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By CPA Trendlines Research A survey found that more than half of all Americans would rather get mugged than audited by the IRS. Getting audited can mean a lot of work, a lot of expense and maybe a lot of … Continued Go PRO for members-only access to more CPA Trendlines Research. View the full article

The so-called spec home, a spin on the American dream home with standardized color schemes and toilet fixtures, is falling out of favor with some US builders. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you’re tired of subscription-based software but still need Microsoft Office, this lifetime license for Office 2024 (Home & Business for Mac or PC) might be worth considering. It's currently on sale for $159.97 on StackSocial until March 30 (down from $249.99) and is a one-time purchase that gives you access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote without the recurring fees of Microsoft 365. After buying, the license ties to your Microsoft account, not a specific device, so you can reinstall it if you switch computers. The catch is that this version won’t get future upgrades, meaning once Microsoft moves on to the next version, you’ll still be stuck with this one. Of course, that might not be an issue if you just need core productivity tools without chasing every new feature. This Office 2024 edition is faster and has some notable improvements over Office 2021, particularly in Excel, where handling large datasets is noticeably smoother. PowerPoint’s got some solid upgrades, too, including the ability to record presentations with live camera feeds—useful for remote work or online courses. The newer Outlook offers better search functionality and an updated accessibility checker to flag emails that may not be easily readable for everyone. Microsoft also gave the whole suite a Fluent Design facelift, making everything look more polished and consistent across its apps. Unlike Microsoft 365, this version works entirely offline, which is a plus for users who don’t want cloud dependency. There are also some AI-powered features baked into this 2024 version. Word’s Smart Compose can predict and suggest text, making writing faster, while Excel’s AI Data Insights can analyze trends and recommend visualizations for your spreadsheets. PowerPoint has improved storytelling tools to make presentations more engaging with smoother transitions and built-in media support. And if you need real-time collaboration, Office 2024 does allow co-authoring within Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. However, it’s not as seamless as the cloud-based version of Microsoft 365. Also, no Microsoft Teams subscription is included, so if that’s part of your workflow, you’ll need to factor that in. This deal makes sense if you want a no-subscription Office suite that works offline. But if you’re after continuous updates and deep cloud integration, Microsoft 365 might still be the better choice. View the full article

Have you filed your freelance taxes yet? If not, it’s definitely time to gather your tax documentation, maximize deductions, and use these tips to avoid costly mistakes before the April 15 deadline. While there’s plenty of questionable tax advice out there, this list will help you avoid it as well as keep your tax records in tip-top shape should you receive an audit or other notice from the IRS. Keeping on top of your freelance taxes year-round is the key to avoiding unpleasant surprises at this time of year. So make your best effort to file on time and with the maximum potential tax savings for 2024 now. Doing so will set you up for a favorable tax situation for years to come. Last minute freelance tax-savings and deductions you may be eligible for:1. Contributions to a SEP IRA or Solo 401(k): Contributions can be made up to the tax filing deadline, reducing taxable income while planning for a financially sound retirement. 2. Double-check your 1099 forms for accuracy: The threshold for filing 1099-K forms is $5,000, so make sure that if you earned that much income across third-party payment platforms like Venmo, Etsy, or others that you claim it. Ensure that you confirm your records align and address discrepancies with issuers. 3. Leverage the Qualified Business Income (QBI) deduction: Deduct up to 20% of qualified business income, provided you meet income thresholds of $191,950 for single filers or $383,900 for married filing jointly in the 2024 tax year.4. Health insurance deductions: Deduct 100% of premiums for yourself, your spouse, and dependents, reducing both income and self-employment taxes. 5. Business vehicle expenses: Deduct either the standard mileage rate (67 cents/mile for 2024) or actual expenses proportional to business use. Maintain detailed records. 6. Home office deduction: There are two methods to calculate the home office deduction: Simplified Method:Deduct $5 per square foot of your home office, up to a maximum of 300 square feet. This means the deduction is capped at $1,500. This method is straightforward and requires minimal documentation.Actual Expense Method:Calculate the percentage of your home's square footage used exclusively for business. Then apply this percentage to actual expenses such as rent or mortgage, utilities, maintenance, and property taxes. This method requires detailed records of all related expenses. If you choose this method, be sure to maintain accurate expense records in case the IRS requests documentation.File your freelance taxes proactively to avoid penalties and fines In addition to the last-minute freelance tax tips above, following these strategies will help you stay compliant and avoid unnecessary penalties or fines: Make quarterly estimated tax payments. The IRS expects freelancers to pay taxes on their income throughout the year. If you owe $1,000 or more in taxes annually, you're required to make quarterly estimated payments. Use Form 1040-ES to calculate these payments and ensure they're made by the due dates (April, June, September, and January).Avoid underpayment penalties. Make sure your quarterly payments or withholding cover at least 90% of your current tax liability or 100% of your prior year's tax liability (110% if your income was over $150,000). This safe harbor rule can help you avoid penalties for underpayment.File on time or request an extension. Missing the tax filing deadline can result in penalties. If you're not ready to file, apply for a six-month extension by April 15, 2025 as noted above. Remember, this is an extension to file, not to pay—estimate and pay what you believe you owe.Keep detailed and accurate tax records. Document all income, deductions and expenses meticulously. Having organized, thorough records will reduce errors on your tax return and help you substantiate deductions in case of an audit.Respond promptly to IRS notices. If you receive any correspondence from the IRS, address it quickly. Ignoring notices can lead to escalated penalties and interest charges. Remember, the IRS will never call, email, or text you. If you receive communication claiming to be from the IRS using these methods it is likely a scam. If you receive a mail notice, the best course of action is to contact a tax professional so you can understand what to do next. By staying proactive and informed about your tax obligations and proactive on your filings and record keeping, you can optimize any potential refund and avoid costly penalties. Investing time in proper tax planning and compliance will save you money and stress in the long run, keeping your focus where it should be. On growing your freelance business. View the full article

Have you filed your freelance taxes yet? If not, it’s definitely time to gather your tax documentation, maximize deductions, and use these tips to avoid costly mistakes before the April 15 deadline. While there’s plenty of questionable tax advice out there, this list will help you avoid it as well as keep your tax records in tip-top shape should you receive an audit or other notice from the IRS. Keeping on top of your freelance taxes year-round is the key to avoiding unpleasant surprises at this time of year. So make your best effort to file on time and with the maximum potential tax savings for 2024 now. Doing so will set you up for a favorable tax situation for years to come. Last minute freelance tax-savings and deductions you may be eligible for:1. Contributions to a SEP IRA or Solo 401(k): Contributions can be made up to the tax filing deadline, reducing taxable income while planning for a financially sound retirement. 2. Double-check your 1099 forms for accuracy: The threshold for filing 1099-K forms is $5,000, so make sure that if you earned that much income across third-party payment platforms like Venmo, Etsy, or others that you claim it. Ensure that you confirm your records align and address discrepancies with issuers. 3. Leverage the Qualified Business Income (QBI) deduction: Deduct up to 20% of qualified business income, provided you meet income thresholds of $191,950 for single filers or $383,900 for married filing jointly in the 2024 tax year.4. Health insurance deductions: Deduct 100% of premiums for yourself, your spouse, and dependents, reducing both income and self-employment taxes. 5. Business vehicle expenses: Deduct either the standard mileage rate (67 cents/mile for 2024) or actual expenses proportional to business use. Maintain detailed records. 6. Home office deduction: There are two methods to calculate the home office deduction: Simplified Method:Deduct $5 per square foot of your home office, up to a maximum of 300 square feet. This means the deduction is capped at $1,500. This method is straightforward and requires minimal documentation.Actual Expense Method:Calculate the percentage of your home's square footage used exclusively for business. Then apply this percentage to actual expenses such as rent or mortgage, utilities, maintenance, and property taxes. This method requires detailed records of all related expenses. If you choose this method, be sure to maintain accurate expense records in case the IRS requests documentation.File your freelance taxes proactively to avoid penalties and fines In addition to the last-minute freelance tax tips above, following these strategies will help you stay compliant and avoid unnecessary penalties or fines: Make quarterly estimated tax payments. The IRS expects freelancers to pay taxes on their income throughout the year. If you owe $1,000 or more in taxes annually, you're required to make quarterly estimated payments. Use Form 1040-ES to calculate these payments and ensure they're made by the due dates (April, June, September, and January).Avoid underpayment penalties. Make sure your quarterly payments or withholding cover at least 90% of your current tax liability or 100% of your prior year's tax liability (110% if your income was over $150,000). This safe harbor rule can help you avoid penalties for underpayment.File on time or request an extension. Missing the tax filing deadline can result in penalties. If you're not ready to file, apply for a six-month extension by April 15, 2025 as noted above. Remember, this is an extension to file, not to pay—estimate and pay what you believe you owe.Keep detailed and accurate tax records. Document all income, deductions and expenses meticulously. Having organized, thorough records will reduce errors on your tax return and help you substantiate deductions in case of an audit.Respond promptly to IRS notices. If you receive any correspondence from the IRS, address it quickly. Ignoring notices can lead to escalated penalties and interest charges. Remember, the IRS will never call, email, or text you. If you receive communication claiming to be from the IRS using these methods it is likely a scam. If you receive a mail notice, the best course of action is to contact a tax professional so you can understand what to do next. By staying proactive and informed about your tax obligations and proactive on your filings and record keeping, you can optimize any potential refund and avoid costly penalties. Investing time in proper tax planning and compliance will save you money and stress in the long run, keeping your focus where it should be. On growing your freelance business. View the full article

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—the provision that protects tech platforms from legal liability for content posted by their users—has long been a point of contention among lawmakers. Since its passage in 1996, it has fueled frustration across the political spectrum, with critics arguing that it enables Big Tech to dodge accountability. Now, nearly three decades later, a bipartisan group of senators is making a renewed push to dismantle it, with Senators Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin crossing party lines to draft a bill aimed at repealing Section 230, according to The Information. For years, Section 230 has been a scapegoat not just for politicians eager to rein in tech giants, but also for users frustrated by the prevalence of harmful content online. The clause has often been cited by platforms as a reason they cannot—or will not—remove content that, while not outright illegal, may be offensive or harmful, such as hate speech or harassment. Originally intended to foster innovation during the internet’s formative years, the provision now feels outdated to many observers. Few beyond the C-suites and legal departments of tech companies still support it. Still, experts warn that repealing Section 230 outright would be a mistake. “Sunsetting Section 230 without proposing ways to change it is like taking a hostage without having a list of demands ready,” says Adam Kovacevich, founder and CEO of the Chamber of Progress, a tech industry trade group. “This is a deeply unserious exercise that reflects the bipartisan opposition to 230 is only surface-deep.” Kovacevich argues that reform—not repeal—is the more responsible path forward. “If Congress doesn’t like Section 230, it should mend it, not end it,” he says. The bipartisan momentum behind the new bill gives it more traction than past attempts, which have often faltered due to partisan divides. But even with broader political alignment, a full repeal could backfire. Republicans have criticized the provision for allowing platforms to suppress content they favor, while Democrats believe it enables platforms to avoid accountability for hosting harmful material. Both sides want change—but for opposing reasons. “Both Democrats and Republicans should be wary of getting rid of Section 230,” warns Anupam Chander, a law professor at Georgetown University. He notes that the law protects a range of actions that each party values—even if it also enables behavior they oppose. “Section 230 protects platforms against lawsuits when they get rid of hate speech, such as lawsuits alleging discrimination against men or religion,” Chander says. That’s a key concern for liberal-leaning individuals who view anti-DEI backlash and culture war rhetoric as regressive. Yet conservatives, too, benefit from the law’s broad protections. “Section 230 also protects platforms like X or Truth Social so that they aren’t held liable for the speech they tolerate on their platforms,” he says. Without those protections, platforms could face costly legal challenges for hosting controversial speech—potentially chilling the very discourse their users want to preserve. “Both sides want different things from a post-230 world,” Chander adds, “but may find the speech they like deemed too risky by internet platforms.” Ultimately, he argues, it’s safer to reform the law than to scrap it entirely: “Being sued in the United States without a liability shield is an expensive and time-consuming undertaking.” View the full article

Turkish authorities have detained 1,133 people across Turkey since the start of protests five days ago against the detention of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on Monday. The detention last Wednesday of Imamoglu, President Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival, has triggered the biggest street protests in Turkey in more than a decade. On Sunday, a court jailed him, pending trial, on corruption charges that he denies. Despite bans on street gatherings in many cities, the mostly peaceful anti-government demonstrations continued for a fifth consecutive night on Sunday, with hundreds of thousands taking part. Yerlikaya said 123 police officers had been injured during the protests so far, adding that the government would not allow “the terrorising of the streets”. Those detained include nine journalists who covered overnight protests in several cities, the Journalists’ Union of Turkey said on Monday. It was not immediately clear why the journalists were detained. An Agence France Presse (AFP) staff photographer is among the detained journalists, the union said in a post on X. Imamoglu’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has been calling for protests against the court decision to arrest the mayor, which they label as politicised and undemocratic. Imamoglu has denied the charges he faces as “unimaginable accusations and slanders” and has also called for nationwide protests. Erdogan said last week that the government would not accept “the disruption of public order”. His government denies that the investigations are politically motivated and says the courts are independent. Omer Celik, spokesperson for Erdogan’s ruling AK Party, said on Monday the CHP’s call for protests was aimed at covering up the opposition’s shortcomings. “Democratic protest is a (fundamental) right, but the language used by the CHP is not the language of democratic protest,” Celik said. JAILED ‘FOR NO REASON’ Imamoglu, 54, was jailed pending trial on Sunday, as the CHP held a primary election to name him presidential candidate. Some 15 million votes were cast in support of the mayor. News of Imamoglu’s arrest covered the front pages of Turkish newspapers on Monday, with opposition media suggesting the mayor was arrested for being the most credible challenger to Erdogan. The mayor’s supporters said on Monday the jailing of Imamoglu demonstrated a lack of justice in Turkey. “I think there is an injustice committed against Imamoglu. They put the man in prison for no reason,” said Adem Bali, a 22- year-old construction worker. Cigdem Tatlica, an unemployed 50-year-old, said she believed there was no justice in Turkey. “This system cannot continue like this.” In an address to the demonstration in Istanbul’s Sarachane district in front of the municipality building, CHP leader Ozgur Ozel said on Sunday that they would continue the protests until Imamoglu was released. —Huseyin Hayatsever and Ali Kucukgocmen, Reuters View the full article

There’s never enough time when managing a project. That’s why we make schedules—to try and control time, just enough to get your deliverable by the deadline. Sometimes, however, things go awry. Changes in a project are common of course, but it’s the project manager’s responsibility to make sure that those changes don’t produce a negative impact on the project schedule. This is when the triple constraint usually comes into play; scope, time and budget. If one falls behind, the others have to make up the slack. There are many ways to adjust things on your project to make up for the time you’ve lost. That includes adding extra resources along the way, which is a method called project crashing. What Is Project Crashing? Project crashing is when you shorten the duration of a project by reducing the time of one or more tasks. Crashing is done by increasing the resources to the project, which helps make tasks take less time than what they were planned for. Of course, this also adds to the cost of the overall project. Therefore, the primary objective of project crashing is to shorten the project while also keeping costs at a minimum. Just as the triple constraint says, if you reduce the duration of the project, or its time, then costs will in turn have to increase. It’s a trade off. Crashing project management accounts for the triple constraint, in that to achieve it, you include additional resources or reduce the project requirements or scope. However, such drastic measures cannot be implemented without the sponsor or primary stakeholders agreeing to the changes. A result of project crashing can be a change to the critical path and the emergence of a new, different critical path. Project crash management requires that you return to your project schedule to make sure you’re aware of changes that have occurred there because of the project crashing. All of this is made easier by project management software with scheduling tools. With ProjectManager, you can build a project schedule in a matter of minutes on our Gantt charts, and then filter for the critical path. From there, you can make all the necessary changes you need to adjust your schedule and deliver on time and under budget. Get started for free. /wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Manufacturing-gantt-chart-light-mode-costs-exposed-cta-e1712005286389-1600x659.jpgProjectManager’s Gantt charts are ideal for project crashing. Learn more Different Interpretations of Project Crashing in Project Management Project crashing as a term is not etched in stone and can mean a few different things. It could refer to spending more money to get things done faster. It can also refer to pinpointing the critical path, providing greater resources there, without necessarily thinking about being efficient. Or, you can review the critical path and see if there are any activities that can be shortened by an influx of resources. A related method for truncating your schedule is called fast-tracking. This is when you overlap tasks that were originally scheduled to run separately. But, this course of action should not be taken without first analyzing its feasibility and risk. Whichever route you take, it’s always wise to give it thought and analysis. /wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Critical-path-method-template.jpg Get your free Critical Path Template Use this free Critical Path Template for Excel to manage your projects better. Download Excel File What Prompts Crashing in Project Management? When would a project manager want to increase investment to complete the project earlier? After all, a lot of time and effort went into the project planning and schedule. Obviously, since project crashing requires higher costs, it wouldn’t be used unless there’s an emergency. One reason for using project crashing would be if the project was scheduled unrealistically, and this wasn’t clear until the project has already been executed. This can even happen at the planning stage if the sponsor, customer or stakeholder insists on a due date that isn’t feasible. Another reason is that, during the process of a change control analysis (which shows impact on the time, cost, scope or other project factors), an issue comes up that must be addressed immediately. As issues arise in the course of managing a project that takes it off track, the project manager must figure out a way to lock back to the schedule baseline. As noted above, other than project crashing, there is the fast-tracking method. Though we’re discussing project crashing, it’s important to touch on when fast-tracking is preferable. Sometimes you can use either, but if the project is already over budget and you don’t have funds, then fast tracking is the likely option. Best Practices When Crashing Your Project Project crashing is usually a last resort, and it’s not without substantial risks. There are some things you need to consider before taking your project down this road. For one, are the tasks you’re looking to crash on the critical path? These tasks are going to impact the delivery of your project. If the tasks aren’t in the critical path, you can probably ignore them. Another thing to consider is the length of the tasks. A short task will be hard to speed up, especially if it doesn’t repeat throughout the project. Long tasks are going to usually have some fat to trim. But regardless of the task, you need to have resources available. If you don’t have access to the right resources, then it makes no sense for project crashing. Having to get new materials or team members is likely going to be too costly to be effective. /wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Resource-Plan-Screenshot-600x213.jpgFree resource plan template Download now Another consideration is if it would take too long to ramp up the project crashing; for instance, if the project involves very specific skills and onboarding new team members would be costly and time-consuming. While it might seem logical to crash at the end of the project when it is becoming clear you’re not going to hit your target, most experts suggest avoiding that scenario. Project crashing is most effective earlier in the timeline—usually when a project is less than halfway done. What Project Management Roles Are Involved in Project Crashing? There are several key players involved in project crashing, and it’s a collaborative process. Project Managers: Project managers are the central figures as they are responsible for deciding when and how to crash a project. They help manage resources and oversee changes made to the project schedule. The project manager will communicate any changes to all stakeholders. Team Members: Team members are also involved as they might need to work longer hours or adapt to new assignments. They must cooperate and remain flexible. Major Stakeholders: Stakeholders such as clients or sponsors may drive the need for project crashing due to changing requirements or deadlines. Other involved roles include resource managers or financial teams. When it comes to getting approval for project crashing, there isn’t a streamlined process. In smaller companies, the project manager might have more autonomy while larger corporations may need approvals from multiple layers of management. Generally speaking, the project manager, project sponsor, client or senior management team are all involved in the approval process, as they’re involved in the project’s schedule and budget. Project Crashing Management Stages Once you’ve made the decision to use project crashing, there are some steps you’ll want to follow to get the results you want. 1. Critical Path Analysis The first thing to do is analyze the critical path of your project. This will help you determine which tasks can be shortened to bring the project to a close sooner. Therefore, if you haven’t already, calculate your critical path and see which tasks are essential and which are secondary to the project’s success. /wp-content/uploads/2024/05/critical-path-method-screenshot-600x205.pngFree critical path method template Download now 2. Identify Tasks Get a list of all the tasks you have, then meet with those who have been assigned to complete them. Ask if they believe any of the tasks they’re responsible for are in the critical path and can be cut down. Then, start looking for ways to tighten up those tasks. 3. What’s the Trade-Off? Once you’ve narrowed down the tasks in the critical path that you believe can be shortened, start calculating how much adding more resources will cost. Find the tasks that can be allocated additional resources, and come in sooner with the least amount of strain on your budget. 4. Make Your Choice When you know what you will have to spend (compared to how much time you’ll save) for each of the tasks in your critical path, you must now make a decision and choose the least expensive way forward. Project crashing is not just adding resources to get done faster, but it’s getting the most in return for that extra expense. 5. Create a Budget Like any project, once you’ve decided on your plan, you have to pay for it. Making a project-crashing budget is the next step in executing your project-crashing plan. You’ll have to update your baseline, schedule and resource plan to align with your new initiative. Crashing in Project Management: Examples by Industry To better understand the concept of project crashing, let’s delve into some examples by industry. Project Crashing in Construction In construction projects, project crashing can help meet deadlines, recover from delays or keep up with client demands. The goal is to reduce the project’s completion time while minimizing any added costs. If a building project is running two weeks behind schedule due to rain delays, the project manager needs to adjust. They may authorize work to be completed over the weekend, hire extra concrete workers or pay for expedited delivery of steel beams. As a result, costs increase but the project can meet its deadline. Project Crashing in IT IT projects can also benefit from project crashing, and the focus is typically on shortening the critical path. However, this can lead to challenges like rushed development, integration issues, security risks and more. For example, if a company is working on upgrading its operating system by a particular deadline, it may bring in outside contractors and consultants to help while the internal team works extended hours. This increases costs but keeps the project on schedule. Project Crashing in Manufacturing The goal of project crashing in manufacturing is to compress the production schedule while minimizing its impact on cost and quality. This can be accomplished through resource allocation, outsourcing, increased workforce, reducing setup times and more. If a company wants to launch a new product before a competitor, for example, it may accelerate production by investing in new equipment and streamlining the assembly process. Even though this is an investment, it can help the company launch the product on schedule. Project Crashing in Event Planning In event planning projects, project crashing revolves around reducing the timeline to prepare for the event without taking away from its quality. This may consist of expediting vendors, prioritizing resources or simplifying the project scope. When an event planner learns that the venue unexpectedly cancels a few days before the event, they need to find a new venue, renegotiate contracts and adjust logistics as quickly as possible. Although more expensive, this route can help ensure the event goes smoothly. How ProjectManager Makes Project Crashing Easier Project crashing involves knowing your resources and then reallocating them. If time is working against you, then this process needs to be as efficient as possible. ProjectManager is an award-winning software that tracks your resources, teams and projects to boost productivity. Track Resource Costs All your resources can be identified with our resource management tools, from teams to supplies, equipment and more. When you add the hourly rates to the project, you can see them across all our software features. Once you team logs their hours, we calculate the actual costs for you. Then, they can be compared to the planned costs, so you know immediately if you’re on target. /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Timesheet_Wide_Zoom-175.jpg Use the Gantt to Schedule Resources & Tasks Use our online Gantt chart tool to schedule your resources. Assignments can be made while in this view. A popup window will also tell you how many hours your team member is working, and if they have too many or too few tasks assigned to them. The Gantt will also filter the critical path, estimate planned costs for your resources and set a baseline. You can even track progress on the Gantt, or by using our real-time dashboard. /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Gantt_Construction_Wide_Zoom-175.jpg Balance Your Team’s Workload for Efficient Project Crashing To make sure your project crashing management plan isn’t overloading some of your team while others are under-allocated, use the workload page. On the color-coded chart, you can easily see who has too many tasks, balance the workload or assign them to the project crashing. /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Workload_Wide_Zoom-175.jpg ProjectManager gives you the tools to control your resources and quickly move them around to execute your project crashing management. You can plan it on our Gantt chart, track progress on the dashboard and even report to stakeholders with reports that can be filtered to show them the data they ask for. See why tens of thousands of teams at organizations as varied as the Bank of America and NASA are using our software. Take this free 30-day trial now. The post Project Crashing in Project Management: Definition & Best Practices appeared first on ProjectManager. View the full article

Google's budget phone for the masses, the Pixel 9a, will retail at $499 when it launches in April. That's a full $100 less than the iPhone 16e and $300 less than the Pixel 9. Even so, the 9a has many of the same features as the Pixel 9. It carries over the same Tensor G4 chip, and promises to feature most of the Pixel 9's AI suite. Most, but not all. Ars Technica is now reporting that the Pixel 9a will be missing some crucial AI features at launch. That's because the Pixel 9a features 8GB RAM, while the Pixel 9 has 12GB RAM, and the Pixel 9 Pro models feature 16GB RAM. While the Pixel 9a comes with on-device Gemini Nano, Ars Technica confirmed with Google that it's going to be using the Gemini Nano 1.0 XXS ("extra extra small") model. This is the company's lightest available model, and the one that runs on the Pixel 8. The rest of the Pixel 9 series phones, by comparison, all run the Gemini Nano XS (extra small) model. While you can still use Gemini AI on Pixel 9a using the power button, being limited to the XXS model means it will lack some of the Pixel line's tentpole AI features. The 8GB RAM is not enough to run the Gemini AI models in the background, and the XXS model is text-only. Because it can't run in the background, and it can't process images, it therefore can't support features like Pixel Screenshots app, which require image processing in the background. It also won't support Call Notes, a feature that uses audio analysis to provide on-device AI summaries of phone conversations. Additionally, it's possible that the Pixel line's newly announced spam detection feature might not be available on the Pixel 9a, but that's not confirmed as of yet. Luckily, the Recorder app will still work, because the app creates a transcript first (not using Gemini AI), and then uses AI on the transcribed text, something that Pixel 9a can pull off. That's all we know so far. More details on what works and what doesn't will only be available once the Pixel 9a is available in the wild, sometime in April. With this Pixel 9a release, the gap between the flagship Pixel and the budget Pixel is widening. Luckily, it's limited to AI features for now. If you don't intend to use these on-device AI features, you won't feel the pinch. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I work at a small creative business with about 25 employees, Our structure is pretty flat, and there is no traditional HR or processes that come with working at larger organizations. There are three main departments. I run one, and my coworker who I am writing about, Maggie, runs one of the others. A small thing has become a big issue: While we all have open calendars to make scheduling easier, Maggie refuses to make her calendar open and keeps it entirely private. In addition, her calendar is often entirely booked with meetings, showing no open times to add anything. As a result, in order to schedule almost anything, the project management team is forced to reach out to Maggie to ask about flexibility on her calendar and wait for her response and/or approval to put something on (often she refuses and says she has no time available). As you can imagine, this creates a bottleneck and a considerable amount of frustration for the PM team, who cannot easily do their work. It also adds a layer that makes it seem like Maggie is the the most senior employee (she is not) and gives her an element of control over all meetings. To add to the frustration, it has become clear that many of the meetings on her calendar have only her in them and are personal appointments or time blocks to do things like “clean the house.” The PM team knows this because they can see all the other meetings on the calendar, so can see she is not booked with anyone, and more than once Maggie has forgotten to sign out of a shared computer and they have seen meetings on her calendar during work hours (10am-6pm) like “walk the dog,” “pilates,” etc. While we keep a flexible work style with two days home and treat each other like adults who can use their time as they like to get their work done (we all often have things on our calendar like “dentist appt”), this calendar issue has become infuriating for many people in the agency. Maggie could open her calendar and make any blocks she wishes to private, but she refuses to do this (and has even said she would quit over it). As a result, her calendar has become a source of mockery. The PM team is convinced it’s all fake vs. having respect for blocked times, her relationships are suffering because she is seen as uncooperative, controlling, and sneaky (hiding something), and the vibes are getting more and more toxic. How would you suggest we move forward with this situation, which is currently at a stalemate? Force her to open her calendar or offer a consequence (no idea what that would be), allow her to quit over it (I would not hate this option), allow her to continue keeping it private and change how we schedule, all make our calendars private (petty but would a point), let it go? I wrote back and asked, “What has Maggie said about her reasons when asked why she wants to do it this way? And what does Maggie’s boss say about it?” Maggie refuses to elaborate other than to say that she thinks it’s a violation of her privacy and she wants a private calendar When the CEO, who is her boss, spoke about it, she told the CEO she would quit if forced to open her calendar. That was about a year ago, and I don’t think the CEO really understands the implications. This week I spoke to the CEO about it being an ongoing problem and someone else sent the CEO screenshots of Maggie’s calendar to show the scheduling blocks are all personal. So we’ll see if there is action taken but when I spoke to the CEO, she expressed she felt like she had no way to force Maggie to comply. You have a Maggie problem, but you also have a CEO problem. Or at least you do if people have clearly laid out to the CEO what problems this is causing — that it’s creating a bottleneck and making the PMs’ jobs harder and that Maggie hasn’t offered any reason for being so committed to not complying with a practice everyone else uses. If the CEO’s response to that is still that she has no way to force Maggie to comply … then are there any policies or accountability in this organization at all? What would the CEO do if someone stopped coming to work? Refused to meet deadlines? Wanted to walk around the office pants-less? Obviously these are bigger deals than “won’t share her calendar,” but the point is that the only way offices can function is if there are shared agreements around expectations and practices and if people are actually held accountable to meeting those. But I’m curious about whether the CEO does know how much of a problem this has become. Often when stuff like this gets shared, it’s shared in a sort of shorthand that doesn’t communicate the full extent of the problem. So if there’s any doubt about how much the CEO understands, the next step is to go back to her and describe in detail the specific issues Maggie’s intransigence is causing, and then state clearly that things are at a crisis point and the CEO needs to use her authority to intervene because a year of trying to resolve it with Maggie directly hasn’t worked. This next part is out of your control, but from there the CEO should talk to Maggie and find out why she’s digging her heels. If Maggie isn’t willing to offer a compelling reason, then the CEO should tell her that this is an expectation of her job like any other, that she needs to comply with it because it’s causing XYZ work problems, and that the CEO is going to check in two days to make sure she’s done it, and that she needs to continue to comply going forward. And then the CEO needs to hold her to that like she would any other work expectation. The CEO may be thinking “I’m not willing to lose an employee over something as small as their calendar settings,” but this isn’t really about the calendar. It’s about someone insisting they’re going to cause bottlenecks and problems for their colleagues and claiming they feel so strongly about their right to do that that they’ll quit over it without ever explaining why it matters. That’s not about calendar settings; it’s about Maggie’s fundamental willingness to work respectfully and cooperatively on a team. It also makes me really curious about the rest of Maggie’s work, because I’m skeptical that this isn’t coming out in other ways too. View the full article

Move could sharply increase levies on China and India, major purchasers of Caracas’s crude View the full article

When you start the planning process for a project, one of the first things you need to think about is: what can go wrong? It sounds negative, but pragmatic project managers know this type of thinking is preventative. Issues will inevitably come up, and you need a mitigation strategy in place to know how to manage risks when project planning. But how do you work towards resolving the unknown? It sounds like a philosophical paradox, but don’t worry—there are practical steps you can take thanks to project risk management. In this article, we’ll discuss strategies that let you get a glimpse at potential risks, so you can identify and track risks on your project. What Is Project Risk Management? Project risk management is the process of identifying, analyzing and responding to any risk that arises over the life cycle of a project to help the project remain on track and meet its goal. Risk management isn’t reactive only; it should be part of the planning process to figure out the risk that might happen in the project and how to control that risk if it in fact occurs. A risk is anything that could potentially impact your project’s timeline, performance or budget. Risks are potentialities, and in a project management context, if they become realities, they then become classified as “issues” that must be addressed with a risk response plan. So risk management, then, is the process of identifying, categorizing, prioritizing and planning for risks before they become issues. Risk management can mean different things on different types of projects. On large-scale projects, risk management strategies might include extensive detailed planning for each risk to ensure mitigation strategies are in place if project issues arise. For smaller projects, risk management might mean a simple, prioritized list of high, medium and low-priority risks. /wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Risk-Matrix-Template-for-Excel.png Get your free Risk Matrix Template Use this free Risk Matrix Template for Excel to manage your projects better. Download Excel File How to Manage Project Risk To begin managing risk, it’s crucial to start with a clear and precise definition of what your project has been tasked to deliver. In other words, write a very detailed project charter, with your project vision, objectives, scope and deliverables. This way risks can be identified at every stage of the project. Then you’ll want to engage your team early in identifying any and all risks. Don’t be afraid to get more than just your team involved to identify and prioritize risks, too. Many project managers simply email their project team and ask to send them things they think might go wrong on the project. But to better plot project risk, you should get the entire project team, your client’s representatives, and vendors into a room together and do a risk identification session. With every risk you define, you’ll want to log it somewhere—using a risk tracking template helps you prioritize the level of risk. Then, create a risk management plan to capture the negative and positive impacts of the project and what actions you will take to deal with them. You’ll want to set up regular meetings to monitor risk while your project is ongoing. Transparency is critical. Project management software can help you keep track of risk. ProjectManager is online software that helps you identify risks, track them and calculate their impact. With our Risk view, you can make a risk list with your team and stay on top of all the risks within your project. Write a description, add tags, identify a resolution, mark impact and likelihood, even see a risk matrix—all in one place. Get started today with a free trial. /wp-content/uploads/2024/03/CTA-light-mode-risk-view.pngMake a risk tracker and manage risks with your team online. What Are Positive Risks & Negative Risks in Project Management? Not all risk is created equally. Risk can be either positive or negative, though most people assume risks are inherently the latter. Where negative risk implies something unwanted that has the potential to irreparably damage a project, positive risks are opportunities that can affect the project in beneficial ways. Negative risks are part of your risk management plan, just as positive risks should be, but the difference is in approach. You manage and account for known negative risks to neuter their impact, but positive risks can also be managed to take full advantage of them. There are many examples of positive risks in projects: you could complete the project early; you could acquire more customers than you accounted for; you could imagine how a delay in shipping might open up a potential window for better marketing opportunities, etc. It’s important to note, though, that these definitions are not etched in stone. Positive risk can quickly turn to negative risk and vice versa, so you must be sure to plan for all eventualities with your team. Risk Management Statistics and Trends The risk management industry is seeing significant growth, as the global market is expected to reach $52 billion by 2032. This reflects a compound annual growth rate of 15.4 percent between 2022 and 2032. But why is this the case? A large factor may be due to the digital transformation of organizations. More companies are adopting advanced analytics, machine learning and AI to improve their risk management processes. As technology increases, the risk of cybercrime increases. The global cost of cybercrime is expected to reach $13.28 trillion by 2028. As a result of these growing statistics, the role of a risk manager is also increasing in importance. This is the direct result of factors such as the need for proactive risk management strategies, increased risk complexity in the workplace and a general sense of interconnectedness between people and technology. Managing Risk Throughout the Organization Can your organization also improve by adopting risk management into its daily routine? Yes! Building a risk management protocol into your organization’s culture by creating a consistent set of risk management tools and templates, with training, can reduce overhead over time. That way, each time you start a new project, it won’t be like having to reinvent the wheel. Things such as your organization’s records and history are an archive of knowledge that can help you learn from that experience when approaching risk in a new project. Also, by adopting the attitudes and values of your organization to become more aware of risk, your organization can develop a risk culture. With improved governance comes better planning, strategy, policy and decisions. Free Risk Matrix Template To manage project risks throughout your organization, it’s important to create a risk matrix. A risk matrix is going to help you organize your risks by severity and likelihood, so you can stay on top of potential issues that threaten the greatest impact. Try this free risk matrix template for Excel so you and your team can organize project risks. /wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Risk-Matrix-Screenshot.jpg In addition to this risk matrix template, we have created more free risk management templates for Word and Excel. 6 Steps in the Risk Management Process So, how do you handle something as seemingly elusive as project risk management? You make a risk management plan. It’s all about the process. Turn disadvantages into an advantage by following these six steps. Identify the Risk You can’t resolve a risk if you don’t know what it is. There are many ways to identify risk. As you do go through this step, you’ll want to collect the data in a risk register. One way is brainstorming with your team, colleagues or stakeholders. Find the individuals with relevant experience and set up interviews so you can gather the information you’ll need to both identify and resolve the risks. Think of the many things that can go wrong. Note them. Do the same with historical data on past projects. Now your list of potential risks has grown. Make sure the risks are rooted in the cause of a problem. Basically, drill down to the root cause to see if the risk is one that will have the kind of impact on your project that needs identifying. When trying to minimize risk, it’s good to trust your intuition. This can point you to unlikely scenarios that you just assume couldn’t happen. Use a risk breakdown structure process to weed out risks from non-risks. Analyze the Risk Analyzing risk is hard. There is never enough information you can gather. Of course, a lot of that data is complex, but most industries have best practices, which can help you with your risk analysis. You might be surprised to discover that your company already has a framework for this process. When you assess project risk you can ultimately and proactively address many impacts, such as avoiding potential litigation, addressing regulatory issues, complying with new legislation, reducing your exposure and minimizing impact. So, how do you analyze risk in your project? Through qualitative and quantitative risk analysis, you can determine how the risk is going to impact your schedule and budget. Project management software helps you analyze risk by monitoring your project. ProjectManager takes that one step further with real-time dashboards that display live data. Unlike other software tools, you don’t have to set up our dashboard. It’s ready to give you a high-level view of your project from the get-go. We calculate the live date and then display it for you in easy-to-read graphs and charts. Catch issues faster as you monitor time, costs and more. /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Dashboard_Construction_Wide_Zoom-150.jpgCapture issues before they become problems with real-time dashboards from ProjectManager. Get started for free! Prioritize Risks & Issues Not all risks are created equally. You need to evaluate the risk to know what resources you’re going to assemble towards resolving it when and if it occurs. Having a large list of risks can be daunting. But you can manage this by simply categorizing risks as high, medium or low. Now there’s a horizon line and you can see the risk in context. With this perspective, you can begin to plan for how and when you’ll address these risks. Then, if risks become issues, it’s advisable to keep an issue log so you can keep track of each of them and implement corrective actions. Some risks are going to require immediate attention. These are the risks that can derail your project. Failure isn’t an option. Other risks are important, but perhaps do not threaten the success of your project. You can act accordingly. Then there are those risks that have little to no impact on the overall project’s schedule and budget. Some of these low-priority risks might be important, but not enough to waste time on. Assign an Owner to the Risk All your hard work identifying and evaluating risk is for naught if you don’t assign someone to oversee the risk. In fact, this is something that you should do when listing the risks. Who is the person who is responsible for that risk, identifying it when and if it should occur and then leading the work toward resolving it? That determination is up to you. There might be a team member who is more skilled or experienced in the risk. Then that person should lead the charge to resolve it. Or it might just be an arbitrary choice. Of course, it’s better to assign the task to the right person, but equally important in making sure that every risk has a person responsible for it. Think about it. If you don’t give each risk a person tasked with watching out for it, and then dealing with resolving it when and if it should arise, you’re opening yourself up to more risk. It’s one thing to identify risk, but if you don’t manage it then you’re not protecting the project. /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/PPM-ebook-banner-ad-evergreen.jpg Respond to the Risk Now the rubber hits the road. You’ve found a risk. All that planning you’ve done is going to be put to use. First, you need to know if this is a positive or negative risk. Is it something you could exploit for the betterment of the project? If not you need to deploy a risk mitigation strategy. A risk mitigation strategy is simply a contingency plan to minimize the impact of a project risk. You then act on the risk by how you prioritize it. You have communications with the risk owner and, together, decide on which of the plans you created to implement to resolve the risk. Monitor the Risk You can’t just set forces against risk without tracking the progress of that initiative. That’s where the monitoring comes in. Whoever owns the risk will be responsible for tracking its progress toward resolution. However, you’ll need to stay updated to have an accurate picture of the project’s overall progress to identify and monitor new risks. You’ll want to set up a series of project meetings to manage the risks. Make sure you’ve already decided on the means of communication to do this. It’s best to have various channels dedicated to communication. Whatever you choose to do, remember to always be transparent. It’s best if everyone in the project knows what is going on, so they know what to be on the lookout for and help manage the process. In the video below, Jennifer Bridges, professional project manager (PMP) dives deeper into the steps in the risk management process. Examples of Risks & Risk Management Strategies No two project risks are the same, and risk management varies across industries. Below are some examples of how to approach risk management in different industries. Construction Risk Management Construction projects are inherently risky. Numerous potential hazards can impact safety, timelines and budgets. Construction risks may be related to finances, safety, schedules, environment, design or contracts. The risk: If there are material delivery issues, design changes, labor shortages or bad weather, it may result in a schedule risk. This uses additional resources and can delay the timeline. Risk management strategy: One example of a construction risk management strategy is contingency planning and creating a schedule with realistic buffer time. Project managers can use critical path analysis to identify key dependencies and monitor the schedule for any updates. If there are potential delays, a contingency plan can help mitigate them. Manufacturing Risk Management Manufacturing projects range from setting up a new production line to launching a new product. Risk management can help minimize disruptions and improve profitability. The risk: Production risks such as equipment failures, production line downtime or quality control issues can cause the project to be delivered late or at a lower quality than expected. Risk management strategy: Quality control procedures such as implementing preventive maintenance programs can help ensure that production risks don’t disrupt the process. This is an example of a risk mitigation strategy. Employees should receive ongoing training and development to help spot equipment failures before they snowball into something more serious. IT Risk Management IT projects are known for their complexity and rapid pace. Risk management in IT can help maximize the return on investment and minimize disruptions. The risk: Technical risks such as integration issues, technology failures or performance problems may result in throwing the project off schedule and using more resources than originally planned. Risk management strategy: To avoid technical risks, the IT project manager can implement contingency planning such as thorough technology assessments and testing before the project kicks off. They may also utilize industry best practices and expert technical resources to ensure any performance issues are addressed as quickly as possible. Marketing Risk Management From rebranding a product to launching a new campaign, marketing projects are subject to risks that can impact their success. The risk: There’s a new creative marketing campaign being launched that has the potential to fail to resonate with the target audience. This would waste significant time and resources. Risk management strategy: To avoid creative concepts failing, the marketing project manager and team can conduct rigorous creative testing and feedback loops to ensure they understand their audience. If changes are needed before launch, the team can implement the strategy accordingly. Risk Management Templates We’ve created dozens of free project management templates for Excel and Word to help you manage projects. Here are some of our risk management templates to help you as you go through the process of identifying, analyzing, prioritizing and responding to risks. Risk Register Template A risk register is a risk management document that allows project managers to identify and keep track of potential project risks. Using a risk register to list down project risks is one of the first steps in the risk management process and one of the most important because it sets the stage for future risk management activities. Risk Assessment Template This free risk assessment template helps project management teams describe risks in detail, including the risk category, risk source, likelihood, who the impacted stakeholders are, among other important risk management information. Risk Matrix Template A risk matrix is a project management tool that allows project managers to analyze the likelihood and potential impact of project risks. This helps them prioritize project risks and build a risk mitigation plan to respond to those risks if they were to occur. Managing Risk With ProjectManager Using a risk-tracking template is a start, but to gain even more control over your project risks you’ll want to use project management software. ProjectManager has a number of tools including risk management that let you address risks at every phase of a project. Make an Online Risk Register Identify and track all the risks for your project in one place. Unlike other project management software, you can manage risks alongside your project rather than in a separate tool. Set due dates, mark priority, identify resolutions and more. /wp-content/uploads/2024/01/risk-image-lightmode.png Gantt Charts for Risk Management Plans Use our award-winning Gantt charts to create detailed risk management plans to prevent risks from becoming issues. Schedule, assign and monitor project tasks with full visibility. Gantt charts allow team members add comments and files to their assigned tasks, so all the communication happens on the project level—in real time. /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Gantt_Manufacturing_Wide_Zoom-175_Focus-on-Tasklist_Spreadsheet.jpg Risk management is complicated. A risk register or template is a good start, but you’re going to want robust project management software to facilitate the process of risk management. ProjectManager is an online tool that fosters the collaborative environment you need to get risks resolved, as well as provides real-time information, so you’re always acting on accurate data. Try it yourself and see, take this free 30-day trial. The post The Risk Management Process in Project Management appeared first on ProjectManager. View the full article

IAB reports that most media companies haven't adopted AI despite positive results. Though half plan implementation by 2026. The post 70% Of Media Companies Not Fully Using AI, IAB Report Finds appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

The most affordable iPhone, or the most affordable Pixel? Which one is right for you? Google's Pixel 9a comes in $100 cheaper than the iPhone 16e, and has many AI features and specs from its flagship big brother, the Pixel 9. And it's a similar story with the iPhone 16e. The Pixel 9a starts shipping in April, while the iPhone 16e is out already (and we've already compared it with Samsung's mid-range lineup). But, as always, the devil is in the details. Here's how Google's new Pixel 9a compares to the iPhone 16e. Design Credit: Apple Both the iPhone 16e and the Pixel 9a have a similar design language. They have flat sides, flat fronts, and rounded edges. And unlike its flagship counterpart, the Pixel 9a does not feature a camera bump. This is a big departure for the Pixel line, but it does make it look more like an iPhone. Pixel 8a (left) vs Pixel 9a (right). Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt On the front, the iPhone features a notch-style display instead of the Dynamic Island found on the flagship iPhones. The Pixel 9a, comparatively, has a circular cutout at the top for the front-facing camera. The Pixel 9a weighs 6.6 ounces, while the iPhone 16e is ever so slightly lighter at 5.9 ounces. The iPhone 16e only comes in Black or White, but the Pixel 9a comes in four different color options: Porcelain, Obsidian, Peony, and Iris. The Peony color is the light-pink option, while the Iris color looks like a mix of purple and lavender. Display Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt The Pixel 9a has a 6.3-inch OLED screen (2,424 by 1,080 pixels), supports variable refresh rate (between 60-120Hz), and has a max brightness of 2700 nits (1800 nits typical brightness). The iPhone 16e on the other hand a smaller 6.1-inch OLED display with a nearly identical resolution (2,532 by 1,170 pixels), and offers a fixed 60Hz refresh rate and a maximum brightness of 1200 nits (800 nits typical brightness). On paper, it seems like the Pixel is out in the lead here, offering a high-refresh rate display that's slightly bigger, sharper, and much brighter than the iPhone. PerformanceBoth the iPhone 16e and Pixel 9a run on chips made by the same company, and are featured in their flagship counterparts. The iPhone 16e features an Apple A18 chip (minus one GPU core) that's found in the iPhone 16 series, while the Pixel 9a uses Google's Tensor G4 chip, same as the Pixel 9. Both devices feature 8GB RAM, which is a downgrade from the flagship. While the Pixel 9a benchmark scores aren't out yet, we can use the Pixel 9 as a comparison, as both devices share the same chip. In Geekbench, Pixel 9 scored 1,657 in single-core performance and 4,060 in multi-core performance. The iPhone 16e, on the other hand, score 2,706 in single-core testing and 7,942 in multi-core testing. Based on raw numbers, it looks like the iPhone 16e's performance is far better than Pixel 9a's. Both devices should be plenty fast for day-to-day use, but the extra headroom from the A18 processor bodes well for iPhone 16e's longevity. CamerasThe iPhone 16e famously has a single camera setup with a single 48MP lens at the rear, while the Pixel 9a has a 48MP ( f/1.7) wide-angle lens and an additional 13MP ( f/2.2) ultra-wide sensor. Apple's sensor lets in more light, however, which should make low-light photography better. Both devices capture 4K video at 30 or 60 frames per second. The iPhone also has options for 24 and 25 frames per second. iPhone and Pixels are generally good at photography, and each have their own slightly different look that largely comes down to computational postprocessing. Both devices also come with their own AI photo editing features, although it's uncertain which will be more useful until the Pixel 9a releases. Battery LifeBoth phones go big on battery life. Google has put in a massive 5,100 mAh battery in the Pixel 9a and is promising over 30 hours of battery life. The iPhone 16e, meanwhile, features a 4,004 mAh battery, and Apple says it has the largest battery life of any iPhone, promising 26 hours of offline video, or 21 hours of streaming video. In real life testing, PCMag found that the iPhone 16e lasted 21 hours and 39 minutes in a battery benchmark test, although Pixel 9a tests are still a question mark. PriceWith the Pixel 9a, you clearly get more for less. Google's budget phone starts at $499 for 128GB storage, and the upgrade to 256GB only costs $559. On the other hand, the iPhone 16e starts at $599 for 128GB, and goes up to $699 for 256GB, or $899 for 512GB. Although, it's worth reiterating that the iPhone 16e is available to purchase right now, while the Pixel 9a will start shipping sometime in April 2025. Which One Is Right For You?Your choice starts with the ecosystem. If you want a smartphone to work well with your Mac, the iPhone 16e might be the default choice for you. The same goes for Pixel 9a if you really want an Android phone. If you want the best AI features, the Pixel 9a might have an edge. It comes with Gemini Nano built-in, and the Gemini app adds support for AI features like Gemini Live, AI photo editing, and more. Apple Intelligence on the iPhone 16e also supports AI features like Writing Tools, photo Clean Up, and more, but the AI-enhanced Siri largely isn't out yet. As for hardware, if you want a phone that will last for a longer time, the iPhone 16e's slightly stronger chip is a better bet. However, the Pixel 9a is the value for money pick. Not only is the base model $100 cheaper, the 256GB version is $140 cheaper than the iPhone 16e. View the full article

After nearly 13 years leading PepsiCo design, its first chief design officer—Mauro Porcini—is departing the company. (Previous to PepsiCo, he was the first designer named to a chief design officer role at 3M.) Under Porcini, design at the PepsiCo family of brands has seen a significant glow up. He arrived shortly after 2008’s disastrous Pepsi rebrand during the era of flat design. And he spent the next decade investing in more internal talent—successfully arguing that the approach would actually save the company money while offering stronger creative autonomy. Porcini opened a flagship design center in NYC in 2012, then following its success, he added 18 more across the world, creating a team that swelled to 400 designers globally. Pepsi’s revenue has grown 40% over that time, while its stock has tripled. Porcini is leaving on two particular high notes—a well received black and blue Pepsi rebrand launched in 2023, and a new Mountain Dew that embraced its Appalachian roots last year. He also published the business memoir The Human Side of Innovation: The Power of People in Love with People, in 2022. Porcini’s next move is still unknown. Meanwhile, we’ve reached out to PepsiCo to inquire if the company intends to hire a new chief design officer and will update this story if we hear back. View the full article

StubHub’s 2024 revenue surged 29.5%, it reported on Friday in its U.S. initial public offering paperwork, as the online ticketing marketplace moves ahead with its long-sought New York flotation. A handful of companies are moving ahead with stock market listings despite volatility arising from uncertainty around U.S. trade policy. Nvidia-backed startup CoreWeave and Swedish fintech Klarna are among the companies gearing up to go public in New York. StubHub, one of the biggest secondary ticketing marketplaces for live events, will sell new shares in the proposed offering, it said. Its revenue jumped to $1.77 billion in 2024, compared with $1.37 billion a year earlier, thanks to higher ticket sales. New York-based StubHub swung to a loss of $2.8 million in 2024, compared with a profit of $405.2 million in 2023. “StubHub’s filing follows on the recent filings of other high-profile deals set to go public soon, including CoreWeave and Klarna. This indicates a recovering U.S. IPO market with owners seeing a window of opportunity to go public,” said IPOX CEO Josef Schuster. “StubHub remains one of the most closely watched IPOs this year and ahead of FIFA 2026.” Founded in 2000, StubHub’s ticketing marketplace allows fans to buy tickets for live events. Buyers from over 200 countries purchased over 40 million tickets on its platform in 2024. CEO Eric Baker left StubHub ahead of its $310-million sale to e-commerce firm eBay in 2007. Baker in 2006 launched viagogo, a rival ticket reseller. Over a decade later, in 2020, viagogo bought StubHub from eBay for $4.05 billion. In 2022, StubHub and viagogo completed the integration of their businesses. StubHub’s major shareholders include buyout firm Madrone Capital and venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners. StubHub, which has tapped over 10 Wall Street banks for the IPO, will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “STUB.” J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are the lead underwriters. IPO proceeds will be used to repay debt and for general purposes. —Arasu Kannagi Basil, Reuters View the full article

Depending on the information you're sharing, you'll want to select the right imagery. Quick Tech Talk With Steve Yoss CPE Today Go PRO for members-only access to more Stephen Yoss. View the full article

Depending on the information you're sharing, you'll want to select the right imagery. Quick Tech Talk With Steve Yoss CPE Today Go PRO for members-only access to more Stephen Yoss. View the full article

Filling out CAPTCHAs to prove you're a human is one of the regular annoyances of the internet—but maybe it doesn't need to be. A new feature in the latest version of One UI 7 for Samsung devices promises to solve CAPTCHAs (or Completely Automated Public Turing tests, to name them in full), but it's not yet clear how effective it will be. Why sites use CAPTCHAsCAPTCHAs pop up on numerous websites, often when you're trying to log in, and their purpose is to prove you're not a bot. The idea is that websites don't want to be overwhelmed with bot spam or come under attack from a swarm of bots, and CAPTCHAs are one way to prevent those problems. The challenge that you're met with is typically something that's relatively straightforward for a person to do, but tricky for a web bot. You may have to identify a group of misshapen letters that are put on top of a distracting background, or you might have to click all the pictures in a grid that have motorcycles in them. While it is necessary to put up defenses against bots, these CAPTCHAs can be a frustrating hurdle for users to get over, and they can often take up a minute or two to complete in full. What's more, some versions of these bot checkers also look at your behavior and actions in the browser to determine whether or not you're human—which isn't great from a privacy point of view. With all that in mind, Samsung is aiming to make your life online a little easier with a new feature called Automatic Verification, which essentially solves CAPTCHAs for you. As spotted by SammyGuru, it's available in the latest version of the Samsung Internet browser on One UI 7, so you can try it now on Galaxy S25 phones, and it's coming soon to older devices. How to turn on Automatic Verification Enabling the Automatic Verification feature. Credit: Lifehacker Open up Samsung Internet on your phone, then tap the menu button (three horizontal lines, bottom right) and Settings. Choose Privacy dashboard, then Smart anti-tracking, and you'll get to the Automatic Verification toggle switch—if it's not already enabled, you can turn it on here. The feature "prevents websites from using data collected during the user authentication process to track your activities" according to the notes accompanying the latest app update. "You can use Automatic Verification to skip the CAPTCHA step on websites." There are a few caveats to keep in mind. First, this is a feature that's restricted to the Samsung Internet browser, so you can't use it with other web browsers you might have installed on your device. Also, websites have to support the feature, Samsung says—it's not clear what that means, but it sounds like it won't work with every CAPTCHA you come across. Does Automatic Verification work?I tested the feature out on several websites, including the demos available at NopeCHA, and they all appeared as normal—it didn't appear that Automatic Verification made any difference. This could be a case of a feature that's great in theory but which doesn't actually work when put to the test. Alternately, it might be too soon to expect results, as Samsung has only just introduced the feature, so it's perhaps no surprise that it's not playing nicely with every website yet. If Automatic Verification is eventually supported more widely across the most popular websites, it could be another reason to stick to Samsung's built-in mobile browser. At this point, that's a big if. View the full article

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google spoke about when (if ever) independent sites will see their content surface better in Google Search and hint...View the full article

March 24, 2025 Hey folks, Kicking off the week with a quote from James Clear: "Sometimes all you need for exceptional results is average effort repeated for an above-average amount of time." When the job search feels like a grind, consistency is your secret weapon. You've got this! Vic Our Favorite Articles 💯US Executives Predict Work From Home Is Here To Stay (HBR)Forget the return-to-office panic: leaders are betting big on remote. ​This Stanford brief​ breaks down the numbers behind the shift. Illustration by Sandra NavarroYou Don't Need a Mentor to Get the Career Advice You Need (HBR)Mentorship is great but not essential. ​This article​ offers smart ways to get career advice without relying on one person. Women Want Flexibility At Work, But Worry It Could Hurt Their Careers (CNBC)Remote or not, the glass ceiling isn't budging. This ​new survey​ uncovers what's holding women back at work in 2025. Illustration: Rita Liu/The GuardianHelp! It Turns Out Breaks Make You More Productive (The Guardian)In a world obsessed with hustle, ​this might be​ the productivity advice we all need: Take a break. Seriously. This Week's Sponsor 🙌Too many emails? Declutter your inbox with Meco, your home for reading newsletters. Try it for free Remotive Jobs 💼Is this job for you? 👉 ​Senior Backend Engineer at Volatus Health​ (Worldwide) 👉 ​Senior Ruby on Rails Developer at Proxify​ (CET +/- 3 hours) 👉 ​Senior Enterprise System Engineer (Power Automate) at Proxify​ (CET +/- 3 hours) 👉 ​Senior Sharepoint Developer at Proxify​ (CET +/- 3 hours) Free Guides & Tools​Public Job Board​We curate 2,000 remote jobs so you don't have to! ​Find your remote job →​ ​Exclusive Webinar​3 Mistakes to Avoid When Looking For A Remote Startup Job (And What To Do Instead) ​Register for free →​ ​Job Search Tips​Looking for a remote job? Here are our tips to help you work remotely ​Check it out → Join the Remotive newsletter Subscribe to get our latest content by email. Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription. There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again. Email address Subscribe Powered by ConvertKit View the full article

ADHD content has been trending on TikTok for a while. Unsurprisingly, much of it has been found to be misleading. A study published last week in the journal PLOS One found that fewer than half of the claims in popular ADHD-related TikTok videos aligned with clinical diagnostic criteria or professional treatment guidelines. Researchers also warned that the more ADHD content young adults consume on TikTok, the more likely they are to overestimate both how common and how severe ADHD symptoms are in the general population. Even those with an ADHD diagnosis struggled to separate reliable information from misinformation. The sheer amount of misinformation becomes even less surprising when looking at the fact that about half of the TikTok creators analyzed in the study were using the platform to promote products like fidget spinners or services such as ADHD coaching. None of them were found to be licensed mental health professionals. Researchers from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver acknowledged that, at its best, mental health content on social media can provide support to those suffering, especially for those who feel isolated or overwhelmed. However, they cautioned that TikTok’s fast-paced, attention-grabbing format makes it difficult to convey the nuance necessary for accurate and responsible discussions about ADHD. Many ADHD creators on TikTok lean into comedy skits for content, prioritizing laughs and engagement over carefully sourced medical advice. While their intentions may be good, the need to feed the algorithm often overshadows the need for accuracy. Creators may start labeling perfectly normal behaviors as ADHD traits or exaggerating symptoms for comic effect, moving further and further away from clinical guidelines in chasing views. The study’s authors suggest that TikTok may also be contributing to an overdiagnosis crisis—an understandable concern given the rising rates of ADHD diagnoses (however, it’s worth noting that many consuming ADHD content will already have a formal diagnosis). “TikTok can be an incredible tool for raising awareness and reducing stigma, but it also has a downside,” warned lead author Vasileia Karasavva. “Anecdotes and personal experiences are powerful, but when they lack context, they can lead to misunderstandings about ADHD and mental health in general.” View the full article

An Orthodox Jewish passenger says a United Airlines pilot forcibly removed him from an airplane bathroom while he was experiencing constipation, exposing his genitalia to other flyers during a flight from Tulum, Mexico, to Houston. Yisroel Liebb, of New Jersey, described his trip through allegedly unfriendly skies in a federal lawsuit this week against the airline and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, whose officers he said boarded the plane upon landing and took him away in handcuffs. Liebb and a fellow Orthodox Jewish traveler said the pilot made disparaging remarks about their faith. They said they were forced to miss a connecting flight to New York City while U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers paraded them through an airport terminal, placed them in holding cells, and searched their luggage. “CBP Officers responded to reports of a disturbance on a flight at the request of the airline,” CBP Assistant Commissioner for Public Affairs Hilton Beckham said. “Due to the ongoing litigation, we are unable to provide any further comment.” United Airlines declined to comment. Messages seeking comment were left for a lawyer representing Liebb and the other traveler, Jacob Sebbag. In the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, Liebb said he was in the bathroom in the back of the plane for about 20 minutes on January 28 when a flight attendant woke Sebbag from a nap and asked Sebbag to check on him. Liebb said he explained his gastrointestinal predicament and assured Sebbag that he would be out soon. Sebbag then relayed that to the flight attendant, the lawsuit says. About 10 minutes later, with Liebb still indisposed, the pilot approached Sebbag and asked him to check on Liebb, the lawsuit says. The pilot then yelled at Liebb to leave the bathroom immediately, the lawsuit says. Liebb said he told the pilot that he was finishing up and would be out momentarily. The pilot responded by breaking the lock, forcing the bathroom door open, and pulling Liebb out with his pants still around his ankles, exposing his genitalia to Sebbag, flight attendants, and nearby passengers, according to the lawsuit. Liebb and Sebbag said the pilot then pushed them back to their seats while threatening to have them arrested and making remarks about their faith and how “Jews act.” After the two-hour flight landed in Houston, the men said about a half-dozen Customs and Border Protection officers boarded and escorted them off the plane. Liebb said when he asked why they were being detained, an officer tightened his handcuffs and responded: “This isn’t county or state. We are Homeland. You have no rights here.” The men said United booked them on a flight to New York City the next day for free, but any savings from the complementary tickets were lost because they had to pay for an overnight hotel stay and food during their delay. —Michael R. Sisak, Associated Press View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. If you want to get started on doing your own home improvements, repairs, and maintenance, but you’re not sure where to begin, there are a few projects that can help you sharpen your DIY skills. Learning how to use your tools and getting the hang of techniques that you can apply when tackling larger jobs is a good way to cut your teeth on DIY home improvement. Hang some shelvesIf you haven’t ever tried it before, hanging shelves is a good way to get used to using a tape measure, a level, a stud finder, and a drill. DEWALT 20V Max Cordless Drill/Driver Kit $159.00 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $179.00 Save $20.00 Shop Now Shop Now $159.00 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $179.00 Save $20.00 For this project, you’ll use your tape measure to set the height of your shelves and make sure your shelf will fit in the area you want to hang it, your level to make sure it’s parallel to the ground, and your stud finder to find where the appropriate attachment points are. The drill can be used to drill holes for your shelf brackets and drive your screws into the wall. You can probably complete this project in about an hour and it should cost between $150 and $200 for all of the tools and materials you need. Patch a hole in your drywallIf hanging shelves didn’t go as planned, or you just need to patch a hole from an accident or an old set of brackets, a drywall patch is a good project for a DIY beginner. You'll use a drywall patch kit that comes with sandpaper, a small putty knife, some spackle, a small patch, and some gloves. To perform your repair, you’ll use your patch to cover the affected area, the putty knife to apply the spackle, and the sanding block or sandpaper to even out the surface to prepare it for paint. This repair takes between 30 minutes and an hour of work time and takes a full 24 hours to cure. The materials for this can cost as little as $20, including all the materials you need. Clean out your dryer ductCleaning out your dryer vent is a chore you should do at least once per year, and it’s simple enough for even the most novice DIYer to tackle. You’ll need either a dryer vent cleaning kit or a shop vac with a long nozzle attachment as well as some gloves and a screwdriver to detach the duct from the dryer. Sealegend 37-Piece Dryer Vent $26.95 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $34.95 Save $8.00 Shop Now Shop Now $26.95 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $34.95 Save $8.00 You’ll use your screwdriver to remove the hose clamp that holds your dryer duct onto the back of your dryer and the cleaning kit with your home vacuum or shop vac with a long nozzle to clear any lint buildup from inside the duct. This project takes about 30 minutes and only costs between $35 and $55. Replace a broken fence boardFixing a fence board will give you a chance to practice using your drill, a tape measure, your chop saw or hand saw, and some screws along with your fence board. You will use your tape measure to measure the height of your fence board, your chop saw or hand saw to cut it to length, and your drill to drive your new screws into your board to attach it to the fence. This project will cost between $150 and $300 for everything you need, depending mostly on whether you decide to go with a hand saw or a chop saw. If you only have one board to replace, a hand saw is likely sufficient, while cutting several boards will be much simpler with a chop saw. You can likely complete this project in about an hour including measuring and cutting as well as attaching your board. Regrade the gravel on a walkwayIf you have a gravel path, chances are at some point the gravel will be scattered from footfalls or from weather. To regrade your path and keep it from eroding, you’ll need some fresh gravel, a piece of string, a pair of stakes, tape measure and a rake. You’ll use your gravel to patch any bare spots on your path and your rake to spread it evenly along the path, using your stakes, string, and tape measure to ensure that the center of your path is one to two inches above the edges to allow for drainage. This project can take between one hour to an afternoon depending on how long of a path you have. The materials for this can cost between $30 and $100, depending on how much gravel you need. View the full article

People are making more purchases online, whether from home on a laptop or on their mobile phone while on the go. In 2025, retail e-commerce sales are estimated to exceed 4.3 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide, and this number is expected to go up in the following years. Naturally, this rise in online shopping has come with a surge in online stores worldwide. How can you make sure your online store stands out and reaches the right people? Ecommerce SEO can help drive up those sales numbers. In this guide, we’ll explain every aspect and help you get started! Table of contents What is ecommerce SEO? Branding is key Technical ecommerce SEO User experience improves conversion rates Don’t underestimate the importance of content Improve your product pages for SEO and conversion Site structure, navigation, and internal linking Link building for online stores Marketing and ecommerce SEO Local SEO for ecommerce Is your online store on Shopify or WordPress? All about ecommerce SEO What is ecommerce SEO? Ecommerce SEO concerns all the tactics you can use to gain more visibility and organic traffic for your online store in search engines, like Google. These tactics focus on the technical and content sides of SEO. By optimizing your store you can get a dependable stream of targeted traffic to your site. This, in turn, should lead to more sales. Branding is key You are one of the millions of companies trying to sell something online. Of course, you might think you’re unique, but, in most cases, that’s not true. In most niches, you compete with dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands of others. What you need to do is stand out. But how? First of all, you need to write down your mission. Your mission will clarify what you – and your customers – want your business to be. This will help you identify your USPs (unique selling points) and create a strong brand that resonates with your audience. Example of strong branding across platforms by Tony Chocolonely. Building a recognizable brand is not just about visuals like a logo or the colors you use, but also your tone of voice or your handling of customer requests. Being present on the right platforms and showing your audience that you are trustworthy and there to help them. How you present yourself to the outside world makes all the difference. Branding helps you get inside people’s minds and stay there. But stay genuine and fit your branding to your audience. SEO helps online stores get found by the right customers at the right time. Unlike ads, which stop when you stop paying, strong SEO keeps bringing in shoppers over time. A well-optimized store makes products easier to discover, builds trust, and reduces reliance on paid traffic. Carolyn Shelby – Principal SEO at Yoast Technical ecommerce SEO To get properly started we need to look at the technical aspects first. Here, we’ll go over some important considerations for your online store. The importance of good hosting One of the simplest but most impactful things you can do is choose the right hosting for your site and upgrade your hosting plan when needed. Starting out, it might not make sense to drop hundreds of dollars for an extensive hosting plan. But once you reach a certain level, it makes all the sense in the world. Good hosting makes your site faster, pages load properly, and you’ll be able to handle more traffic than ever before. It can also better handle the crawling efforts of Google and other search engines, making it easier for them to index your URLs. Most hosting providers offer several packages with uptime guarantees, scalability options, dedicated support, et cetera. Find a hosting provider specialized in ecommerce, and don’t try to take the cheap route. SSL is essential for ecommerce SEO Long gone are the days when having an SSL certificate for your site was optional. When you are selling something and/or collecting customer data in any way, you need to do so in a secure environment. No one will leave their credit card details on a website that is not adequately secured. There are other benefits to having a properly secured website. Google, for instance, has said many times that having an SSL connection can give your site a ranking boost. In addition, many of the newer internet technologies like HTTP/2 only work on websites that use HTTPS connections. Make your site visible through crawling and indexing You probably want to have all your pages shown in Google, but not being mindful of this can backfire. For example, indexable results from your internal search engine, URLs with parameters from your faceted navigation or product filters, outdated content, temporary pages, and test content can be considered useless URLs. If you have a ton of them, Google will spend a valuable part of your crawl budget indexing those instead of crawling and indexing the pages that you do want to show up in the search results. Use your robots.txt file to control what search engines can and can’t do on your website and adequately use meta robots tags to block stuff that doesn’t make sense to show in the search results. Also, to get Google to crawl your store correctly, you need optimized XML sitemaps that list your most essential pages. Improve the URLs of your online store Getting your URLs right is a crucial aspect of ecommerce SEO. Unreadable URLs make it harder for search engines and site visitors to understand your products. And online stores tend to have a ton of URLs. Usually, every single product has its own URL and every product variation also comes with its own URL. On top of that, things like faceted navigation can generate an endless stream of URL variants. If Google finds the same products on multiple URLs, how will it know which one to show in the search results? Help search engines by minimizing the number of URLs on your online store to prevent confusion and unnecessary crawling. Check your paginated search results and see if all of these have a unique URL. Give your URLs descriptive names to help search engines identify the contents, so change URLs like /sweaters/323551 to /sweaters/ugly-christmas-sweater. Follow Google’s advice on how to design a URL structure for ecommerce websites. Be aware of duplicate content This endless number of URLs showing the same content can cause another SEO issue you want to prevent. If they find duplicate content on multiple pages, search engines won’t know which URL to show which can lead to lower rankings for all pages involved. So make sure to check how your ecommerce CMS handles product variations and faceted navigation. You can use a canonical URL to signal to Google what the original version of a page or product is. Duplicate content is also a risk when you use product descriptions provided by manufacturers, which are used on other websites. Although you’ll be competing with content on other websites, it will make your product page stand out less. Leading to search engines favoring other websites that do write their own product descriptions. Add structured data to your products Structured data lets you describe your products and business information to Google. This makes it easier for the search engine to understand your business and products. In return, you can get rich results like highlighted product information. You can use structured data to provide details like titles and descriptions, stock and shipping details, SKUs, prices, reviews, ratings, and product images for products. Using these details, Google can highlight your products in diverse ways and various locations, like Google Images and Shopping. With product structured data your products can be highlighted in Google Images (for example). You can also use structured data to provide business information. Google uses this data to verify whether you say who you say you are. It cross-references the information it finds on your site with what it finds on Google Business Profile. So make sure to keep this information (f.e. location, phone number, opening hours) up to date and consistent. If you want to add structured data to your products (or other pages), the structured data feature in our WordPress plugin and Shopify app might be worth checking out. Improve your mobile shopping experience Many people do their online shopping on a mobile phone, and that number is only growing. That’s why your mobile site has to offer a great shopping experience, similar to your website shown on a computer. We call this mobile parity. Your mobile pages should load quickly, work properly, and have no unnecessary distractions. People should not have to wait for your page to load, only to be confronted with things jumping around and buttons that aren’t clickable. Example of desktop and mobile version of a website: Etsy Keep the design of your mobile site simple while still offering the branding experience that people are familiar with. Especially on your product pages, you should offer a minimal amount of distraction to get people to convert as quickly as possible. Make sure that your theme is responsive and scales appropriately to all screen sizes without having multiple designs. Give extra attention to the readability of your pages, especially those with more than a bit of text, like product pages or blog posts. Optimize the page speed of your online store Site speed is an ongoing challenge for most websites, especially since Google has declared it a ranking factor. For ecommerce sites, that’s even more important because a slow store can cost you customers. It is proven repeatedly that people will more likely buy from an online store with proper page speed. It’s also a vital part of another ranking factor, page experience. How you improve the loading times of your store depends on the type of store you’re running. Hosted platforms like Shopify and Wix have built-in performance enhancements, like a CDN and image optimization options. For these SaaS platforms, you’re somewhat limited to the choices they make. If you run a WooCommerce store on WordPress, you have more control over your performance. You can choose your hosting plans, your CDN, your cache management, et cetera. Of course, there is no wrong solution. Pick whatever fits your goals and budget. Improve your code Many of the performance improvements you can make are found in your code. Make sure that the code of your theme is lean and mean. Fix scripts that block the rendering of your content in the DOM. Minify your code and try to add lazy loading to images where it makes sense. Don’t rely on JavaScript for loading critical functionality and content. All the evergreen site speed tactics should also be applied to your online store. Think optimizing your images, uninstalling unnecessary apps and plugins, updating your CMS and plugins, optimizing your caching, minimizing the number of HTTP requests, asynchronously loading scripts, et cetera. To get an idea of where you should start, make sure to look at the Core Web Vitals. User experience improves conversion rates Related to technical SEO and branding, it’s important to be aware of the overall experience your online store offers its users. You need to help customers feel safe and welcome before they are ready to buy from your store. A well-optimized online store is a joy to use, offers a safe and secure buying experience, and loads in no time — both on mobile and desktop. Photography, typography, and content also contribute to user experience. User experience is also about taking away frustrations and barriers for users to reach their goals quickly. It’s about optimizing product pages, CTAs, and payment flows to get people moving through the process without issue. Focusing on user experience can help you improve your store’s conversion rates. In addition, it builds a relationship with the customer and helps them come back for more. Build brand loyalty through a pleasant user experience. So add an option for guest checkout, make your site search work, improve the text on your CTAs, and offer proper faceted navigation. To give a few examples. Don’t underestimate the importance of content Content is, and will remain, still a very important part of SEO. Ecommerce SEO is no exception to this rule. Having great content on your website, and a proper content SEO strategy can help Google and your customers choose your shop above your competitors. Keyword research for your online store An important aspect is figuring out which keywords you can target — and which keywords your potential customers are searching for. It gives you a better sense of the competition and the landscape you are operating in. While doing keyword research for your online store, you’ll also uncover different search intents. Often enough, the customer doesn’t follow a straight line in their buying journey. However, you can guide potential customers during their buyer journey with helpful content in the right place at the right time. For this, you can use proven marketing strategies like the AIDA model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) to guide a customer from discovering their need to guiding them to a purchase. At any touchpoint during their journey, you need to be there to stay part of their buyer journey. Keyword research will help you uncover the terms searchers use during the different sections — helping you write content that is valuable and on point. Improve category pages for ecommerce SEO Often, category pages can be easier to rank than individual product pages. You can set them up to target a broader set of terms instead of one specific product. Your keyword research can help you use keywords that your audience searches for. Give your category pages a good title and meta description featuring the keywords you want the page to rank for. In addition, pick a proper URL structure for your category pages. Keep them short and focused. Add a piece of text to the category page to give Google and customers more insight into what this page holds. Don’t overdo it, though; it doesn’t have to be a wall of text. Just ensure that it is written for humans and isn’t stuffed with your keywords. Add great product images to your category pages and link to them from other relevant pages on your website. Again, consider search intent here; category pages should target and offer solutions for ‘browsing’ behavior. This differs from what you do with individual product pages. For category pages, you want to rank for “Black Dresses” while your product page might want to rank for “Black Dress”. Add a blog to your online store One of the most important ways of promoting your online store is via content marketing. Adding a blog to your site gives you a range of options to rank in the search engines and attract a new wave of customers. While your product descriptions and landing pages allow you to talk about specific products, a blog can be much more flexible. Here, you can dive deeper into your product, your business, and topics related to what you sell. Just make sure it’s relevant to the people you’re trying to target. Zappos has a great blog with excellent content on various relevant topics. With high-quality content, you show that you are passionate about your product and that you are an expert on the topic. Trust and expertise are crucial factors for Google and visitors to find the business they want to buy their products from. Relevant content has a great chance of ranking if you target the right keywords. You can write all-encompassing, authoritative cornerstone content that you can use as a base for your content strategy. Supporting those articles, you can go into more detail about specific aspects. For instance, the guide you are reading now is supported by numerous articles on ecommerce SEO topics which are all interlinked. Improve your product pages for SEO and conversion Your product page is where the magic happens. Here, you want your customers to hit that buy button without hesitation. But what are the aspects of an excellent product page? What can you do to improve your product page SEO? Write great titles and meta descriptions The words you use to describe your articles are essential. Of course, this also goes for the words you provide for your product to be used in the SERPs — the titles and the meta descriptions. In 2021, Google was actively rewriting more page titles than ever. According to them, too many sites were using non-descript or spammy titles. Therefore, it is even more important to improve your titles and keep an eye on what Google is showing for your products. Using WordPress/WooCommerce SEO plugins and Shopify SEO apps like Yoast SEO for Shopify, you can set up templates for both titles and meta descriptions, so they follow a similar pattern. This saves you time, and you won’t have to do everything by hand. Of course, you should write everything by hand for your most important articles and pages. Make them stand out! Write your own product descriptions We already touched on this topic briefly while discussing the risk of duplicate content. To prevent your product descriptions from being the same as 100+ online stores out there, you need to write them yourself. If you have a ton of products, start with the ones most important or most valuable. Example of an elaborate and informative description on Armed Angels webshop. Be sure to write in the language your audience uses to find and describe these products. Don’t use jargon or made-up words that only a few people will understand. Good product descriptions are easy to grasp and easy to read. Also, stay away from walls of text — use a good header hierarchy and break up the text with paragraphs and lists for readability. Add unique, high-quality product photos Excellent product images are another great way to set yourself apart from your competitors. Your customer wants to see your products in detail. Even if you have an offline store as well, photos show what your products look like and give you that edge over competitors who just use the images provided by the manufacturer. Try to take authentic photos and do it yourself. Make sure they are high-quality and show your product in use to show what it looks like in real-life situations. Everlane combines great product photography with animated GIFs to show their backpack in use. If you’ve shot good photos of your products, optimize them for the right size, compress them and give them a proper SEO-proof name. Use the product name in the image file name and the alt text when you upload it to your store. Add reviews of your product or service Reviews are incredibly important for your business. Collect them, display them and add review and ratings structured data. It can nudge customers to buy your product or service. It also helps Google turn those reviews into highlighted listings in the search results — with stars and all. Fable England shows a reviews tab next to their products that allows you to scroll through reviews. Most shoppers look up reviews before buying a product or deciding on a service. While the availability of reviews on your product pages helps build trust, they need to be genuine. Don’t publish fake reviews or only publish the ones that paint your product or service in a positive light. Even negative reviews have a place! What’s more, how you respond to negative reviews says a lot about you and your business. Add related products for cross-selling and internal linking To increase the conversion rate and the total amount spent per cart, you can use a variety of tactics. One of those tactics is adding related products on your product pages and even on your checkout screen, although you need to test that second option so that it doesn’t harm the checkout process. The same goes for a list of alternative products for the one a customer is looking for. An ‘Other customers also look at’ feature helps uncover more products for your customers, plus it helps them reach their goal more quickly. In addition, this helps your internal linking as well. By doing this, you make it easier for customers and search engines to reach different parts of your site. Improve the shopping experience with filters For online stores, faceted navigation is a must-have on category pages. Faceted navigation — also known as product filters —, lets users filter their search to a more manageable level. We all know filters like size, price, color, brand, et cetera. Offering ample filter options genuinely improves a shopper’s experience on your site. Filters give them the possibility of finding a product with much less friction. Filtering (subcategories, availability, price, country) on a category page of Ten Thousand Villages. When set up correctly, they should work without issue. The problems with faceted navigation start whenever this system spits out a massive amount of indexable URLs, thanks to the filtered parameters. This could lead to duplicate content, index bloat, and crawling issues. These URLs mustn’t get indexed by Google. Handle out-of-stock products Every online store will eventually reach a point where products run out of stock. How you deal with that is more important. Manage expectations by showing when this product will be back in stock. Or offer ways to keep them in the loop by offering to send an email when it’s available again. There’s more you can do to handle products that are out of stock, but it is important to act upon it to show potential customers and Google that you’re active and trustworthy. Site structure, navigation, and internal linking Site structure is essential for every site — and the larger your site is, the more important it gets to keep it under control. Setting everything up transparently helps customers and search engines find their way on your ecommerce site easily. As Google uses the structure to understand your site, you need to think about how you link everything together. With proper internal linking, you can signal to Google which pages are the most important ones. It will prioritize these over other, less-linked pages. Think about your navigation The same goes for your navigation. Well-thought-out navigation doesn’t just please Google, but users as well. Search engines like Google use the navigation of your online store to uncover your content. They also use your navigation and your site structure to connect the various parts of your site. Google, for instance, advises shop owners to add links from menus to category pages, from category pages to sub-category pages, and finally from sub-category pages to all product pages. It’s vital to link to all the products you want to have indexed. Don’t forget to add your most important pages and categories to the footer, as that is important real estate! Don’t forget about internal linking Other than having a proper navigation and site structure in place, you also need to link related content to each other. This shows search engines what pages and topics are related to each other and which pages are most important. It also helps site visitors find other related content or pages to the page their currently on, keeping them on your site and helping them find what they are looking for. When you have a blog, internal links also give you a great opportunity to link directly to specific products or categories that are related to that topic. Use internal linking to show the importance of pages and help users navigate through your site. Link building for online stores You shouldn’t underestimate the power of link building. These are links from other websites leading to your products and/or content. This is, to this day, an important ranking factor for search engines. Not just having as many links to your website as possible, they need to come from relevant websites and make sense. You need to publish content that people will link to for this to happen. That doesn’t strictly have to be a blog post, but that could also be a buying guide, an infographic, a tool that helps people make decisions, original research, et cetera. Excellent, unique content has a bigger chance of getting links from relevant sites and people. Another link building strategy is to reach out to your local community to get them to talk about you. Or you could invest in influencer marketing and digital PR to boost your online store. Marketing and ecommerce SEO You can sit and wait for people to show up in your online store, or you can act. While not technically SEO, marketing is still at your disposal — and there’s a lot you can do. We’ve already talked about content marketing, but we’ll also discuss social media, ads, and video marketing. Social media Everybody knows social media can do a lot of good when used right. So, use it to your advantage. It won’t help your store rank better, but it can help you get and build an audience. It can function as an extension of ecommerce SEO, and it is a wonderful way of contacting your customers. Social media marketing is essential for your branding — it’s where people can see you and what you do. Make the most of it! Video marketing Video is huge, and its growth is nowhere near stopping. Invest in video SEO if you have the budget. Just make sure it looks good and represents your business. With video, it’s important to know what you want to achieve. Do you want to get recognized on YouTube and have your videos rank well there? Then that’s where you should focus your attention as simply adding a few videos to your store won’t help in this situation. Do you want to produce the best videos on your ecommerce site? Then you need to think about where you want to host these and how to make them click with your audience. Want videos to do well in the organic search results? That’s something else entirely. Figure out if you want to focus on videos for YouTube or your own site. Running paid ads Running ads in the search results is another way to stand out from the crowd. It gives you the option to bid for specific keywords and — depending on your niche — can get you a relatively cheap way to the top of the search results. Fledgling stores often rely on paid ads to get noticed in the search results. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course. But, with paid ads, you must keep paying, or else your stream of customers will dry up. It’s not a sensible strategy to just focus on running paid ads. Combine it with SEO, social media, and content marketing. Google Shopping feed/Merchant Center While it is good to focus on getting your products found in Google’s organic search results, most online stores also put effort into Google Shopping. Google helps customers find the best products for the best prices in the Shopping section. In 2020, Google made it free for merchants to add their products to the Shopping section. Simply sign up for Google Merchant Center, correctly fill in all the required data about your business and follow the guidelines. Local SEO for ecommerce If you combine your online store with a brick-and-mortar one, you must also focus on local SEO. Discover how your online and offline stores can support each other to strengthen each other. Write content optimized for your locale and build good landing pages that help you get noticed for searches in your area. We also offer a local SEO plugin that can help you optimize your website for a local audience. For instance, it adds proper business location schema structured data for your shop and helps you get your details in Google Maps. Is your online store on Shopify or WordPress? Shopify is one of the biggest ecommerce platforms out there. And WordPress powers around 43% of all websites worldwide. Both WooCommerce and Shopify are excellent choices for your online store. For WordPress sites, many of the ecommerce stores are powered by WooCommerce. It’s a solid platform that does a lot out of the box. Put the ecommerce tips from this guide into practice, and you are well on your way to an optimized store. If your online store is on Shopify, you’ve chosen a platform focused on ecommerce. It comes with pretty much everything you need straight out of the box. If there is something you’re missing, there are tons of apps that can help you out. Although most SEO advice is platform agnostic and this guide will already give you lots of input, we also have a guide on Shopify SEO to help you get your Shopify store ranking high. WooCommerce SEO plugin by Yoast SEO To help you quickly set up WooCommerce for optimal SEO, we built the WooCommerce SEO add-on for Yoast SEO. Our WooCommerce SEO plugin adds several extra features while also improving the code WooCommerce puts out to make it more understandable for search engines. It’s an essential tool if you want to get the most out of our WooCommerce store. You can use this add-on with both the free and Premium version of Yoast SEO. Yoast SEO for Shopify app One of the most remarkable aspects of Shopify is that you can improve your store by running apps. There are apps for everything, from review management to email marketing and image optimization to cross-selling products. One of the most popular categories is ecommerce SEO, and we’re proud to offer a Yoast SEO for Shopify app as well. Our app improves the technical SEO of your Shopify store while also offering features that help you produce the best possible product-related content. It comes with SEO and readability analyses, various controls for handling how Google crawls your site, and an impressive Schema structured data implementation that instantly helps search engines understand your products. The Yoast SEO for Shopify app when you’re working on your product page. All about ecommerce SEO That’s it! You’ve just learned a lot. But although this is billed as a thorough guide, a complex topic like ecommerce SEO cannot be contained in one single guide. Where possible, we’ve linked to related articles that go deeper into a specific detail — read these to expand your knowledge! The post Ecommerce SEO: how to rank higher & sell more online appeared first on Yoast. View the full article