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Introduction to Wix Alternatives

The following article provides an outline for Wix Alternatives. WIX is an Israel-based cloud-based web development platform with multiple offices at 12 locations worldwide and a marketing business model for e-commerce, online marketing, email marketing, and several others. With its inception in 2006, Wix has revenue worth $603.70 million with total assets of around $214.97. Wix has a huge customer base as they offer website building at a flexible rate suitable to different segments of users as per their needs.

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Some Pros and Cons Wix has:

It has Beautiful Templates, Flexible Design Controls, an Excellent Application Market, and Site Backup.

Wix has some limitations as it is not the cheapest solution available (for sure), Template Selection (one time), Not Good For Bigger Businesses, and Design Flexibility.

List of Wix Alternatives

Different Wix Alternatives available in the market are as follows:

1. WordPress

An undisputed king for Content management with an open-source code structure that allows users to modify their website how they prefer. Whether it is to create a blogging website or an entire online store setup, there isn’t much you can’t do with this web builder solution. With the implementation of the wooCommerce plugin, a user can quickly bloom its website into a fully functional online store with over 100 payment gateways.

WordPress features:

The templates have an endless list

Free plugins inbuilt

Ever-increasing user base

Design freedom

Suitable for bloggers, freelancers, entrepreneurs, professionals, and online business

Note: The pricing is subject to change, but as of now, they are mentioned below.

Hosting costs start from $6 onwards

Template charges $27 onwards (look for ThemeForest)

Again depending upon your business type, you may need plugins that range up to $200

Programmer charges if customization is there

Why choose WordPress over Wix? If you need a completely flexible solution that empowers you with 100% customization, then you must go with WordPress.

2. Weebly

Weebly has a great user-friendly web-building platform in terms of both aesthetics and accessibility. The best part apart from its business model is the development framework suitable for novice developers. It encourages developers to seamlessly transfer data while the development is going on between different templates. Customer support sets the bar even high for Weebly competitors. It is the best Wix alternative as a Weebly website user can opt for phone, chat, and ticket-based assistance with a responsive and effective solution.

Marketing mechanism: They have powerful email marketing tools suitable for any business. A predesigned toolkit that includes email-building features, marketing statistics, support tools, and the layout within itself.

E-commerce benefit: An e-commerce web store setup was never easy, so if you need an online store added to your business, Weebly would definitely be a better solution.

Some astonishing features of it:

Integrated Shopping cart

Secure checkouts

Inventory management and tracking

Customizable e-commerce template availability

Advanced SEO

Pricing details:

Starter @$8/month

Pro @$12/month

Business @$25/month

Performance @$38/month

Why choose Weebly over Wix? A better blogging option, better designs, and good for multiple-page website needs. With the visual editor benefit, the development is easy and quick, even with newbie developers.

3. Squarespace

Squarespace is the largest competitor as they have a similar business strategy and cover nearly equal functionalities offered by Wix. They guarantee their users with stunning web templates and easily adaptable applications to the web, mobile, and pad. In addition to web development with desirable properties, they also have fully functional e-commerce options. They have good and knowledgeable customer service.

Squarespace features:

Polish template: Squarespace offers a vast selection of stylish and trendy themes suitable for any business need, with a professional touch

Packed all-in-one builder: Each template has a set of pre-installed features that might range from SEO tools to inbuilt analytics capturing ability, RSS subscription, and much more

Security: Squarespace uses the latest technologies to enhance its web security features and claims they have 100% fraud protection techniques.

Pricing details:

Personal @$12/month

Business @$18/month

Online Store @$26(basic)/month

Online Store @$40(Advanced)/month

Why choose Squarespace over Wix? If you want more of a blogging website and have a no or limited need for SEO, go for Squarespace. Also, it is better for a smaller e-commerce setup. Unlike Wix, if you choose Squarespace, you do not have to stick with one platform forever. You can import/export and leave the platform forever. Squarespace is Git-enabled, which means it has the power to access the older version of your website. These are a bit complicated but completely versatile web builders and hosting platform. You can opt for their 14 days trial period to evaluate better as needed, followed by a paid version.

Conclusion

As you can see, there is no shortage of Wix alternatives in the market. However, it would be best to consider your need and why you want to build a website. Our discussion will be helpful to give you a broader look. Choosing the right tool is always necessary to decorate your job. This goes well with the website development business. Some have blogging needs, some have SEO needs in addition to blogging, some are looking to sell/rent things, and the counting is unlimited. Last but never least, we would like to address our readers and all those planning to make a digital presence go through the below-mentioned high-level point of concern before they spend.

Ask Yourself

Are you comfortable with one fixed layout (means no further changes)

Your need? Blogging or business

Personal or professional, or enterprise level?

%age of customization

A Complete Guide To Google Maps Marketing

Ensuring that your business shows up in Google Maps is paramount to long-term viability.

Prospective customers are often skeptical of businesses with little or no online presence.

Fortunately, Google Maps provide one of the easiest and fastest ways to get online.

Business owners now have an opportunity to market their goods and services in real-time to anyone with a mobile device.

What Is Google Maps Marketing?

Google Maps marketing is simply the optimization of your business presence on Google Maps.

The goal is simple: by ranking higher in search, you have an opportunity to significantly increase your business.

The better your profile optimization, the better your chances are for showing up in a Google Maps search for your business type in your area.

Why Is Google Maps Marketing So Important?

Google handles about 3.5 billion searches per day and accounts for nearly 88% of all mobile searches.

Local Google searches also directly translate into sales with 76% of those searching for local products visiting a store within the day.

Google Maps marketing can impact the way Google views your business and how or if it appears in organic search in what is known as the local 3-pack.

Google Map Results (local 3-pack) appear at the top of the page in this Google Search.

Google Maps can channel thousands of potential customers toward your business.

Unless your business ranks in the 3-pack, your chance of being found is exponentially lower.

That is why Google Maps Marketing is generally considered the most important facet of local SEO work.

Setting up & Optimizing Your Google My Business (GMB) Listing

Creating a Google My Business (GMB) listing is totally free.

That said, the end goal is to get your business to rank higher than your competitors.

Setting Up Google My Business

To set up your Google My Business listing:

Then locate or create a listing for your business. Sometimes other factors or inputs have led to an impromptu assumption listing about your business. Make sure you claim and correct it if that happened.

Fill out all of the information to the best of your ability.

Make sure to select the correct category and to add a contact.

Verify your account. This can be done with Google via phone, email, or traditional mail.

Add quality photos.

Double-check all of your information.

Read this guide to learn how to completely optimize your GMB listing.

How to Rank Better in Google Maps

Google Maps take into account a number of factors when it decides how to rank results.

The geographic distance from the person conducting the search and the business category relevant to their search are the most obvious.

Perhaps more important is how complete and accurate your GMB listing is. This could be the tie-breaker among you and your competitors in determining who appears in the search.

Finally, positive sentiment (good reviews) can be a deciding factor.

Getting Good Reviews

Many companies have developed systems around cultivating positive reviews.

Some will ask customers directly, at the conclusion of a transaction, to give them a review.

Other businesses put a request for a review prominently, at checkout. Some even have used QR codes.

One effective method is to leave a review request, on a business card, attached to a “Thank You” memento. Something as simple as a complimentary air freshener can go a long way.

In all of your promotional materials, it’s good business practice to provide a link for customers to leave a Google review.

What About Bad Reviews?

Handle bad reviews calmly. Work hard to overcome them with more good reviews.

When you get a bad review, apologize, accept responsibility and offer to make it right; even if it wasn’t your fault.

It’s a losing proposition to get defensive or aggressive in your reply.

A bad review give you the chance to demonstrate your professionalism, helping to mitigate any potential damage.

Posting on Google as Your Business

This is an underused feature.

Business owners can “publish … offers, events, products, and services directly to Google Search and maps.”

This can be another effective way to stand apart from your competitors.

Google Maps Optimization Checklist

To give your business a better chance of showing up in Google Maps for relevant searches, just follow the checklist below.

Claim or create a listing for your business.

Fill out all of the information:

Correct service area and address.

Business hours / workdays.

Website / URL for them to make a purchase.

List your specific offerings. Clearly and simply. Try to add keywords in naturally when possible.

Pick the most relevant and common categories for your business.

Ensure information is consistent across the web.

Add high-quality photos.

Double-check all of your information.

Cultivate good reviews.

Talk about your business in Google My Business.

List your business in other directories.

Use analytics to adapt your strategies.

Paid Advertising & Local Search Ads

Tracking Your Google Maps Marketing Performance

Tracking your performance on Google Maps is done via analytics offered with your Google My Business account.

This is necessary for evaluating your current web presence and optimizing it, moving forward

Following are the key metrics you should pay close attention to:

The Google Services That Customers Use to Find Your Business

An important metric to pay attention to is the type of searches leading to your website.

This will let you know the volume of users that are searching for you by name, vs those discovering you via the keywords relevant to your brand, location, and industry.

This may help you gauge the percentage of new versus repeat customers coming to your site via Google.

Where Customers View Your Business on Google

This section will let you know the frequency that you are being found on general search vs map listings.

Taken in conjunction with the first metric you can gauge the general success of your Google Map Listings in attracting new customers.

As you make changes, monitor these stats to ensure you are making the right decisions and moving in a positive direction.

Listing Visitor Action Taken

“Customer actions” will show you what actions people are taking in response to your listing.

You will discover if your listing is helping people find your location, your website, or leading to some form of contact.

This is perhaps the most important metric as you embark on optimizing your listing.

Working to improve customer engagements and interactions is your best path to success.

Where Customers Are Coming From

“Directions requests” shows where customers are requesting directions to your business from.

With this information, you can begin to localize and better target your other marketing ventures as well as perhaps adjust your target keywords.

The Performance of Your Photos

“Photo views and Photo quantity” shows how your photos are performing as compared to competing businesses.

Humans react positively to appealing visuals, so you should take the time to capture the best possible photos of your business.

The Final Takeaway

While getting the basics right is simple enough, fine-tuning will set you apart from the competition.

Pay attention to your analytics.

The best way to market yourself across all Google apps is to:

Keep your information up to date.

Keep your social proof (customer reviews) positive.

Make certain that your visual presentation is always top-notch.

More Resources:

Image Credits

All screenshots taken by author, October 2023

A Complete Guide To Doing Geospatial Analytics

Introduction

Let us consider a situation which has probably happened to all of us. Sometimes when we book a cab, especially during peak times, we are met with a message that says “we cannot find a ride, try again”. This is a classic case of a supply-demand gap. It could be because of the following reasons:

Wrong Location

: It might be that the riders are not available because they are all busy or are idle in the wrong location.

Cancellation from drivers

: Sometimes, the pickup distance is high which causes the drivers to not accept or they don’t wish to travel to the location of the pickup. It could also be your payment mode that may cause this.

As you can see, for a company with moving assets, a lot of the insights and decisions have to be derived from the location. Companies like Uber, Amazon, and Airbnb, among others, realized the immense value of this data in their nascent stages and built their business with location as their foundation. Uber revolutionized the usage of maps and started understanding the flow of their cities to become the top ride-sharing player in the world. Similarly, Amazon has built one of the most resilient supply chains by tapping into the power of location data and the list goes on.

Read on to find out how we can perform geospatial analytics and make the most out of your location data!

Importance of Geospatial Analytics

In simple words, it is the information about the geographic positions of an entity (this could be a user, POI so on). It is also called geospatial data, geographic data, or geodata. They are often formatted as points (latitude-longitude coordinates), polygons, or polylines.

The differentiating feature of the location is that it incorporates the third dimension on top: values across time and dynamic location — and this aspect requires us to approach the data with a slightly unique approach. Remember, location is not just about individual points, but also about movement.

Because there are millions of moving assets from the delivery fleet, vehicles, users to drivers on the ground that need to be monitored and optimized at all times. For example, if we consider a city, no two areas behave the same way at a particular time. Some of them have more movement during the day and some during the night. We also have to consider the external factors like weather, accidents, traffic, and rallies which affect the behavior of areas without a forewarning.

Therefore, it is important for us to contextualize our decisions for different areas and times and practice location-based decisions. It is only through the lens of location intelligence we can unearth the patterns, relationships, and trends between the moving assets and answer questions like:

Where are my users?

Where and when can we send in promotions and discounts?

How can we run incentive programs?

What is the order density on a weekday?

Churn analysis console: Identify where the user churn is the highest

Vocal for Hyperlocal insights

Robust location analytics platforms give you relevant real-time hyperlocal insights that can transform your day-to-day operations. You can:

Take data-driven strategic decisions as well as react to things in real time and take tactical decisions to address bottlenecks on the go.

Create a central knowledge base of operational metrics and understand what strategies are working well. For instance, a discount of x% always drives upconversion in the eastern part of the city

Run multiple experiments and strategies for different locations, users, and times of the day and iterate them by measuring their impact. A culture of rapid experimentation is essential to know what works best in different locations.

Altogether, this will promote better asset utilization, reduce churn, and improve overall performance of businesses involving moving assets.

Locale.ai Console: Impact analysis

Now that the importance of location analytics has been established, let us understand how one can go about making decisions about your on-ground assets.

We can break this down into five essential steps.

Recipe for geospatial analytics done right 1. Orchestration

Getting insights involves gathering data from different places. After that, the data has to be cleaned and checked for any outliers. Once that data is ready to be used, we can move on to creating relevant metrics.

Today the way it is done involves writing complex queries and performing data transformations on R and Python. Other commonly known software for powerful data processing and geospatial operations are PostgreSQL and PostGIS. While these tools offer the capabilities to process your data, creating complex metrics like idle time, unfulfilled demand, or deviations can be time-consuming and requires you to have an innate understanding of the problem.

2. Debugging:

This important step helps us unearth patterns and relationships between the moving assets. Essentially, it is about identifying the problematic areas and arriving at actionable insights. For example, an actionable insight could be that there is a high demand near colleges at 4 PM during the weekdays.

Today, this process is done by BI tools like Tableau, Looker, Power BI, and open source softwares like chúng tôi Though the BI tools are equipped with basic geospatial functionalities, it is no doubt that they are best suited only for statistical analysis. Features like analysis on routes, grids, layering, and so on are incompatible and you can only plot points and zip code via these tools. Consider Tableau, it has great heat maps, but we cannot equate visualization to analysis.

Coming to chúng tôi provides a great platform to explore everything related to maps. But it is useful only for one-time use cases, and as we process the data outside the tool, it cannot act as a catalog in the future. Thus making this process unsuitable for multiple iterations and situations that are specific to your industry.

Source: Locale.ai

3. Decisioning:

As mentioned earlier, there needs to be a provision to make decisions either in real-time when you need to react or more strategically when you need to analyze patterns and trends.

For example, a promotion would have to be sent via Mixpanel. While a pricing problem would be solved via tweaks to a formula, a ground operations person would fix a driver issue. Finally, passing the data to implement the strategy requires multiple teams to come together to decide and act upon it. This process is painstaking and involves top-notch coordination. It can be particularly problematic if a decision has to be taken in real-time.

4. Collaboration:

Analytics cannot be done in a silo. It needs to ensure that people across teams can come together to debug and implement decisions. Today, we can use Slack, Jira, and others to collaborate but note that they do not come with a knowledge base, and clearing the ticket on Jira can take longer than expected. When decisions need to be taken across different stakeholders, the context is often unclear and results may be delayed.

5. Measuring Impact

Once you take your decisions, you can measure the impact of your actions and iterate. It is the only way to know if your solution is working. This step is actually missing in today’s analytics process due to the lack of the right infrastructure. This not only hinders experimentation but also doesn’t provide a means to assess the strategy for different areas and times. For example, we can run an experiment by provisioning extra members of the delivery fleet in the western part of the city and see if delays are reducing or not on Mondays.

A robust analytics platform should be able to perform all these actions seamlessly. When done right, the teams will be able to drill down and have access to insights at their fingertips.

How do we achieve this with Locale?

Locale.ai is working towards empowering Ops and city teams, in the same spirit of Mixpanel and Clevertap. It is designed to act as a central operations platform by ingesting location data across users, fleet and orders.

But doing this requires organizations to invest in strong data pipelining and management architectures for their geospatial data. Unfortunately, handling geospatial data is still a hard problem. Add scale, contextual visualization, and near real time latencies to the mix, and such analysis remains out of reach for most organizations. With Locale, we want to bridge this gap and envision a world where every company is able to tap into the power of location data with great ease.

Source: Locale.ai

What next?

If the world of geospatial analytics excites you and you want to delve deeper into location data, here are a few resources you can check out:

If you want to know more about how a product for location analytics was built by Locale:

The media shown in this article are not owned by Analytics Vidhya and are used at the Author’s discretion.

Complete Guide To Mystery Number

Introduction to Mystery Number

The Mystery number is defined as a number which we get by sum up of two the numbers and that two numbers should be the reverse of each other, this is a unique number, to find that number must be of two digits, then break the number into two numbers such as ‘A’ and ‘B’, if the digit of ‘A’ is reverse of ‘B’ or the digit of ‘B’ is reverse of ‘A’, then that number is said to be a Mystery number, to get this number split the number into two number in which the unit digit and tens digits are interchanged.

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Logic behind Mystery Number

In the above introduction, we saw that a number is said to be a Mystery number if that number can be got by sum up of the two numbers and that two numbers must be reverse of each other, and that number may lie between 22 and 198 because these are the multiples of 11 in the decimal numeration.

Let us see the logic behind using decimal numeration.

If a number is split into two digits numbers so that its unit digit and ten digits are interchanged or reversed then we have to use logic as given below.

Suppose N is a unit digit and M is a 10-digit then the original number will be 10M+N

If we interchange the unit and tens place, then we get 10N+M

Then we get a number i.e., hence we can write it as Mystery number = 10M+N+10N+M

By solving the above, we get the equation as 11M+11N

11 is common in above, so take it common, hence we get 11(M+N)

In this case, M and N can be replaced by any whole number, also we can say that we can use this case when the condition is given in a two-digit number.

Let us see some examples by using the above equation.

Put the values of M and N in the above equation.

11(2+2) = 44 = 22 + 22

In this way we can find the number.

How to Check Mystery Number?

If we have a number first check that number must be a two-digit number.

Then break that number into two numbers, and two numbers which we get that also be two-digit numbers.

After that check whether the digit of one number is the exact reverse of the second number or we can say that numbers digits must be interchanged.

If two numbers are in reverse of each other, then that number is a Mystery number, otherwise, it is not.

Examples of Mystery Number Example #1

Java program to check whether the given number.

Code:

import java.util.*; class Mysterynumber { static int revers(int m) { int sum=0,rem; while(m!=0) { rem=m%10; sum=sum*10+rem; m=m/10; } return sum; } public static void main(String[] args) { int num,i,f=0; Scanner sc=new Scanner(System.in); System.out.println("Enter any number :"); num=sc.nextInt(); for(i=1;i<num;i++) { if(i+revers(i)==num) { System.out.println("This is a Mystery number"); f=1; break; } } if(f==0) System.out.println("This is not a Mystery number"); } }

Output:

In the above example, we have written java code to check the entered number. For that, we take a class ‘Mysterynumber’ and defined one method ‘revers()’ to reverse the given value and used while loop for a condition if that condition is true then it will return the yes it is a Mystery number if the condition is false then returns that is not and to import of package is also necessary, as we have done at the first line of the program. In main() method called the defined functions to check a number is a Mystery number or not. The screenshot is given for the reference of the output.

Example #2

Code:

import java.util.Scanner; public class MystNumber { static int reverse(int a) { String strn = Integer.toString(a); String string=""; { string=string+strn.charAt(i); } int rev=Integer.parseInt(strn); return rev; } static boolean MystNum(int num) { for (int z=1; z <= num/2; z++) { int y = reverse(z); if (z + y == num) { System.out.println( z + " " + y); System.out.println(num+ " is a mystery number."); return true; } } System.out.println("The given number is not a mystery number."); return false; } public static void main(String args[]) { Scanner sc=new Scanner(System.in); System.out.print("Enter a number: "); int num = sc.nextInt(); MystNum(num); } }

Output:

In the above example, we have written a java program to check the given number is Mystery or not with its sum up of two numbers as shown in the above screenshot. For the writing program, we take a class ‘MystNumber’, and define a static function to reverse the given number, in that took a string to convert the number into a string that string has been stored and reverse of the string also been stored. Define a function to check by reversing and comparing two numbers put a print statement to show two numbers which get from a given number, put conditions to check the given number if the condition is true then it will show the given number is a mystery number and if condition false then returns this is not a mystery number.

Conclusion

In the above article we conclude that this is a unique number and to find it we must have to follow conditions, and if conditions are true then and then only we will get that number, some logic and steps are explained in this article which will help to find the Mystery number.

Omnichannel Marketing A Complete Guide For 2023

Omnichannel marketing has been a priority and a must-to-do for all the businesses out there for years now. Customers are now expecting much more from their favourite brands, and brands have the responsibility to maintain the demand and supply with their customer’s expectations. With so many gadget kinds, sites, sales channels, and content types accessible.

It is now important for businesses to be present everywhere possible and maintain their presence undoubtedly. This is where omnichannel marketing enters the picture. In digital marketing, terminology like omnichannel, multichannel, and cross-channel are sometimes used interchangeably.

Overall, they tend to signify the same thing: leveraging several channels to attract, interact with, and keep customers.

Customers now want to be interacted with their brands at every stage of their buying behaviour. This opens up the pathway to a better customer experience and retains the customers satisfyingly.

Nonetheless, of the Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in terrible and depressing changes, for retailers and other shop businesses, having their omnipresence everywhere possible is a job to focus on sincerely.

If omnichannel marketing is used wisely by your firm, it is pretty much certain that your business reputation and sales will reach the heights of success. But only if done correctly and timely.

Hence in this article, i.e. “Omnichannel Marketing: A Complete Guide for 2023“, we will take you into the depths of omnichannel marketing, and brings you across everything you should be aware of.

So what are we waiting for?

Let’s start learning from the basics!

What Is Meant By Omnichannel Marketing?

Omnichannel marketing is all about being present across all the marketing channels possible, providing the same customer experience, and maintaining the same flow of the user’s journey. Your consumers seem to be everywhere, and they’re always finding new companies, both consciously and unconsciously. As a reputed or new brand, you should already be hustling to make a place everywhere and maintain your omnipresence. You want your customers to have a consistent, good impression of your brand. This ensures customers get the same enjoyable experience regardless of where they see your content or engage with you. This is the essence of multichannel marketing.

Omnichannel marketing includes the brand image and message that are consistent, the communication and interaction that takes place are accordingly personalized, and this gives rise to a better buying experience despite customers switching between various channels. Omnichannel marketing ensures that there is a much better shopping experience for customers as compared to previous engagements.

In other terms, Omnichannel marketing is the practice of sending and communicating with a suitable response to a business’s consumers via digital or conventional/traditional marketing channels, regardless of how the consumer’s behaviour is and how the consumer interacts with the brand or the networks via which they engage.

Several people associate reliability and quality with regularity. A business that can provide its clients with a complete customer experience will be respected. Whenever the knowledge your customers get is constant and accurate, they know they can trust it, and the message will be reinforced by repetitions. Your marketing message will also be simplified thanks to putting omnichannel marketing into action. There will be less messaging ambiguity since your marketing plan will be streamlined across all media and channels.

The most popular and effective technique for adopting omnichannel marketing is to adapt to any and all channels and applications your consumers use to connect with your company. As omnichannel marketing implies being present everywhere, analyze where your customers are the most present and what they really expect. Furthermore, for each of those channels and devices, construct an overarching marketing message, aims, and objectives based on that message. (We will discuss how to create an effective omnichannel strategy later in this post)

For now, let’s get to know what are the pros and cons of omnichannel marketing;

Benefits of Omnichannel Marketing 1. Bigger Profits

Customers are encouraged to interact with a company through many touchpoints and channels when using an omnichannel strategy. Enhanced, diversified interactions at each stage of the buyer’s journey may help boost profits, as research shows that consumers who connect with several touchpoints perform 30% better. As you manage to be present almost everywhere your customers go, it is indeed a fact that you are being exposed to a larger and different segment of audiences which will lead to an increase in sales and profits. This more personalized marketing also fosters loyalty, making it more likely that a customer would return to your business. Despite making up a smaller fraction of your client base, repeat customers account for half of your revenue.

2. Brand Strategy & Image That Go Together

Developing a consistent approach throughout platforms necessitates the development of an immediately identifiable brand name, image, and tone. This image should be based on the needs and ideals of the target audience. Once you have made the space of your business flourish everywhere possible, your brand strategy and your brand image go hand-in-hand. You’ll have a more comprehensive brand strategy that translates to higher brand loyalty and more focused messages if you focus on the full experience and work within your brand rules to target each channel.

3. A More Pleasant User Experience

The customer experience (CX) is better because of the omnichannel focus on the customized experience across devices rather than the channel. All the customer-focused and personalized messages across various channels help your customers in having a pleasant user experience throughout their buyer journey. This in return, helps increase your brand’s credibility and goodwill and helps the customers to stay retained. Companies may increase sales and retention rates by concentrating on the consumer rather than the platform.

4. Promotes Customized and Personalized Shopping:

Customers generally aren’t just concerned with the quality of the product. They demand a consistent service experience, a user-friendly interface, consistent branding, and rotating product options, and they expect it now. By developing an omnichannel marketing strategy, you control their experience and do things your way. You can precisely track every customer’s activity and offer what they anticipate if you have the correct analytics tools. Every purchase allows you to establish preferences and push campaigns that will appeal to your consumers the most, from measuring when your customers are more likely to purchase particular things to tracking the demographics of regular customers.

5. Boosts Inventory Turnover

As technology becomes more integrated into our everyday lives, an omnichannel approach may assist you in identifying and eliminating accidental operational errors and constraints. You may fulfill more requests, better estimate seasonal demand, obtain the proper stock levels, have better reporting, and meet long-term company goals as you get a greater understanding of inventory.

Always keep in mind that you are constantly learning and being updated with your audience’s behaviours.

Drawbacks of Omnichannel Marketing 1. Marketing across several channels isn’t easy.

Regrettably, an omnichannel marketing plan is more difficult to implement than a traditional marketing approach. This approach is broad and considers all channels with the goal of providing a consistent consumer experience across all devices and channels. Planning throughout the several different channels might be time-consuming and drain a lot of quality energy, which could be utilized on one channel itself. Before you start constructing your plan, you must first understand each client touchpoint; knowing your consumers’ behaviour is critical to getting this strategy off the ground.

2. Everyone may use it.

Because omnichannel is open to everybody, it invites rivalry from other retailers or brands. This might lessen your audience’s attraction to your brand’s goods and services. As a result, there are just a few choices for dealing with this problem.

You have no choice but to urge them to pick you. Offering customers discounts or creating contests, or introducing giveaways might help you come back into the digital game!

3. Omni-channel marketing necessitates honest conversation

From the marketing department to the customer support teams and shop floor assistance, omnichannel marketing engages your whole workforce. It is important for the departments under your brand’s roof to communicate effectively and in detail, regarding all the several channels you are present on. It is extremely important that your departments coordinate among themselves honestly and productively. To make your omnichannel marketing plan a success, everyone involved must be on board and working toward the same goal.

Now you would be wondering if there are other terms connected with omnichannel marketing like multichannel marketing and cross-channel marketing. So what are they?

Keep reading on how to understand these terms thoroughly.

What Do You Mean By Multi-Channel Marketing?

Multichannel marketing is nothing but engaging with and marketing to your audience over a range of online and traditional/physical channels.

Benefits of Multichannel Marketing 1. The Consumer Is Seen From Every Angle, Just Like The God’s Eye

Feedback from the customers can help businesses learn what customers want and how to enhance their products and services. Businesses may tune their marketing efforts successfully by determining which channels perform best for various client categories and how to target their demands. This also helps businesses to determine and understand their customer’s behaviour and what really they are seeking. A god’s eye picture of the consumer opens up additional marketing options and gives them a more tailored experience.

2. Improved Sales Control

Businesses use as many methods as possible to spread their message and get feedback from various client segments. Multichannel marketing promotes the use of crowdsourced data, which may assist businesses in evaluating and improving their performance by this, sales control is thoroughly improved. Whenever the performance is improved, the sales tend to increase, and in return results in better growth and profit. This method guarantees that resources are utilized effectively and that operating expenses are reduced.

3. An Advantage Over Competitors 4. More Sales Due to Increased Exposure

A corporation may engage more prospective clients by making its message more noticeable. Marketing using a single channel limits your ability to reach the most potential buyers. Staying everywhere and having an omnipresence increases exposure as compared to your rivals who are not following the strategy. By following a multichannel strategy, you are touching the audiences buying decisions first, which helps the brand increase its credibility. Companies may leverage their online presence to create a personalized image, grow a consumer base, and increase retention and loyalty.

5. Utilize the Perks that Various Media have to Give. Drawbacks of Multichannel Marketing 1. Inconsistent Technologies

Distinct channels may have different technological constraints and assets at their disposal. This can make it tough to manage technology across channels and get adequate IT workers and support. It might be possible that the content you are wanting to post on one channel, might not be supported on the other, this might lead to inconsistent messages and might lead to the downfall of your brand’s social image. A channel, for instance, may largely give qualitative data, which might be more difficult to analyze when utilizing the same technology as quantitative data.

2. Lack of Consistency in Messages 3. Issues with Estimation

Certain components of the marketing message, such as brand reach, reliability, and engagement levels, can indeed be difficult to monitor across numerous platforms. By having different content available over various different channels, it might get different for businesses to conclude the response or might face difficulties in understanding and examining estimations. It’s also tough to determine which channel or consumer touchpoint prompted a reaction.

What Do You Mean By Cross-Channel Marketing?

Whenever brands use cross-channel marketing strategies, including promotional emails, bulk SMS, online push alerts, Facebook and Instagram Messenger, and so on, this is where cross-channel marketing is taking place.

In general terms, cross-channel marketing is an upgraded version of multichannel marketing.

The selected strategies are employed in tandem to complement one another and increase their real effect. The interconnection of the marketing tactics allows for a holistic picture of the initiatives. This makes it simple for a company to measure and understand where their company is headed and what is the scope of profits in the future.

An effective cross-channel marketing plan necessitates the involvement of the whole brand. Every department under the roof of your brand, from project management to marketing, will undergo modifications. This is important is the messages might look different, but the meaning and essence shall remain the same. To accomplish the shift effectively, brand executives must recognize the importance of this stage and support the development of a cohesive strategy for their company.

Benefits of Cross-Channel Marketing 1. Customers are better understood.

Businesses may easily acquire information about their existing consumers from many communication channels in one location using cross-channel marketing. Here they can identify behavioural changes and ask relevant questions to clear away their doubts if necessary. Companies can then utilize the information to develop segmented and relevant offerings.

2. Provides vital customer service

Cross-channel marketing allows a business to communicate with clients across many platforms at the same time. The most commonly used means of customer service are emails and bulk messages. Brands reach out to their customers in a way that lets the customers communicate with them openly. Businesses may enhance their interactions with prospects and customers by providing the correct message through the most appropriate channel, any channel where they know their specific audience spends most of the time.

3. A pleasant buying experience.

Businesses may improve their consumers’ purchase experiences by properly incorporating cross-channel communication into their marketing plan. As cross-channel marketing helps you connect with your audience directly and in a smooth manner, Consumers will have simple access to assistance and product information, making their relationship with the company more enjoyable.

4. Brand Image Enhances

Cross-channel marketing results in a pleasurable buyer journey, which contributes significantly to customer satisfaction. A brand being able to connect with its audience in several ways and at several channels, increases the brand’s trust and credibility. Customers would have a sense of being important to the brand. As many marketers know, happy consumers have a favourable influence on a company’s brand because they will enthusiastically refer the company’s products or services to their friends and family.

5. Increased Participation

Consumers who connect with merchants across 10 or more channels are extremely beneficial to your brand. Consumer-brand emotional bonds are made via engaging encounters, and they are frequently the decisive factor in converting your intended audience into brand-loyal customers. As you are connected to know 24/7, they understand you care about them. Hence is a known fact that cross-channel marketing methods increase participation and engagement.

Drawbacks of cross-channel marketing 1. Changes in regulations

To offer a customer-centered marketing strategy, integrated cross-channel marketing requires siloed divisions. If your key clients refuse to cooperate, they might obstruct and forsake your growth. This might be the biggest drawback to new businesses that are implementing cross-channel marketing strategies. There might be a loss of productivity and creativity.

2. Personalized messages

Cross-channel marketing, like multichannel marketing, requires sending individualized messages to each buyer. Maintaining a consistent brand messaging and composition becomes difficult and is time-consuming. Creators of this strategy should be mindful of what messages are being sent at which channel. If you lose track and distribute contradictory materials that make no sense, your brand loses recognition as potential customers get confused about your products or services.

3. Incomplete Information

Because client information is entered through several channels, it becomes dispersed and unreliable. Brands might face difficulties in tracking and finding information from several channels. It’s tough to spot the flaws, hence building a business on these crucial client data takes a lot of effort, time, and energy.

4. There are phases to developing an Omnichannel marketing strategy.

Now that we know the basics of omnichannel marketing with its benefits and drawbacks, let’s look at how to build an effective omnichannel marketing plan.

5. Consider the customer’s perspective.

Although customer-centric marketing is becoming more common, it is more difficult to implement. To start, you must comprehend how each element of your marketing department functions and how it influences the consumer experience. Make absolutely sure that you are offering exactly what the customers are seeking. Without considering and understanding your audience’s perspectives, it might get difficult for you to create an effective omnichannel marketing strategy.

6. Make more informed judgments.

The next stage in developing an omnichannel marketing strategy is to create a single database that holds consumer data gathered from various channels. The information will assist you in better understanding customer actions, behaviour, and relationships with the brand. It will also assist you in understanding their requirements, desires, objectives, and preferences, such as the time of day they connect with your business the most, their favourite devices, the product they engage with the most, and more. It is extremely important to first know what your audience wants and is expecting from various brands and your rivals. And when you offer what is required at the very right time, things fall down in your favour. This information will serve as the cornerstone for your omnichannel marketing strategy.

By having complete data filled with informative knowledge regarding your audiences, it becomes easier for your audience to consider your brand for the future as you are providing them with what they are looking for.

7. Select the appropriate marketing instruments.

An omnichannel marketing approach has a lot of moving elements. Hence brands can be considered depending on effective marketing tools that could help you analyze, examine and note the essentials. Customer Data Platform, Marketing Stack, and Customer Relationship Management software are the three kinds of tools.

8. Messages that are contextually relevant and optimized

Personalized and relevant messages provided via the right channel at the right time are contextually correct and optimized communications. Here again, it is important to realize and understand where and when your audiences are active and spend their time. Relevance and timings are what an omnichannel marketing strategy is all about.

Consider going back to your collected data and revising your customer’s behaviour and needs.

9. Subdivisions

Trust us whenever we say this, but it is a fact that AI will be taking over most of the operations in the future. Marketers and customers will soon be heavily dependent upon AI for fulfilling the buyer’s journey.

By implementing AI, you are also cutting down the time and energy consumed.

Few Omnichannel Statistics You Should Be Aware of

The greatest hurdle to multichannel marketing, according to 64% of marketers, is a lack of resources and investment. (Club of CMOs)

Consumers anticipate consistent engagement across channels in 90% of cases. (SDL)

In-store smartphone research has become a key element of the shopping experience for 71% of customers. (Google)

Shoppers who use many channels have a 30 percent better lifetime value than those who just use one. (Google)

Over 35% of consumers want to be able to communicate with the same customer support professional regardless of channel. (Zendesk)

If an online business does not give physical store inventory information, 39% of consumers are reluctant or extremely unlikely to visit the store. (Forrester)

Customers have used their mobile devices to study items at home 56 percent of the time, 38 percent of the time to check stock levels while driving to a store, and 34 percent of the time to research products while in the store. (Forrester)

69% of customers want store workers to be equipped with a smartphone to conduct easy and quick activities like searching up product information and checking inventory.

Firms with exceptionally high omnichannel customer interaction keep 89 percent of their customers, whereas companies with mediocre omnichannel consumer engagement maintain only 33 percent. (Group Aberdeen)

Consumer data is stored across channels by 77 percent of strong omnichannel organizations vs 48 percent of weak omnichannel companies. (Group Aberdeen)

Whenever communicating with customer support, 61% of consumers have found it difficult to transfer from one channel to another. (Aspect)

During the pandemic, the number of orders ordered online and picked up in shops by customers increased by 208 percent. (Adobe Analytics)

Conclusion

To make sure your brand’s omnichannel marketing approach is top-notch, one might need to fine-tune it on a regular basis. If you implement all the three – omnichannel, multichannel, and cross-channel marketing strategies effectively and professionally, get ready to encounter better results coming your way already.

Happy Marketing!

Variables In Python: A Complete Guide (Updated 2023)

In Python, you can store values to variables.

The value of a variable can then be changed throughout the execution of the program.

For example, let’s create a bunch of variables:

x = 10 name = "Alice" age = 58

Why variables?

As you can imagine, storing data is essential to a computer program.

For instance, a typical game application keeps track of some kind of score. Behind the scenes, the score is a variable that is updated based on certain actions.

This is a comprehensive guide on variables in Python. You are going to learn important concepts, such as:

Variable Assignment

Variable Types

References and Identity

Naming conventions

All the theory is backed up by great examples.

Variable Assignment

To create a variable in Python:

Come up with a name for the variable.

Use the assignment operator (=) to give it a value.

For example, let’s create a variable called name and assign the name “Alice” to it:

name = "Alice"

Once you have created a variable in your program, you can use it. This is the whole point of variables in Python.

For example, let’s display the value of the variable name:

print(name)

Output:

Alice

Now you can also change the value of the name variable.

For instance, let’s turn the name into Bob:

name = "Bob" print(name)

Output:

Bob

As you can see, now the name is no longer Alice. Instead, it was changed to Bob. It will remain Bob until you change it again.

In this example, you learned how to create variables with the assignment operator.

Chained Assignment

Sometimes when you create multiple variables all with the same value, you introduce unnecessary repetition in your code.

To fix this, Python supports what is called a chained assignment.

A chained assignment allows you to assign the same value to multiple variables in a single expression.

To demonstrate this, let’s create three variables on separate lines:

x = 0.0 y = 0.0 z = 0.0

However, because the value of each variable is the same, you could have used a chained assignment like this:

x = y = z = 0.0

Let’s print these variables to see that they are indeed 0.0 each:

print(x, y, z)

Output:

0.0 0.0 0.0

Now you understand the basics of variables in Python.

Next, let’s talk about the types of variables there are in Python.

Variables Types in Python

Variables are by no means a Python-only concept. Instead, variables are broadly used in each and every programming language as one of the building blocks of code.

In many other programming languages, variables are statically typed.

This means a variable is restricted to a single data type. In other words, no value of a different data type can be assigned to it.

As an example, if you declare an integer variable, you cannot assign a string to it.

This is what is meant by static typing.

However, Python does not have this restriction!

In Python, variables are dynamically typed.

In other words, the data type of a variable is open to change.

For example, let’s create an integer variable and turn it into a string on the next line:

x = 10 x = "Test" print(x)

Output:

Test

As you can see, this change of data type causes no problems in Python.

In some other languages, doing this kind of change would cause errors in your code.

Object Identity

In Python, every single object is automatically associated with a unique identifier number, or ID for short.

In a Python program, it is guaranteed there can be no two objects with the same ID.

Occasionally, it can be useful to be able to check the ID of the object.

To do this, use the id() function.

For example, let’s store two integer objects into variables and check their identity:

a = 10 b = 20 print(id(a)) print(id(b))

Output:

9789280 9789600

As you can see, the two IDs are different.

In other words, the integer objects 10 and 20 are stored in different memory addresses.

Object References

Although this is a beginner-friendly guide, we need to take a behind-the-scenes look at variable assignments to truly understand what happens.

This is important to understand right off the get-go because:

It causes strange behavior if you do not know how it works.

It works differently in some common programming languages.

Objects in Python

In the previous chapter, you already heard the word “object”.

But what is an object? Is it the same as a variable?

Python is an object-oriented programming language. This means practically everything in Python is an object.

You are going to hear this a lot.

But what does it mean?

Consider this piece of code:

print(1000)

Apparently, this displays the number 1000 in the console.

But behind the scenes, there is a lot more going on.

When you run this piece of code, the Python interpreter:

Creates an integer object to the memory.

Assigns a value of 1000 to the object.

Displays the value of the object in the console.

How about when we assign a value to a variable?

In Python, a variable is just a symbolic name for an object behind the scenes.

When you assign an object to a variable, you use the variable as a reference to the object somewhere in memory.

In other words, the variable itself is not an object. Instead, it is a pointer to an object.

All of this probably sounds confusing to you. Let’s see an example with an illustration to help to understand it better.

For instance, let’s create a variable x and assign 1000 to it:

x = 1000

Behind the scenes:

An integer object is created with a value of 1000. This object is stored somewhere in the memory.

In addition, a variable x is created to reference the integer object. The x acts as a middleman between you and the actual object in memory. Without x you could not access the integer object.

Here is an illustration of the situation:

The variable x points to an integer object in memory.

But here is where it gets interesting.

Consider creating another variable y where you assign the variable x.

y = x

This does not copy the value of x to a y! Instead, it creates a new symbolic name for the same object the variable x points to.

Here is a behind-the-scenes look at the situation:

To verify these variables refer to the same object, let’s see their identities using the id() function:

print(id(x)) print(id(y))

Output:

140106690603920 140106690603920

As you can see, the IDs match.

In other words, the variables x and y are both aliases to the same object in memory.

But now, let’s assign a new value to one of the variables:

y = 5000

This creates a new integer object somewhere else in the memory and makes y point to it.

If you print the identities of the variables x and y again, you can see that now they reference different objects in memory:

print(id(x)) print(id(y))

Output:

140508061916048 140508061916016

As expected, the IDs were different.

To take home, Python variable assignment means creating a reference to an object in the memory. The variable itself is not an object. Instead, it is a name via which the object can be accessed.

Notice that in Python tutorials, variables are often called objects for short. However, they are still only references to the objects. If someone says “x is an integer object” they mean “x is a variable that refers to an integer object in memory”.

Variable Naming

Thus far you have mostly used short variable names such as x or y.

But variable names can and usually should be longer than that.

In this part, you learn how to create descriptive and valid variable names in Python.

Why Does Variable Naming Matter?

Understanding code is a brain-heavy task.

As a programmer, your task is always to write understandable code.

This is beneficial to yourself and your teammates or project members.

Writing clean and understandable code starts with variable naming.

When it comes to variable naming, you need to be descriptive. The variables should not be cryptic. Instead, the variable names should express themselves.

Before talking about the best naming conventions of Python variables, let’s briefly discuss the restrictions and rules.

Variable Naming Rules and Restrictions

In Python, a variable name can:

Contain as many characters as you want.

Consist of both lowercase and uppercase letters.

Consist of digits.

Contain the underscore (_).

In Python, a variable cannot:

Start with a digit.

Contain special characters (except for underscore).

Be a reserved keyword.

Here are some valid and invalid variable name examples:

# Valid names x = 10 VERSION10 = "test" distance_to_house = 100.00 # Invalid names 5_letters = "Hello" my name = "Artturi" first&second = "Alice, Bob" for = "test"

With the variable naming rules out of the way, let’s talk about the naming conventions.

Variable Naming Conventions

There are many different blueprints for naming variables in Python.

There is not a single agreed way to name variables.

But there is a bunch of naming conventions that are commonly used.

In this part, you are going to see a couple of commonly used naming conventions in Python.

When it comes to variable naming, the most important part is to be clear and descriptive with the name of the variable.

When your variables are self-descriptive, you or one of your teammates can understand the code easily. This makes it easier to manage and build on top of the existing code.

Do not be afraid to use longer names and combinations of different words if needed.

For example, here is a great example of a descriptive variable naming:

distanceToHouse = 100.00

And here is a really bad example:

dth = 100.00

It is easy to understand the first variable. On the other hand, it is impossible to understand what the second variable is without context.

This is a great example of a long variable name that does its job really well.

When you need to combine multiple words in a variable name, there are many ways to do it.

For example, these all are valid variable names in Python:

distancetohouse = 100.00 DISTANCETOHOUSE = 100.00 distanceToHouse = 100.00 DistanceToHouse = 100.00 distance_to_house = 100.00

But for some of these names, there is room for improvement.

For example, take a look at the first two names:

distancetohouse = 100.00 DISTANCETOHOUSE = 100.00

Because you cannot use a space in a variable name, the consecutive words are not visually separated.

To “separate” the multiple words in a variable name, there are a bunch of commonly used conventions.

Camel Case. Starting from the second word, every consecutive word starts with a capital letter.

For example, distanceToHouse

Pascal Case. Each separate word starts with a capital letter, including the first one.

For example, DistanceToHouse

Snake Case. Words are separated by underscores.

For example, distance_to_house

In Python, you commonly see the 1st or 3rd approach being used with variable names.

At the end of the day, naming conventions boil down to personal preference.

In the Python community, there is no single naming convention that everyone would follow.

Thus, you should stick with one that is visually most appealing to you. At least do not use different naming conventions in the same project.

At some point, you should also read the Style Guide for Python to learn more. However, when you are learning about variables in Python, it is too early to worry too much about conventions.