The Most Important Google Search Algorithm Updates Of 2015 - #infographic

According to Search Engine Watch, 2015 was a tumultuous year for SEO, due in large part to Google’s actions.

Whenever there’s a significant update to the Google algorithm, search marketers all across the board go crazy. Everyone first goes into a tizzy to see if their clients have been affected, and then to publish their own hypotheses on the nature of the update and how to ride it unscathed. And thanks to Google’s FUD tactics, major business publications like the BBC, WSJ and Bloomberg have also started taking note.

We at E2M have been closely monitoring the evolution of Google’s search algorithm and producing a year-end infographic every year for the past few years. While there are many sites that closely monitor and analyze algo updates, we focus on representing them together in a simple and fun manner.

So here is this year’s animated version – a “gifographic” if you will:

by Guest Author via Digital Information World

Bruno Amorim Digital Designer

Bruno Amorim is a Digital Designer with more than ten years of experience.

by csreladm via CSSREEL | CSS Website Awards | World best websites | website design awards | CSS Gallery

UX Mastery Podcast #8: Studying UX with David Trewern

Matt chats with David Trewern, an award-winning Australian designer and founder of the Tractor design school. They discussed design schools, whether accreditation is valuable, and how to prepare for a career in UX.

If you’re interested in a career in UX design and would like to follow up with more information, you might find our ebook “Get Started in UX” helpful. Best of luck!

---

You can listen to this episode directly in your browser—just click the “play” button:

Twitter

Google+

The post UX Mastery Podcast #8: Studying UX with David Trewern appeared first on UX Mastery.

by Sarah Hawk via UX Mastery

7 New Ways to Test Your Minimum Viable Product

If you first heard about “lean methodology” in 2011, when serial entrepreneur Eric Ries coined the term, you probably thought it referred to Jenny Craig or the Paleo diet, not a set of principles for keeping costs low and delivering products as quickly as possible.

Now, of course, thousands of startups, as well as many big businesses, are “lean” (or at least, they claim to be.)

But even if you’re constantly iterating and innovating, don’t forget the most crucial component of the process: testing your MVP.

Here are seven new ways to see whether your product will resonate with the market.

1. Wizard of Oz

This test involves a little bit of trickery. Your customers or users believe they’re experiencing the true product, but you’re doing all the behind-the-scenes work manually.

Not only can you see whether you’ve got a desirable good or service before you actually build it, but you can also identify the pain points of that good or service.

Jason Boehmig, co-founder of Ironclad, relied on this strategy when developing the company’s eponymous software. Ironclad is an automated legal assistant, helping companies get paperwork and contracts completed much more efficiently. In the beginning, however, there was no technology; Boehmig, a former lawyer, was finding documents, requesting signatures, and filling out everything by hand.

He said this exercise showed him exactly what Ironclad’s software needed to do. Plus, the excitement of the original customers proved that Ironclad filled a real need.

2. Fake Door

If you’ve already got a customer base, using the fake door test is a fantastic way to gauge whether they’ll be interested in a new product or feature.

That’s what online marketplace CustomMade did. The team was thinking about introducing the option to save other users’ projects for inspiration. Instead of developing the functionality and then seeing if it was popular, they simply added the “Save” button. Just the button—there still wasn’t a save feature.

A vast percentage of site visitors clicked the button, so CustomMade built the entire capability.

The good news: You don’t need to have a website to employ this strategy. It also works if you’ve got a large social media following. Build a landing page for the product, share it on your networks using customized links, and track the click-through rate. This exercise will tell you how many of your followers would be interested in buying or signing up.

(Oh, and that landing page? Make sure you write something along the lines of “Coming Soon!”, so people don’t get too confused or frustrated.)

3. Audience Building

The most famous example of audience building is probably Product Hunt. After realizing there was no easy way to find the coolest new tech gadgets and products, Ryan Hoover started an email newsletter called “Product Hunt”.

It took him just 20 minutes. Even better? Only 14 days later, Hoover already had 130 subscribers, many of whom were Silicon Valley influencers.

Now, Product Hunt is valued at $22 million.

Copying Product Hunt’s approach is fairly simple. Pick a low-cost (preferably free) method of building a virtual community (Slack, a newsletter, a Facebook group, etc.) that’s tied to your end product.

For example, let’s say you want to build a platform that connects college students looking for portfolio work with businesses looking for freelance interns, as my brilliant friend Lauren Holliday has done with Freelanship. To test the market for Freelanship, Lauren could have first started an informal “matchmaking” service for millennials and startups. The more interest this service garnered, and the more people signed up, the more confident Lauren would be that she could make it a real business.

Continue reading %7 New Ways to Test Your Minimum Viable Product%

by Aja Frost via SitePoint

Preparing for ECMAScript 6: Proxies

In computing terms, a proxy sits between you and the thing you are communicating with. The term is most often applied to a proxy server -- a device between the web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge etc.) and the web server (Apache, NGINX, IIS etc.) where a page is located. The proxy server can modify requests and responses. For example, it can increase efficiency by caching regularly-accessed assets and serving them to multiple users.

ES6 proxies sit between your code and an object. A proxy allows you to perform meta-programming operations such as intercepting a call to inspect or change an object's property.

The following terminology is used in relation to ES6 proxies:

[author_more]

target
The original object the proxy will virtualize. This could be a JavaScript object such as the jQuery library or native objects such as arrays or even another proxies.

handler
An object which implements the proxy's behavior using…

traps
Functions defined in the handler which provide access to the target when specific properties or methods are called.

It's best explained with a simple example. We'll create a target object named target which has three properties:

[code]
var target = {
a: 1,
b: 2,
c: 3
};
[/code]

We'll now create a handler object which intercepts all get operations. This returns the target's property when it's available or 42 otherwise:

[code]
var handler = {

get: function(target, name) {
return (
name in target ? target[name] : 42
);
}

};
[/code]

We now create a new Proxy by passing the target and handler objects. Our code can interact with the proxy rather than accessing the target object directly:

[code]
var proxy = new Proxy(target, handler);

console.log(proxy.a); // 1
console.log(proxy.b); // 2
console.log(proxy.c); // 3
console.log(proxy.meaningOfLife); // 42
[/code]

Let's expand the proxy handler further so it only permits single-character properties from a to z to be set:

[code]
var handler = {

get: function(target, name) {
return (name in target ? target[name] : 42);
},

set: function(target, prop, value) {
if (prop.length == 1 && prop >= 'a' && prop <= 'z') {
target[prop] = value;
return true;
}
else {
throw new ReferenceError(prop + ' cannot be set');
return false;
}
}

};

var proxy = new Proxy(target, handler);

proxy.a = 10;
proxy.b = 20;
proxy.ABC = 30;
// Exception: ReferenceError: ABC cannot be set

[/code]

Continue reading %Preparing for ECMAScript 6: Proxies%

by Craig Buckler via SitePoint

Lightbox for Bootstrap 3

A lightbox gallery plugin for Bootstrap 3 based on the modal plugin. It supports images, YouTube videos, and galleries.

by via jQuery-Plugins.net RSS Feed

ColorFavs

Create and Discover Pleasing Colors and Palettes for All of Your Projects

by csreladm via CSSREEL | CSS Website Awards | World best websites | website design awards | CSS Gallery