Cloud & Elastic Path Commerce Cloud? Salesforce Commerce Cloud customers are turning to Elastic Path for a single platform for support their entire commerce strategy across B2B, D2C, and B2B2C. See the Comparison   Finding a Commerce Platform to Support Multiple Business Models I decided to write this blog because, as previously mentioned, we have seen a huge uptick in the number of brands specifically looking to run digital commerce for multiple business models. This means that we have been answering many questions about how we do this at Elastic Path versus how other commerce platforms do it. Consistently, this question seems to be focused around a Salesforce Commerce Cloud comparison. For the rest of this blog, I will speak to that in detail. Unpacking How Salesforce Supports Multiple Business Models At Salesforce, they have four separate platforms commerce. First, there are two B2B platforms, one comes from the Cloudcraze acquisition and one is an updated B2B commerce solution built on Salesforce Lightning (a component-based framework for app development) that will eventually replace Cloudcraze. Second, there are also two B2C platforms. The most famous is the acquired Demandware technology which is not, and never will be, built on Lightning since it is a legacy stack. Salesforce has also built a specific platform on lightning for B2B brands who want to add D2C. Plus, if you want to use CPQ, that is an entirely separate purchase not included in any of the above mentioned solutions. Are you confused yet? In short, this means that the vast majority of brands will have to select and work with two separate platforms. There are some key challenges with this approach: Multiple Disparate Commerce Teams: when you have separate platforms, you generally need separate teams with differing types of experience to run each technology. This can create a silo internally which, unfortunately, often leads to inconsistent branding experiences externally. And, while B2B and B2C experiences should be different, they should have some aspect of branding continuity across them.   Confusion: having multiple solutions can complicate internal communications, strategy conversations, and general organization. Often times managing these totally separate, but related, platforms creates confusion that interrupts internal productivity.   Cost: While your license cost may be the same whether or not you use one or multiple platforms, you will have to pay double for many other aspects of your strategy. For instance, two implementations, separate customizations across platforms, additional team members to work on each product, and more. There are some situations where you may be told by Salesforce that you can run both your B2B and B2C commerce on one platform. While it is technically possible, we would urge you to evaluate this approach with caution for a few reasons: You can technically support lite B2B with the legacy Demandware platform however it has severe limitations. A good example of this is that you cannot support true account-based pricing. While tiered accounts are available, it is impossible to set up pricing for different accounts who have specific negotiated pricing. Based on our experience, this is a pretty core feature for B2B brands and not supporting it would be massively detrimental.   On the other hand, you can support a lite B2C site with legacy Cloudcraze but, the storefront is incredibly basic and unlikely to meet the needs of any brand who wants to power B2C digital commerce. And, if you have aspirations to power omnichannel B2C experiences, this platform will simply not be robust enough for your needs. To summarize, while it is possible to support B2B and B2C with one Salesforce platform, the customer experience you could power for one business model would be very basic and likely involve an extreme amount of custom work to even come close to meeting your requirements. Unpacking How Elastic Path Supports Multiple Business Models At Elastic Path we believe that brands should be able to power their commerce business across business models, brands, geographies, campaigns, and channels with one platform. For that reason, we built Elastic Path Commerce Cloud to support every business model a brand may want to power today or launch tomorrow. While customers like Pella Windows & Doors and Hobie Cat power their D2C experiences on Elastic Path, others like eMed are selling their B2B products using the same platform. There are two key capabilities that make this possible. First, our Product Content Management capability allows brands to import, enrich, and organize their product data in whatever way suits them. This means that you can bring in product data for both B2B and B2C models (if different) from whatever external sources that you may have. Then, you can create unique pricebooks per model, or even per account in a B2B scenario. You have the ultimate flexibility to assign multiple pricebooks to the same product so that a B2C customer would pay $20, but B2B Customer A would pay $18 and B2B Customer B would pay $16. This is all brought to life by our Catalog Composer capability which allows you to compose unlimited catalogs from products assortments (known as hierarchies) and price books. These two capabilities give brands the flexibility to manage products, prices, and catalogs to support any business model from one place. And, for those who are concerned about how to get started with a Composable Commerce approach, at Elastic path we have Pre-Composed Solutions™ for B2B, B2C, and D2C to help you quickly launch with any business model. Pre-Composed Solutions™ are business-ready, complete solutions built on top of Elastic Path Commerce Cloud that pre-integrated core commerce capabilities, third party solutions (like search, CMS, and personalization), and any other customizations to bring a specific use case or business model to life in record time. By removing the manual effort of composing, or integrating, multiple technologies, these solutions minimize the risk of a Composable Commerce approach. Especially for those who need to power multiple business models.   To summarize, for any brand who currently runs multiple business models across digital channels, or for brands who plan to expand their digital routes-to-market in the future, I would encourage you to choose a digital commerce platform that makes supporting multiple business models as simple as possible. If you aren’t sure how to get started, one of our commerce experts would be happy to walk through your digital commerce strategy and provide some suggestions.
    Topics: run, elastic, business, b2c, digital, commerce, support, brands, platform, b2b, platforms, multiple, models.
  • - The humble curtain might not seem like your standard source of inspiration, but for Adrien Taylor, it helped spark an idea that quickly developed into his New Zealand-based company, Offcut. Adrien was visiting his father’s curtain warehouse when he noticed a room filled with off-cut fabric and asked what happened […]
    Topics: experience, brand, adrien, business, way, starting, using, start, run, right, offcut, think, offcuts, industry, environmentallyfriendly.
  • Ensuring Quality in Elastic Path Commerce Cloud - At Elastic Path, having a quality mindset is the key to providing our customers with the best commerce experience. Elastic Path Commerce Cloud is a composable, microservices-based commerce solution which offers simple, flexible, and powerful APIs. Microservice architecture means Elastic Path Commerce Cloud has a set of loosely coupled, collaborating services. Each service has its own responsibility. However, a set of services need to collaborate to fulfill the needs in most user journeys. For example, a simple user journey where a shopper wants to checkout will require the authentication service for identifying the shopper, catalog service to serve the products plus the cart, orders, inventory, and payment services for checkout. To ensure this journey is working consistently every day after every release, we need thorough testing strategy in place. The following will highlight how testing is done in our software development lifecycle. How do we ensure quality in Elastic Path Commerce Cloud? The engineering team at Elastic Path has defined a test pyramid, inspired by the work of Martin Fowler and Chris Richardson, that follows industry best practices. The pyramid represents the complexity and speed of test execution. From bottom to top, tests at the bottom layer (e.g., Unit Tests) are more isolated (less complex) and faster (speed). The tests at the top (e.g., end-to-end tests) are more complicated in terms of setup and slower because they require a fully deployed environment and various configurations of the software. The diagram on the right describes the service and its relationship to the platform. A service is within a blue box whereas the purple boundary is a group of services integrated together (a deployed functional environment). Test Overview What are the different types of tests we run to ensure quality? Unit Tests Unit tests are the lowest level of the tests. They are the most fundamental layer, focused on a class and functional methods. Unit tests provide the fastest feedback and have minimal dependencies on other parts of the service because they do not require a deployed service. The tests are mostly written in the same language as the production code. The goal is to ensure the business logic within a class and method is tested both positively and negatively. Component Tests Component Tests test a service in isolation from other services. The goal is to ensure the service responsibilities are as expected. The tests are on API level. For example, a POST request to add items to cart is tested by providing the required headers and requested body. Then the success response is validated to ensure the returned status code and body has the right information. We use Cucumber for the test cases and the backing code is in Typescript or Go, depending on the service. The test cases cover all the business requirements that a service is responsible for, including data persistence and event processing. In addition, integration tests with database and messaging are also implemented here. There are test cases to ensure data persistence between the business logic and database. There are also test cases to ensure events are emitted for any API requests that need to emit certain events for consumers to consume. This level of test requires the service and the dependencies (database, message broker) to be running. Contract Tests These tests ensure that service to service communication works as services, often owned by different teams, evolve independently. When a service (consumer) talks to the other service (provider), there is a Contract between them. The consumer expects the provider to provide an agreed response. For example, if a specific field in the provider response (e.g., customer_name) is changed (e.g., to shopper_name), this will break the consumer as it expects customer_name. In this case, it is a breaking change and can impact our customers. We adopt Pactflow as our contract testing broker. The contracts are stored in the Pactflow server. Both provider and consumer services will download the contracts and verify if the contract is still valid during the test run. This gives us confidence in communication between the paired services. End-to-End Tests The goal of these tests is to ensure that services are configured and work correctly in a deployed environment. Our end-to-end tests are written from an end user's perspective. We follow BDD and write tests in Cucumber. Each test scenario describes an end-user's journey when using the public APIs. We have two distinct types of user profiles - a seller or store admin, and the buyer or shopper. Each user profile has different journeys. For example, a seller has journeys like catalog management, promotions management, and orders management. While the shopper has journeys like browsing, registration, and checkout. The tests are executed every time there is a new deployment from any service code changes. This is to ensure the commerce experience is still performing as expected. Any failures stop further release process. In addition, we have scheduled jobs that run the tests against the production environments to ensure the production has no outage or unexpected behaviors. UI Tests We have Commerce Manager which is a web-based user interface that allows business users to manage their stores. The UI tests ensure that each page and their components are functioning as expected. Store admin journeys such as creating products, managing catalog, price books, promotions, orders, and other store settings need to be tested. The test scenarios are written in Cucumber format for readability and the implementation is SeleniumJS. The test uses Chrome driver to simulate the browser and selenium commands to execute the browser interactions (e.g., clicking on buttons). UI testing is usually the slowest of the tests. We utilize the parallel testing feature which allows us to run multiple tests at one time. This significantly cut down our test cycles. To achieve parallel testing, tests are designed to be isolated from each other. This allows us to run any single test at any time without dependencies. Summary At Elastic Path, our entire team is committed to quality. The Test Pyramid outlined above is the guideline that our engineering team follows to ensure our customers have a reliable platform to run their businesses. All tests are run in a continuous delivery pipeline. This gives us confidence in the quality of changes being released to production for Elastic Path Commerce Cloud. Stay tuned for future blog posts where we will talk about the non-functional testing we do for performance and security.
    Topics: service, ensure, ensuring, run, path, commerce, cloud, tests, testing, quality, elastic, test, services.
  • From movies to shipping, AWS is driving Amazon’s revenue diversification - Put simply: Most of Amazon’s operating income came not from selling stuff, but instead from selling compute and storage.
    Topics: revenue, business, techcrunch, amazon, run, amazons, shipping, cloud, aws, billion, diversification, operating, selling, results, driving, movies, support.
  • Germany’s Xentral nabs $20M led by Sequoia to help online-facing SMBs run back offices better - Small enterprises remain one of the most underserved segments of the business market, but the growth of cloud-based services — easier to buy, easier to provision — has helped that change in recent years. Today, one of the more promising startups out of Europe building software to help SMEs run online businesses is announcing some […]
    Topics: led, businesses, business, techcrunch, offices, online, help, xentral, run, sequoia, nabs, erp, europe, software, build, onlinefacing, services, tools, smbs.
  • Hard Lessons from Designing My First Product - Recently I went through the entire process of designing and manufacturing my own product, all the way from early sketches through a final production run. As a newbie to product design, I learned a ton and want to share my experience with you.  You’ll learn: The exact product I created, including a link to the [...]
    Topics: production, really, hard, designing, youre, product, probably, think, way, lessons, things, run, know.
  • Helpful Tips for Improving Your Mobile Ecommerce Site - My first suggestion for optimizing your website for mobile devices is to visit your local smartphone store. Target, Best Buy, Walmart, AT&T — you name it — your local phone store is the one place you can quickly experience your own site across the myriad of devices.
    Topics: desktop, experience, helpful, run, store, tips, sites, mobile, improving, ecommerce, search, visitors, site, try.
  • - Laptop lifestyle (noun): Running a business that you operate entirely from your laptop, that lets you live and work from anywhere in the world. Browse the 1.3 million posts tagged #laptoplifestyle on Instagram, and you’ll discover a world filled with tropical destinations, motivational quotes, and cups of coffee propped up […]
    Topics: productive, laptop, ecommerce, work, store, knew, helped, swimwear, business, really, dropshipping, stay, im, run, traveling.
  • How Influencer Marketing Drives Holiday Sales - Influencers have the power to help drive ecommerce sales the way old school media did in years past. Advertising on 1950s television and other mass media was successful because of the audiences. Today, the same thing may be true for influencer marketing.
    Topics: coupon, marketing, drives, video, voss, holiday, codes, audience, run, sales, vessi, influencer, vosss.
  • How and Why You Should Run a Customer Panel for Your Marketing Team - As a marketer, we typically ask ourselves the following question at least a dozen times a day: "Would our prospects and customers like this?"
    Topics: customer, run, consider, good, marketing, questions, panel, youll, customers, panelists, product, team.
  • - The goal of every online store owner is to get traffic to their site that will ultimately lead to conversions.  But not every user who comes to your site will turn into a customer. In fact, not every user will even engage with the content on your site.  The top […]
    Topics: page, load, website, properly, run, user, speed, site, redirects, server, test.
  • How to Run A Content Audit in 2021 - Think of all the content you create — the good, the bad, and the ones that take a scary amount of time.
    Topics: audit, page, know, content, youll, information, website, youre, seo, pages, run.
  • How to Run Facebook Ads: Step-by-Step Guide to Advertising on Facebook - When setting up a paid Facebook ad, there are a lot of boxes to check. Are you targeting the right people? Did you choose the right bidding model for your ad? Are you running the right type of ad? If we’re being honest, it can get a little confusing.
    Topics: create, ad, advertising, set, youre, metrics, youll, audience, page, stepbystep, ads, run, facebook, guide.
  • How to Run Google Ads: A Guide to Setting Up Your First Campaign - As the former head of marketing at two different tech companies, I can tell you firsthand: You can optimize your content for search engines all day, but sometimes, pay-per-click advertising — or PPC — is the way to go. In this blog post, I’ll walk through everything I’ve learned about how to run Google Ads, from creating your account to launching your first campaign.
    Topics: guide, search, ad, term, marketing, google, ads, campaign, youre, set, run, setting, way.
  • How to Run Marketing Team Meetings That Don't Suck - Meetings suck. They're time for people to avoid doing actual work, stare blankly at each other, throw in generic comments to look like they're paying attention, and if you're lucky, maybe come out with some wicked notebook doodles.
    Topics: metrics, work, teams, marketing, suck, dont, meeting, help, run, little, projects, meetings, team.
  • How to Run a Competitor Analysis [Free Guide] -  
    Topics: free, understand, start, coffee, research, analysis, run, competitor, youll, guide, competitive, business, youre.
  • How to Run a Facebook Giveaway: A 6-Step Guide - Did you know that 78.4% of contest shares are done on Facebook? And that on average, 34% of new fans are acquired through a contest? Additionally, Facebook has over 2.7 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2020. As a marketer, those stats are hard to ignore. Social media contests and giveaways are an excellent way to engage fans and acquire followers.
    Topics: facebook, ask, promote, guide, contest, vote, need, 6step, giveaway, run, rules, prize.
  • How to Run a Focus Group for Your Business - When you're developing or launching a new product, service, or business, you'll want to have a general sense of how receptive your target market will be to it.
    Topics: group, focus, youre, ask, youll, product, run, discussion, business, participants, questions.
  • How to Run a Marketing Campaign on a Tight Budget [Expert Tips & Free Tools] - Many of us have been there with the cup of noodles diet when money is tight. 
    Topics: virtual, expert, events, free, tools, hubspots, run, tight, content, tips, ways, budget, campaign, way, marketing, youre, media.
  • How to Run a Perfect Kickoff Meeting - Starting your project without a kickoff meeting is like hiking without a map. Sure, you might enjoy some cool trails, but you'll probably get lost without a map and a clear plan.
    Topics: share, team, internal, perfect, roles, meeting, run, tip, goals, project, kickoff, members.
  • How to Run a Social Media Contest That Gets Tons of Engagement (11 Contest Ideas) - There are so many rules and guidelines and so much planning and preparation involved. A contest could be the best tactic you’ve ever introduced to grow your reach, drive site traffic, and generate leads, but you want to ensure you're doing it right.  Here's how you can set yourself up for success with contests on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.
    Topics: ideas, ask, entrants, run, tons, media, engagement, youre, rules, facebook, brand, contests, social, gets, great, contest.
  • How to Run a Structured Interview (Questions Included) - Imagine this -- a hiring manager is choosing between two candidates of similar expertise, so she invites them both into the office for an in-person interview. However, she's given power to choose which questions she asks each one.
    Topics: structured, included, questions, semistructured, candidate, tell, team, candidates, rate, run, interview, role.
  • How to Run a Successful Grassroots Marketing Campaign [+ Examples] - When I try to think of marketing campaigns that were emotional and memorable, one of the first ones that comes to mind is the Dove Real Beauty campaign. The reason? Dove uses grassroots marketing strategies to create targeted content that their audience wants to share with everyone they know.
    Topics: create, video, successful, share, campaign, grassroots, run, audience, content, know, examples, inspire, marketing.
  • How to Run a Successful Virtual Event in 2023, Plus Best Practices According to Eventbrite's CMO - As a result of the pandemic, there's been a shift in recent years to virtual conferences.
    Topics: inperson, events, event, best, conference, audience, networking, eventbrites, plus, live, successful, cmo, according, attendees, practices, mendelsohn, run, virtual.
  • How to Run an Effective Vetting Process for Candidates in 2022 - Imagine you're a hiring manager and put up an ad for a role. After a lengthy process, you hire someone you think is a great fit.
    Topics: run, job, write, phone, effective, vetting, candidate, role, candidates, video, process, background.
  • - Do you run an ecommerce business? The odds are you’re spending a lot of money on paid advertising. Large established brands spend a significant portion of their budget on ads and if you run a store that just started out,… Continue reading Inbound Marketing for Ecommerce – Complete Guide
    Topics: guide, content, website, inbound, customers, run, outbound, complete, marketing, ecommerce, youre, google.
  • Introducing Shopify Ping: A New Mobile App for Running Your Business on the Go - Time is every entrepreneur’s most valuable resource. Between life’s many commitments and all the hats you wear to run your business, there’s never enough time to go around—especially if you’re part of a small team or the sole founder like many Shopify merchants. That’s why we’re launching Shopify Ping: a new way to run your business on the go by bringing customer conversations, marketing workflows, and more together in a single mobile app.More
    Topics: running, app, apps, marketing, shopify, run, ping, introducing, business, kit, single, mobile, way, growing.
  • Koio, a direct-to-consumer leather sneaker brand, picks up $3 million - Retail has been revolutionized over the last decade, with brands like Casper and Warby Parker offering high-quality goods at lower costs simply by selling them through the internet. Koio, a relatively new high-end sneaker brand, is looking to get in on the new retail wave, and the company has some fresh cash to do it. […]
    Topics: brand, sneaker, koio, company, sneakers, retail, relatively, launching, picks, wichert, lower, directtoconsumer, shoes, leather, run, million.
  • MOQ Meaning: What Is MOQ & What You Need to Know - What is MOQ and MOQ meaning. Learn everything you need to know when it comes to sourcing products for your online business.
    Topics: suppliers, units, moq, business, supplier, need, production, moqs, run, meet, products, meaning, know.
  • Magento 1.9: Going, going, gone? - Time is running out for the thousands of merchants still using Magento 1.9 or older. Support for Magento 1.9 is due to expire by June 2020 at the latest. But ...
    Topics: run, php, data, expensive, need, software, gone, magento, likely, using, going.
  • Maria Wik's 5 Tips for Automating and Organizing Your Online Business - The business and lifestyle coach has mastered how to organically streamline an ecommerce shop.
    Topics: automating, know, sales, business, wiks, leads, platform, online, organizing, tips, wik, sale, run, lead, maria.
  • MasterClass, the education platform featuring all-star instructors, will soon teach you how to run for office, too - In 2015, the San Francisco-based education platform MasterClass was founded to provide everyone access to “genius,” whether it be in filmmaking, directing, book writing, cooking, tennis, basketball, comedy, acting, screenwriting, photography — even producing electronic music. Toward that end, MasterClass, which is now selling a $180 all-you-can-eat yearly subscription, currently offers hours of instructional insights […]
    Topics: soon, film, featuring, im, actually, hes, masterclass, think, teach, run, platform, office, instructors, education, steph, class, allstar, learn, really.
  • Papier inks $50M Series C to in a run to lead the online stationery market - Papier, a startup leveraging technology to bring very non-tech products into the world, has raised some funding to continue expanding its business on the heels of strong demand for its personalized notebooks, planners, cards and other paper-based stationery that it sells online. The London startup has raised $50 million, a Series C that it will […]
    Topics: brand, atighetchi, papier, online, technology, digital, today, way, series, stationery, run, products, startup, consumers, techcrunch, inks, market, c, lead.
  • Regression Analysis 101: How to Find Out How Fast Your Blog Is Growing - Raise your hand if you are maniacal about monitoring your blog traffic. Is your hand raised? Mine is, too. I check out traffic every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Most of the time, it's great to be so in-the-weeds -- if I notice a sudden dip in pageviews, I can quickly react.
    Topics: growing, run, traffic, line, data, youre, regression, , analysis, fast, trendline, blog.
  • Reliance To Lead India's $150 Billion E-Commerce Market In Long Run: Berstein - Berstein also said the winner in the Indian e-commerce market will be the one with the most-compelling integrated value proposition, in terms of offline, online and as well as prime
    Topics: report, reliance, strong, indias, retail, terms, largest, market, run, lead, berstein, network, long, billion, ecommerce.
  • Running a Business in Hong Kong - After running businesses in multiple countries, Joonas Gebhard of Blippo.com has settled in Hong Kong. Today he joins the show to discuss why he thinks HK is the best place to start a business, as well as all the logistics of setting up shop there. Listen in as he shares his knowledge about selling products from [...]
    Topics: suppliers, work, place, business, hk, kong, running, working, taxes, hong, joonas, thinks, run.
  • ShipBob nabs $200M at a $1B+ valuation to help e-commerce companies run logistics like Amazon’s - E-commerce saw a massive surge of activity and growth in 2020; and while we may hear a lot about how big companies like Amazon got even bigger during the COVID-19 pandemic, that rising tide also lifted a lot of smaller boats. And that, in turn, has had a big impact on the wider e-commerce ecosystem. […]
    Topics: online, amazons, round, shipping, help, amazon, shipbob, customers, run, companies, logistics, valuation, techcrunch, growth, ecommerce, nabs.
  • Small Business Owners, Don't Run From Technology — Embrace It. Here Are 5 Strategies to Succeed. - All the new technologies and tools can be overwhelming for small business owners with fewer resources than bigger companies. These strategies will help you overcome these digital difficulties and seize the opportunities that new tech can provide.
    Topics: run, dont, digital, embrace, data, users, customers, small, online, trust, tech, security, business, cybersecurity, mobile.
  • - It’s no secret that starting a business can be pretty tough. There’s a lot to figure out, and one of the best ways to learn is to listen to what other entrepreneurs have to say.  That’s why we’re launching our brand new podcast, Start Yours.  Start Yours is a podcast that’s […]
    Topics: start, including, launching, exactly, learn, giveaway, win, business, pro, podcast, run, macbook, worth, starting, prizes.
  • Supply.co Founder: Day of Reckoning Is Coming for DTC Brands - Patrick Coddou launched Supply.co with his wife, Jennifer, in 2015. The company, which sells razors and shaving supplies, is bootstrapped — no outside investors. He has little patience with the concept of lifetime customer value or paying more to acquire a customer than he can recoup on the initial purchase.
    Topics: value, thats, founder, business, lot, brands, reckoning, customers, run, lifetime, coming, customer, dtc, day, dont, supplyco, profitable.
  • TailwindCSS is a Great Fit for Composable - Composable architectures offer many benefits, including improved scalability, flexibility, and maintainability. But building an attractive and maintainable UI can be a challenging task, requiring careful consideration of various design principles and the ability to easily reuse and combine components. That's where TailwindCSS comes in. This popular CSS framework provides a utility-first approach to building custom user interfaces, making it an excellent fit for composable. In this article, we’ll get you started on working with Tailwind with a simple development environment that includes hot reloading and finish with an open-source ecommerce template. The Challenges of CSS Before CSS all style information was embedded directly in the HTML with style centric tags like <font>, <i>, and <b>. CSS changed the game allowing a separation of presentation and markup and is now the best approach to providing a way to style and layout HTML content. The original approach was built with cascading in mind and a push for semantic HTML. One of the key challenges of CSS is the need to write and maintain custom styles for every element in a project. This can quickly become an unwieldy task, especially as the number of elements and variations increases. Developers must often create an enormous amount of class names and manage complex class hierarchies to achieve the desired look and feel of their UI. Another issue with traditional CSS is that it can be difficult to maintain consistency across a project, especially as the number of developers and teams involved increases. Without a standardized approach to styling and layout, developers can easily end up with conflicting styles and a lack of overall coherence in the UI. These problems gave rise to CSS frameworks with popular options including Bootstrap and Foundation. These frameworks provided the necessary CSS classes to build robust user experiences. They followed the semantic approach offering pre-defined components. So, developers would simply need to add the class PrimaryButton and have a consistent button style across the entire application. While being a huge boost from writing all CSS from scratch, overriding the default styles was difficult, resulting in many bootstrap websites looking similar. People could quickly identify the “Bootstrap style”. In addition, the goal of separating CSS from HTML was never fully realized as these components required specific HTML to work properly, often with complex nested elements. The TailwindCSS Approach TailwindCSS takes a vastly different approach to styling. Rather than relying on pre-built components and complex class hierarchies, TailwindCSS provides a robust set of utilities. So instead of using a semantic component class like PrimaryButton or writing custom CSS for every element in a project, developers use a set of pre-defined utility classes to style and layout their UI. For example, instead of creating a custom CSS class to set the font size of a text element, a developer using TailwindCSS might apply the text-lg utility class to achieve the same effect. Similarly, instead of writing a custom class to set the margin of an element, a developer might use the m-4 utility class to add a margin. This approach has several advantages, including: Faster development: By using pre-defined utility classes, developers can style and layout their UI more quickly, without having to write custom CSS for every element. Easier maintenance: Because TailwindCSS provides a standardized set of utility classes, it's easier to maintain consistency across a project and ensure that the UI remains coherent as it evolves. Greater flexibility: By combining and reusing utility classes, developers can achieve a wide variety of styles and layouts, making it easier to build and maintain complex UIs with composable architectures. Many detractors for utility-first CSS make the argument that having a bunch of these classes is fundamentally the same as just embedding styles directly into the HTML. This fails to recognize the benefit of having a well-defined subset of styles that were well built and curated by a team of designers. It also fails to consider the current trend in development towards SPAs, PWAs, and Transitional Apps. Viewing the HTML alone it feels as though these classes are constantly repeated and that each time you need to build a button you need to remember a lengthy list of utility classes. This may be true if you were building a website with traditional techniques, but in a modern composable world companies are adopting JavaScript frameworks like ReactJS, VueJS, and Svelte that take a component approach. With these frameworks you will make a button component and as a result that specific list of utility classes will only exist in that JavaScript component and the code can be re-used across the application. Get hands on with an Elastic Path Free Trial Start building the commerce experience your unique business demands with a free Elastic Path Commerce Cloud account. Get in touch with us and we will setup a Free Trial store for you for six weeks. Sign up for a free trial Example Utility Classes Here are a few examples of the many utility classes provided by Tailwind. By combining and reusing these classes, developers can quickly and easily build custom UIs. Spacing: TailwindCSS provides a range of utility classes for setting margin and padding values, including m- and p- classes for setting margin and padding, as well as mt-, mr-, mb-, ml-, pt-, pr-, pb-, and pl- classes for setting specific sides of an element. Typography: TailwindCSS provides a wide range of utility classes for setting typography, including text- classes for setting font size, font weight, line height, and more, as well as font- classes for setting font family and leading- classes for setting line height. Layout: TailwindCSS provides a range of utility classes for setting layout properties, including flex- and grid- classes for building flexible and grid-based layouts, as well as float-, clear-, and object- classes for setting float, clear, and object properties. Colors: TailwindCSS provides a comprehensive set of utility classes for setting colors, including bg- and text- classes for setting background and text colors, as well as border- and divide- classes for setting border and divider colors. Effects: TailwindCSS also provides a range of utility classes for adding visual effects to elements, including hover:, focus:, and active: classes for setting styles on specific states, as well as transition- classes for controlling transitions and opacity- classes for setting opacity. Getting Started There are plenty of options in the Tailwind documentation to get you started from their own CLI to embedding Tailwind in a front-end application. Here we will discuss how to set up a local development environment for building HTML templates with Tailwind. It will include a local server along with hot reloading as content changes. In your bash shell start by creating a new project: $ mkdir tailwind-template $ cd tailwind-template $ npm init Follow the NPM prompts to create your project allowing us to then install Tailwind and the other necessary NPM packages. Install tailwindcss, postcss, and autoprefixer for CSS workflow. We will also install five-server for a local development server and concurrently to help with running the tools. $ npm install -D tailwindcss postcss autoprefixer five-server concurrently Next initialize Tailwind $ npx tailwindcss init Then configure postcss by modifying the postcss.config.js file as follows: module.exports = { plugins: { tailwindcss: {}, autoprefixer: {}, } } Next, configure tailwind.config.js file and ensure it is looking for any HTML files. Tailwind will selectively include classes based on what is used within your HTML code. /** @type {import('tailwindcss').Config} */ module.exports = { content: ["./**/*.{html,js}"], theme: { extend: {}, }, plugins: [], } Finally, let’s add some scripts to the package.json to help with building and running the template:  "scripts": { "build:css": "tailwindcss -i ./src/main.css -o ./dist/main.css -w", "serve": "five-server", "start": "concurrently \"npm run build:css\" \"npm run serve\"" }, The build css script will execute just the tailwind CLI. This will watch the specified CSS files and build it to the output based on the tailwind configuration. The serve script will run the local web server. The start script will run both the tailwind CLI and local web server concurrently. $ npm run build:css $ npm run serve $ npm run start We can now start building out our code. We will start by creating our CSS file in /src/main.css and adding the code: @tailwind base; @tailwind components; @tailwind utilities; Now we can create an index.html file and start using TailwindCSS. <!doctype html> <html> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> <link href="/dist/main.css" rel="stylesheet"> </head> <body> <h1 class="text-3xl font-bold underline"> Hello world! </h1> </body> </html> You will notice that the html code points to the dist folder, this is where the final CSS output will be. Now we can run everything and preview the results. npm run start Your browser should open running localhost. When files are edited and saved the website will update with the new content. Ecommerce Template To help you get up and running fast, you can find all of the code from this tutorial as well as an open-source TailwindCSS Ecommerce template on GitHub. This template includes some basic layouts and pages that you can leverage for your next commerce website. Elastic Path Commerce Cloud makes the perfect backend for the website. If you would rather theme an existing project please checkout the Elastic Path Composable Frontend or get in touch for more information.  
    Topics: run, css, classes, fit, tailwind, class, setting, tailwindcss, utility, npm, html, composable, great.
  • The Plain-English Guide to Local PPC - For the last few weeks, my husband and I have been ordering more takeout than ever. As we were trying to find a restaurant to order from, we came across an online ad for one of our favorite local restaurants that just started offering delivery. We were so excited and immediately placed an order. That's why local pay-per-click (PPC) can be a great option for local businesses.
    Topics: ad, online, plainenglish, extensions, ads, run, youre, specific, ppc, search, local, guide.
  • The Ultimate Guide to Social Testing - As marketers, we know the importance of making data-driven decisions. The more information we have about our audience, the more we’re able to make effective marketing moves.  In addition, having the numbers to back up the implementation of a marketing strategy is almost as important as the strategy itself. One of the ways to get this data is through social media testing, where you figure out what campaigns resonate most with your audience and help you meet your marketing goals.
    Topics: run, audience, ultimate, social, youre, tests, youll, testing, ad, test, media, guide.
  • Tired of Waiting for IT to Generate Your Reports? Try Ad Hoc Analysis - In midsize to large companies, it's standard to have business intelligence (BI) analysts generate reports on behalf of employees.
    Topics: team, reporting, hoc, generate, try, large, waiting, reports, tired, data, run, need, ad, analysis.
  • Today is Day 1 for Andy Jassy as former AWS CEO moves to Amazon corner office - Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has always liked to motivate his employees by saying every day is Day 1. Well, it is actually Day 1 for his successor Andy Jassy, who officially moves into the corner office at Amazon today. Bezos announced in February that he would be stepping down as CEO to focus […]
    Topics: day, corner, office, run, today, amazon, moves, aws, andy, executive, billion, jassy, ceo, company, spent, techcrunch.
  • ViralSweep Spotlight: Run Viral Giveaways Your Way - In this ViralSweep review, we discuss how ViralSweep makes running viral giveaways easy for brands, businesses, bloggers, influencers & website owners.
    Topics: way, viral, sweepstakes, facebook, giveaways, spotlight, contest, brands, social, audience, email, viralsweep, entries, run.
  • What is an A/A Test & Do You Really Need to Use It? - What's worse than working with no data?
    Topics: need, really, ab, group, run, testing, tests, content, identical, aa, rate, test.
  • WooCommerce Pricing: How Much Does it Cost to Run a Store? - WooCommerce and WordPress are both free, open source software. While this can represent considerable savings, when it comes to WooCommerce pricing, there are still some costs involved in launching a new store. One of the reasons many people choose WooCommerce is because, like the software itself, costs are customizable — you have a lot more control over […]
    Topics: security, pricing, services, woocommerce, costs, cost, free, youll, does, ecommerce, store, wordpress, run, themes, site.
  • Zalando tests reusable packaging in the Nordics - Zalando is launching a pilot with reusable packaging. The test will run for four weeks and is aimed at customers in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. During the pilot, 10,000 customers will receive their orders in reusable shipping bags, so the German fashion company can reduce the packaging waste. The… Continue reading
    Topics: packaging, shipping, tests, nordics, zalando, customers, company, reusable, run, startup, pilot.