Did you see this coming? 2016 was, undoubtedly, the year when chatbots ruled over the digital landscape. When all the “players” in the arena rushed to jump on this mega-trend and to ride the tide.
And then some of the voice interface's limitations have started to come out.
It's in this very context that the conversational form interface (not yet a mega-) trend has started to “steal away some of the spotlights”! It's then that designers with a vision decided to dig deep into the "old trunk" with out-of-fashion web interfaces and take out the “dusty” old web form!
Yet, they weren't that naive to think that users would just move away from cool chat-based interfaces to... filling out clunky, long web forms. They definitely had to give web forms a modern touch to ensure user engagement.
And so, they made them... conversational!
This is how this “experimental” approach, the hybrid conversational form interface, was “born”! It's designed to improve user experience where conversational interfaces start to show their “weaknesses”. And it's designed to drift away from the classy, unanimously hated web forms.
Now, let us highlight for you here both:
the most “irksome” limitations that voice interfaces have started to show
how precisely the conversational form UI succeeds to deliver a better user experience where chatbots fail
The Biggest Inconveniences of Using a Purely Conversational UI
“... for both users, development teams and site/app owners.”
It looks like chat-based conversational UIs have slightly loosened the “spell” that they had cast on users.
Customers have gradually started to grow frustrated (and this is due mostly to their (too) high expectations in chatbots) when they realized that:
they have to (there's no other way) go through each and every single sentence that the bot asks, which leads to more tapping (and friction) than they would have expected
they can't just skip some of the questions in case they don't feel comfortable giving away certain sensitive information
they experience the whole information-collecting process as being mandatory, as if they're being “constrained” to divulge that data
On the other hand, compared to a conversational form interface, a purely conversational interface isn't any more convenient on designers'/developers' and their clients' side either:
dealing with the validation of some "tricky" answers isn't precisely a breeze (like when someone enters an invalid phone number, for instance)
in order to prevent all kinds of “dumb bot” experiences, the bot has to be perfectly “trained” to parse users' answers correctly (even when faced with situations where users give “I'm a butterfly collector” type of answers to a “What's your job title?” question)
it's no easy task for the app's/website's owner to actually set up the chatbot; they need to carefully plan ahead how the questions will be phrased, the used tone and voice etc.
How Exactly Does a Conversational Form Interface Increase User Engagement?
Now that we've “exposed” to you the voice interfaces' limitations, it's only logical that we present to you a solution to these issues, right?
Introducing web forms turned into conversations? Or conversational forms, if you prefer!
What started as an experiment now stands all the chances to perfectly fit all those scenarios when companies can't afford to just blindly jump on the latest UI trend! And where they need to go for a hybrid type of approach instead: conversational UI & web forms.
Here's what these “experiments” revealed:
users feel more comfortable knowing that they DO have the option to simply ignore filling in these conversational forms if they want to
since users interact with these forms only within conversations, practically these web forms aren't intrusive, like the old web forms used to be, when they would overlay on top of the open text fields; it doesn't feel like a disruption of the user's flow anymore
the same users tend to provide the required information much quicker than they do when faced with a conversational UI (they're already familiarized with web forms and they do not experience that “awkward” feeling that someone's “asking” them to give away information).
it calls for minimal bot interaction since users get to control, right within the form, whether they've correctly filled in the required fields or not (once they chose a wrong format, they can just correct it themselves)
In short:
it's not just the old “dreaded” type of web forms that users choose to fill in
they're actually delivered within the conversational UI itself
implicitly, it's not an exclusively voice-based conversation that we're dealing with
... but with a CI incorporating one or multiple web forms
Bottom Line
“If it doesn't fit, just don't jump on the latest design trend!” As simple as that.
Conversational UI doesn't have to be “purely” conversational after all! It could also mean voice-based conversation AND interactive elements such as buttons, cards or forms.
If you anticipate that this type of chat-based conversational UI:
won't get you too far with your information-collecting
will just manage to irritate your customers
… you can always take a step back from what's currently “hype” and experiment another type of UI instead. Maybe this hybrid conversational form interface will best fit your needs and your customers' expectations.
Maybe you'll be surprised to discover that it's those “oldies but goldies”, “dusty” designs that help:
your users carry out the given tasks faster and with minimal friction
you to collect that concise, basic information or data that you need for tailoring your offers/products to your questioned customers' own needs and preferences
What's your opinion on this hybrid approach to UI design?
Adrian Ababei / Oct 25'2017
Each one of the two popular databases “lures” you with its own set of tempting features that the other one lacks. Yet, you need to go beyond the old “relational vs NoSQL” debate to find the answer to your “Which database should I choose for my web app?” question.
Therefore, it's more than a generic MySQL vs MongoDB comparison that we'll attempt to make in this post. It's not a well-founded answer to a question like “Which is the best database to use for web applications?” that we'll try to give.
Instead, we'll try helping you discover which is THE one that best fits YOUR own web app's use case.
It All Comes Down to One Key Question: “What Type of Web App?”
And just like a snowball rolling down a slope, once you've asked yourself this crucial question, expect it to “unleash” other key ones, as well:
What type of data will you be storing in your database? Is it relational data (e.g. social network-specific data, where each user has lots of associated photos, comments, groups etc.) or is it documents or analytical information that your web app's database will be storing?
Would you “trade” data protection guarantee (let's say... losing some of the stored data every dozen thousand transactions?) for really high data insert rate?
Would you store it in a relational schema guaranteeing you clear relationships between entities or would you go for a more flexible data storage format instead? One enabling you to perfectly store dynamic, unique items?
Do you expect your web app to grow any bigger? How big? Are we talking about a “very large” data volume? And this is probably the second most important question to ask yourself after the “Which database should I use for my web app?”
How many queries do you expect it to perform (per minute, hour, day)?
And which is your skills level (or your development team's skills level) in using various databases?
Will your database need to be perfectly equipped to support further and further joins?
What coding language/front-end framework will you be developing your web app in?
And you must surely agree that this is a never-ending list. There are so many aspects relevant for your specific use case, for your specific web app that you should take the time to determine.
And to focus on those which weight heavily in your database selection process.
“Which Database Should I Choose for My Web App?” Go With MongoDB If...
… it's a web app carrying a heavy write load that you're planning to develop.
MongoDB database's biggest advantage over a MySQL one is its capability to accommodate really large data volumes. Take the comments section of high trafficked websites (The New York Times or Craigslist) for instance. Loads and loads of content is being “pumped in”, at high speed, and MongoDB's perfectly equipped to assimilate it all.
Note: it might excel in terms of performance, yet it trades transaction safety to achieve that kind of performance. So, make sure you go with MongoDB only if it's not sensitive data that your web app's database will be storing. MongoDB does require a high level of risk tolerance, you know.
And there are plenty of other reasons why MongoDB might be a suitable replacement for MySQL for storing data. You should back your web app with a MongoDB database if:
... it's a small, a start-up business that you own. On open source document-oriented database, which doesn't pigeonhole your data in a rigidly structured schema (it simply stores all the values that you're inserting as documents), which is flexible, easy to set up, to manage, to deploy and to scale, is perfect for your own specific web app's needs.
. … you dream big. This NoSQL database is built to scale (horizontally), to auto-shard (and to replicate) your data as it gets heavier.
. … your web app doesn't require a complex data model and you're good to go with a simpler one. One with no further joins requests and much easier to deploy.
.... it's a prototyping scenario that you're planning to use it in.
And Now: When Not to Use MongoDB?
For if it's best-suited for certain scenarios involving backing web apps, it certainly is ill-suited for others.
Here are some of them:
if you're looking for an easy way to join tables to your database... MongoDB is not IT
if you're planning to use it as the primary database system for... 1k machines, let's assume. It's not that stable.
if it's security-critical information that you're planning to store in your web app's database (e.g. critical customer information). MongoDB doesn't guarantee you the same level of data protection as MySQL
if it's relational data that you'll be storing (so if there are clear relationships between your entities, e.g. users and reviews)
if you're counting on transaction support
A MySQL Database Might Better Suit Your Web App If...
… it's a commercial/end-user app that you're developing, which depends on a strict hierarchy of relationships between various entities.
In this case, you can't expect a MongoDB, piling up your data in collections of separate documents, to meet your needs. It's a relational database like MySQL, which stores your data in “conventional” tables, made of rows, that you should back your app with.
And if this doesn't really answer your “Which database should I choose for my web app?” question, here are a few other use cases that might get you thinking:
it's not just a traditional RDBMS (relational database management system) that would meet your data storage needs, but a full-featured one. Luckily, MySQL is that “full-feathered” relational database that you need. Over the years it's been upgraded with views, cursors, clustering, triggers, query stored procedures etc.
real-time analytics is crucial for you
you're not willing to trade high data protection standards (let's assume, for instance, that it's a live auction app that you're developing, which will store and retrieve data of critical importance) for... high data insert rate
you need transaction support, security assurance for all the transactions carried out on your app
Also, to give you one more helping hand with your decision-making process, here's a short list of web apps where a MySQL database would work best as a back-end:
e-auctions
automated online assistants
online retailers
e-commerce
real-time big data analytics
dynamic pricing
When Not to Use MySQL? Which Are Its Key Limitations?
It's precisely those scenarios where MongoDB “shines” that MySQL doesn't.
Therefore, here are some more clues to help you find the answer to your “Which database should I choose for my web app: MySQL or MongoDB?”:
scaling is definitely not it's trump card; it can't possibly rival a MongoDB database when it comes to horizontal scaling
it can't handle high transaction loads so well; from a performance point of view, MySQL isn't built to cope with really big data volumes
although it's been upgraded with replication and clustering features, their implementation isn't precisely a... no brainer
So, which one's going to be? Will you use MongoDB as a backing storage for your web app or MySQL instead?
If you need professional support in your database development projects, get in touch with Optasy.
Adrian Ababei / Oct 19'2017
Building better websites and apps has just got easier! And by “better” we do mean user-friendly (a feature encompassing all the other aspects: UX design, various functionalities, written content, graphic content etc.).
How so? Incoming Feedback by Hotjar makes it ideally easy and convenient for your users to give you specific feedback for your site/app (on its copy structure, on its design elements etc.)
And right there, on-site, on-page, at precisely THAT moment in their user journeys.
For your site visitors it's nothing but a two-clicks process (so much more at hand than answering questions in a poll) and for you, the site/app's owner it's:
a chance to grab instant and contextual feedback from your users
… and turn it into actionable insight
And now, let us briefly point out to you:
The context that “called for” such a tool (and what makes it more efficient than conventional polls)
How it works precisely
How you get to collect, monitor and use all that data to “fuel” your future design/copy/functionality improving strategies
“But Why Incoming Feedback by Hotjar? I May As Well Grab User Feedback via Polls.”
Let's play devil's advocate:
Why bother using this tool when you could easily use polls for collecting all the specific feedback you need?
Your users would simply (and kindly) answer all the questions in your poll and... voila: a fresh new “crop” of user feedback for you to leverage!
But what if:
you ask your questions long time after the user will have actually been on that specific page or has completed that specific action?
you risk misinterpreting the collected answers, due to... LACK OF CONTEXT?
And this is precisely where we wanted to get! This new tool by Hotjar, added to their whole suite of all-in-one analytics & feedback tools, brings CONTEXT to the equation.
For it's right THEN, right at that specific moment in your user's journey on your website/your app that you get to... pop up your question! Not a few pages after. Not a few hours or days after.
The feedback that he/she gives you precisely then is, by far, the most relevant one! Relevant due to:
the context of that specific visited page/visualized designed element/tested functionality/read piece of content
the impression that he/she gets about your target site element that very instant!
And How Does This Tool Work Actually?
Incoming Feedback by Hotjar is as easy for you to set up and to customize as it is easy for your visitors to use it.
1. You get to configure your widget's color, its position, its flow and, finally, enter your message. It will simply sit at the edge of your screen, looking like a tab.
2. The instant your users will want to give their feedback on the element of your site/app that you point out to in your widget, they instantly get a pop-up up to:
evaluate your site/app on a “Love to Hate” scale
enter a quick comment if they feel like putting their feedback into words
even use the area selection tool to highlight specific elements on your page (and this gold!)
eventually enter their email addresses allowing you to follow up
And there's more:
you get to create as many incoming feedback widgets as you need (since more likely than not it's multiple pages on your website/app that you'll like to get user feedback for)
the Incoming Feedback by Hotjar works on all devices
How Do I Centralize The Answers? How Do I Monitor Performance Over Time?
“By making a great use of your Incoming Feedback dashboard.”
It's a two-in-one dashboard, actually, that you get to use for:
deep analyzing and drilling down the user answers that you will have collected (using various filters)
monitoring your newly implemented enhancements' rates of success
Here are the two separate dashboards:
1. The responses dashboard
This is the repository of all the user feedback given for the suggested aspects of your site/app. Here's where you can filter them, by various criteria such as:
liked/disliked or the expressed feedback type
time when the feedback was given
page URL
… so you can turn them from “just” responses into valuable, actionable insights!
2. The results dashboard
This is where you get:
the full picture of the overall score resulting from your visitors' feedback
a breakdown of their feedback over time
It's on this dashboard that you can measure the real impact that your bug fixes, your implemented upgrades and other various improvements to your site/app have on your users.
Bottom Line
Building user-friendly websites & apps has, indeed, just got easier!
With a tool like Incoming Feedback by Hotjar you get to:
collect specific user feedback (you get to target particular aspects of your site/app)
… instant, contextual type of feedback
… and use it to take the needed action for improving the content (both graphic and written) that they dislike
Have you tried it?
Adrian Ababei / Oct 17'2017
Creating web content and deploying it on a plethora of:
platforms
devices (both modern desktops and mobile browsers)
… of different screen sizes
… and running different operating systems
web browsers
markets
… sure has “Mission: Impossible” written all over it, doesn't it? And this is precisely how your business will benefit from using HTML 5: it's been adapted specifically to help you turn all the above-mentioned challenges into... benefits.
It's the formatting language that you can use to:
design rich media web pages/mobile web applications to... entice your users with
implement them (your websites/web-based mobile apps), seamlessly, on all platforms, notwithstanding layout, design and functionality restrictions
This being said, let's get into it!
Let's point out the 10 challenges which you're currently facing, as a business striving to stand still on in the “shifting sands” of the digital web of today. Challenges which HTML 5's built to turn into key advantages for you:
1. Cross-Device Mobile App Development: It Reduces Costs and Development Time
In short, here's how your business will benefit from using HTML 5:
your development team can write code once and use it as... many times as needed (the very same batch of code) on several markets, devices and platforms
this cannot but translate into: lower lifetime cost and reduced maintenance costs, too, obviously
How about investing those “spared” resources of time, money and effort... elsewhere?
2. It Turns Offline Browsing From a Challenge Into an Offline-Cache Web Experience
Another great “app-like” behavior that HTML 5 adopts is that of running without internet connection.
That's right, practically your HTML 5 web pages' code and content get stored via the offline application cache. This way, you can guarantee your business website's visitors a great web experience even while they're ... offline.
Note: locally storing content and code (and client-side data in true SQL database) will not impact just the user experience, but your website's/app's performance, as well. Basically, offline cache makes possible for code and content to be accessed rapidly, locally, in a “no internet connection” context.
3. Better Mobile Access Translates Into Better Access to Business Intelligence
Just a moment (or two) of reflection on these 2 scenarios here:
you ask your team to either use the very same type of device, all of them, or to develop one business intelligence app for each and every type of device there is out there
you use HTML 5 for developing one business intelligence app which will collect, collate and use data on all types of devices, by leveraging browser-based analytics tools
And this is another way that your business will benefit from using HTML 5!
It's nothing but pure logic after all: since all devices run an HTML 5-compatible browser, your future business intelligence app will run smoothly on... them all!
4. Video Content Is King Now: Luckily HTML 5 Comes With Native Video Support
Just imagine: you get to build your video content right there, in the supporting browser!
No plug-ins required!
This can only translate into: faster video distribution to all targeted platforms!
How about using the time you'll gain for crafting high-quality video content that will bring you both the targeted audience and SEO on your side?
5. It Makes Front-End App Development a... Breeze
What is it that you're “cooking” (or planning to) in terms of front-end apps?
Some drag and drop tools? Or maybe some discussion boards? Some wikis?
No matter what type of front-end apps you might have in plan, with its standards and all its new features HTML 5 makes their development quicker and easier.
So, how will you value the extra time that your business will benefit from using HTML 5?
6. Here's How You Will Benefit from Using HTML 5: It's Operating System-Agnostic
“No strings attached”, here's another possible way of defining HTML 5.
For although its runs in a web browser, it's not dependent on the underlying operating system.
How does this translate into a key benefit for your own business? Practically while developing your apps you won't need to:
get tangled up in complex, time-consuming development processes
get dragged down by support overhead
… like it's the case with native apps (iOS, Blackberry, Android)
7. It Turns The Challenge of Cleanly Structuring Your Web Page Into an SEO Advantage
Clean(er), neat(er) and semantically valuable code! This is how you could best describe the “backbone” of an HTML 5 web page.
And this is precisely the type of easy-to-read, logical structure that search engine robots “enjoy” crawling through.
Bottom line: gaining search engine visibility is how your online business will benefit from using HTML 5!
8. Running Your Web Pages/Web Apps on ALL Browsers Is No Longer an Issue With HTML 5
It looks like “all the roads lead to” our preliminary definition of HTML 5: “Write once, run anywhere.”
By implementing HTML 5 and leveraging the capabilities of CSS 3 your design team can easily create a business website/web app that will run on ALL browsers.
9. It Improves User Experience Via Multimedia and Graphical Content-Rich Web Pages
And it's precisely rich-media web pages that create .. enriched web user experiences, right?
Luckily HTML 5 makes adding animations, SVG content, audio content, charts, visually-arresting graphics (and the list of design and media types can go on and on) such a breeze.
Providing your developers with features such as “<video”, <audio>” etc., they can easily integrate media files into your web pages. Enriched web user experiences... crafted with great ease!
10. It Turns Location-Based App Development from a Challenge into an... Advantage
If it's a location-based app/services that you're planning to develop, then here's how your business will benefit from using HTML 5: since it supports geolocation, APIs will make the user's location available to any browser-based app compatible with HTML 5.
As simple as that!
And this is where our list of 10 benefits that you can “reap” from implementing HTML 5 when developing your business website/web-based mobile app. Would you add some more? Or maybe some limitations/downfalls?
Adrian Ababei / Oct 17'2017
Magento's about to step into... the third dimension of e-commerce!
As you well know, the other 2 are:
responsive e-commerce websites
native apps
And the e-commerce giant is about to make its glorious entrance by launching its Magento PWA Studio! A suite of tools designed to empower developers to... develop (obviously!) online stores as progressive web apps.
That Magento has jumped on this trend is really no surprise at all. But the suite of tools that it's now developing is, for sure, a source of ongoing assumptions, skeptic feedback and expectations.
Here's what we know for sure, right from their post on Magento turning into a progressive web application platform:
that these tools are aimed to turn into “learning tools” for future Magento PWA developers
that they're designed to enable them to build blazing-fast PWA front-ends for their e-commerce Magento stores
that it's a “toolset” that will help them build PWA components and extensions to be reused or even sold on the Magento Marketplace
But before we get into this, before we shed some more light on Magento's new “baby” (that they're developing in collaboration with Google) we should answer the next question:
What's a PWA?
“The “eraser” of all clear-cut differences between the mobile web and native apps”.
Now, in order to give PWAs a less... metaphoric definition, how about “dissecting” the term itself, “progressive web app”, starting from the back:
it's an app (not an applet!): since it installs and runs its code on the customer's own device (PCs here included)
it's a “web” app: an obvious advantage over native apps, since it's not closely “dependent” on one specific platform and on its specific language; it uses “plain” web languages such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript
it's “progressive”: meaning that it progressively loads assets and data as the user scrolls down a specific page in the store or goes from one page to another; so, there's no need for those “surfed” pages to reload, since changes and transitioning happen... gradually
Summing up, progressive web apps:
look like native apps (delivering the same app-like and lightning-fast digital shopping experiences)
behave like responsive mobile websites, since they run in browsers and are written in standard web languages
and yet... they're neither native apps nor JavaScript one-page apps
They're... progressive web apps (a no-brainer conclusion, no doubt about it).
And it's those types of digital shopping experiences of the future that the Magento PAW Studio's tools will help developers create.
Progressive Web Apps vs Native Apps
It's a fact: native apps “rule” in terms of conversion rates and in terms of provided shopping digital experiences.
The mobile web stands no chance to compete with that!
Yet, developing native apps does come with its inconveniences for players in the e-commerce arena (especially for small and medium-sized businesses):
they're expensive to develop
potential shoppers only download and install the apps of those specific brands that they interact with most frequently
And here's how PWAs “dare” to challenge native apps' long-time supremacy:
they're more cost-effective to build since they're developed on open standards (and even so more now, with the Magento PWA Studio soon to be available)
they're equally fast
they run their code right in the mobile web browser, there's no longer a need for a separate installation
Progressive Web Apps vs Responsive Mobile Sites
In short: how are any better (for both online store owners and their customers) than traditional responsive websites?
Here's how/why:
they leverage open source technology
they rely on the new API's, Service Workers, integrated now into web browsers, which allow JavaScript to run in the background: boosted speed + improved usability
And, deriving from this tiny “detail”, there are a plethora of features that make them a huge leap forward into the future of e-commerce. We've pointed out the most significant ones in this post here on PWA's and how they can benefit your business.
What Does The Magento PWA Studio Include So Far?
Now that we've defined PWAs and that we've compared them to the other 2 online shopping channels, let's focus more on Magento's plan to turn into a progressive web app platform.
In this respect, here's what this suite of tools includes for now:
application shell: a basic PHTML file, created in the early phase of the project, standing for the basis for the HTML responses (coming from all routes)
API layer: working on a new style of API and on new API methods, that could provide lighter, more customized responses (compared to those of the REST designs)
application framework: the resulting PWA will be interacting with the “headless” Magento store via API calls
Yet, from all the information that the Magento team shared on their blog, the one with the greatest impact has been that: it's React apps that developers will get to build using the Magento PAW Studio.
It's React-powered front-ends that these apps will have.
Great news indeed, for all front-end developers out there, since there's no point denying that React's riding huge waves of popularity these days.
No wonder that the Drupal core committer team, too, is considering using React JS for building their own administrative user interfaces.
What's In It for You, The Magento Store Owner?
Ok, so we've pointed out how much more enjoyable Magento developers' work is going to be, that they'll be enabled to get their Magento PWAs up and running in no time, but... what about you, the business owner?
Let us point out some key PWA features that easily translate into benefits for you:
PWAs are SEO-friendly: thanks to their JavaScript architecture PWAs are easy to crawl through (by search engines' bots); also, they're lightning-fast, which makes them SEO-optimized right from the start
PWAs run on desktop browsers, as well: that's right, they're not restricted to the mobile web since Service Workers run on desktop browsers, too
PWAs will run on Safari, as well: Apple's planning to “do the necessary” so that PWAs can run on Apple devices, as well, in the near future.
The END! For now, at least, since the Magento WAP Studio is still under development, tests are being run, developers' feedback is being collected and closely analyzed.
Are you looking forward to it? What's your opinion on progressive web apps shaping the future of e-commerce?
You can also check out our Magento website design services in Vancouver.
Adrian Ababei / Oct 12'2017
Or simply put: “What can Hadoop possibly do that my data warehouse can't already?”
A predictable and legitimate question following the “Why should my company use Hadoop after all?”.
Our today's post is not aimed at convincing you that you should, indeed, replace your current data warehousing solution and move your data over to a Hadoop platform. That would just point out the“why it's best to go with Hadoop”.
Instead, we're ready to answer your specific question: “Why should my company use Hadoop as a data storing and data processing solution?”
We'll be:
presenting you with specific use cases when Hadoop is, indeed, the best option
outlining key advantages of using Hadoop over the traditional data warehousing
When Should You Consider Replacing Your Data Warehouse With Hadoop?
One of the most popular sayings here, at our Toronto web design company, is: “if it ain't broken why fix it?”.
Therefore, let us point out to you just 2 specific situations where you should consider a massive data migration to Hadoop as your best option:
you're dealing with a huge amount of data
you need built-in capabilities for processing raw and semi-structured data... in a scalable way, of course
Does any of these contexts ring a bell to you? If so, you're better off with Hadoop.
"Why Should My Company Use Hadoop?" 7 Advantages Over Traditional Data Warehousing
For it all comes down to the benefits that your company will gain from such a transition.
In this respect, we've put together a list of 7 key reasons why Hadoop is a great asset for your company.
Analyze them, weight them, compare them to the benefits that you're currently “reaping” from using your current enterprise solution and... do the math yourself:
1. It's Cost Effective: it's free actually
No, no, we're not trying to brush under the carpet costs such as:
staff training investments that you should consider
commodity hardware costs to take into account for storing impossibly large sets of data
And yet, they are insignificant compared to the costs that legacy commercial vendors products' come along with:
annual support offered by the data warehouse's vendor (compared to Hadoop's open source support)
perpetual licenses
significant costs that each scaling process would call for (no wonder that companies used to get rid of loads of raw data since scaling their data warehouses to accommodate it all was cost prohibitive)
2. It's (so much) Easier to Use: skip formatting and “exploit” your data from day one
Here's an answer, which makes a strong argument itself, to your “Why should my company use Hadoop over my current data storage solution?”
Its ease of use feature will come as a major surprise to you once you've gone through a:
changing formats
complex preprocessing
establishing data models
… type of experience with your current enterprise solution. An entire “ordeal” to go through just to be able to finally leverage your own data!
With Hadoop it's just a “feed the data” process! That's all! No preliminary steps to take.
And where do you add that you get to use all your familiar tools, languages and even to test the newest methods for getting the most value out of our data!
3. It's Flexible: it can capture data from a plethora of data sources
And this is gold when you have an entire ecosystem of data sources ready to deliver you data if you just have the right tool to... tap into!
Hadoop's perfectly suited for the job: it will access and extract data and provide you with valuable insights from sources ranging from:
social media
email conversations
… and lots of other “repositories” of both structured and unstructured data. It will go and get this heterogeneous load of data to you.
Data that will then fuel your marketing campaigns, your fraud detection initiatives, your log processing actions etc.
Do giants such Marks & Spencer and Yahoo and their own use cases of Hadoop make convincing enough answers to your “Why should my company use Hadoop?” question?
They're using Hadoop to:
play the “personalization” card right
put together cross-functional teams (IT, marketing, e-commerce, finance...) thanks to Hadoop's capability to seamlessly process all types of data
gain a better understanding of their customers (this is where Predictive analytics comes into play)
And this is what extracting value from your own data, that's just sitting there, waiting to be leveraged, really means.
4. It's Open Source Technology: bugs and feature development handled by multiple companies
Just try to compare bug fixing and new features development being handled by a single company (your commercial license vendor) to the same processes being carried out by hundreds of companies!
In other words: when choosing Hadoop as your data storage platform there's an entire community of contributing companies offering you support and continuously improving the platform.
5. It's Built With High Scalability in Mind: keep on adding more and more data clusters
How easily (or “costly”) is it to scale your current data warehouse to accommodate your increasing amounts of data?
Hadoop scales... organically, using low-cost hardware as a unique resource!
Here's how it works:
as you add new and new heavy nodes (clustering thousands of terabytes of data)
Hadoop manages to seamlessly accommodate it all
… and to distribute it across hundreds of inexpensive servers that run in parallel
Scalability is, undoubtedly, one of Hadoop's “five-star” features, the one that traditional relational database systems (RDBMS) can't possibly compete with!
6. It's Fast: data processing at high speed
When you're questioning yourself “Why should my company use Hadoop instead of sticking to its current data warehousing solution?”, you might be thinking, in fact:
“How much faster than my current data warehouse can Hadoop process data?”
A lot faster!
And this is exclusively thanks to its unique data storage method: the data mapping & the data processing happen on the same server where data is stored.
This way mapping and processing massive volumes of unstructured data is no challenge for Hadoop at all: it will map it no matter where it might be located in a cluster.
And so processing it (we're talking about petabytes of data here) turns into a matter of hours!
7. It's Equipped to Handle Fails Remarkably: say Hello to automatic data replication!
You can run, but there's no way of hiding/completely avoiding cluster fails!
But luckily Hadoop provides you with a great “safety net” type of capability: it automatically replicates data for you, sending it to other nodes.
So, when faults happen (and they will), you can stay reassured: Hadoop will always have copies of your data ready to be passed on to other, non-compromised locations of your data infrastructure.
Final Thoughts
Or “recommendations” if you prefer:
if it's small data that your company's “piled up” so far, if there are small files that you need to store and leverage, don't go for Hadoop
if you don't really need to access and to process your unstructured or semi-structured data, there's no real need to use Hadoop
Now getting back to the initial question, “Why should my company use Hadoop over its current data warehouse?”, our answer is:
“Because Hadoop is built and being constantly enhanced with impossibly large amounts of data in mind!"
Adrian Ababei / Oct 11'2017
He proposed it:
“... make some of Drupal's own administrative UIs more powerful and easier to use, I proposed that we add a modern JavaScript to core.” (Dries Buytaert's keynote presentation, DrupalCon Vienna)
... and stirred waves of enthusiasm, of unveiled skepticism and never-ending debates. What would using React JS for Drupal's administrative UIs mean for you?
You, the site builder. You, the content creator?
And this is precisely what we'll try to answer in this blog post as we'll be:
presenting you the context: why is integrating a JavaScript framework right into Drupal core even needed?
pointing our Drupal's long way to becoming “ JS ready”
highlighting the reasons why React's most likely to win this “popularity contest” over other JS technologies
highlighting the challenges to expect and to plan out for (to overcome) if React is, indeed, the “chosen one”
outlining the clear benefits that YOU will get if a JavaScript framework, more precisely if React does get integrated into Drupal core
3 Inconveniences for Currently Not Having a JavaScript Framework in Drupal Core
While headless Drupal 8 has proven to be a powerful content repository for front-end apps, not having a JS framework integrated into its very core has been the cause of certain … limitations:
it kept putting off addressing well-known editorial and site-building UX issues
it made it almost impossible to help Drupal core contributors realize how they could leverage certain JavaScript approaches and advanced practices; how they could transpose them into new modules and new Drupal features
it has been a break on assimilating more JavaScript experts and JS expertise into the Drupal community
From Improving Its Web Services APIs to Being Ready for Integrating a JS Framework in Core
You're closer than ever, as a site builder/content creator, to using React JS for Drupal's administrative UIs. Yet, this didn't happen overnight:
first Dries Buytaert (Drupal CMS's founder himself) and his team decided to stabilize Drupal's web services APIs
then to step up their efforts even more for improving them
and it's just now that they've decided that Drupal's finally matured and 100% ready for this major integration
Meanwhile, Drupal users have done wonders leveraging Drupal 8's web services APIs:
front-end apps have been built alongside Drupal, which has been backing them up as their content repository
… and modern, JavaScript frameworks have been used for powering these apps' front-ends, with no restriction, whatsoever, on the particular JS technologies that web developers chose to use
Now having passed the “decoupled architecture test” and having managed to adapt itself to all JavaScript frameworks used as front-ends, Drupal's ready to... level up!
To incorporate a JavaScript framework in its core.
And, implicitly, it's time for the Drupal community, as well, to commit to a unique framework that will be used for its administrative front-end.
Why React JS?
We'll start by answering the “Why React JS over Angular or Ember?” question:
“Because of its component-based nature.”
And there's a growing “trend” among web developers to create user interfaces by putting together reusable component libraries. Luckily, React makes it easy to build self-contained components and to simply “assemble” them in big-sized apps.
Therefore, the other 2 JS frameworks (focused on MV* specific workflows instead), are off the table.
And now, let's list other reasons for using React JS for Drupal's administrate UIs:
it's backed up and constantly updated with new libraries, new tutorials etc. by a worldwide, active community of developers
it powers large-scale web projects such as Facebook, Airbnb, WordPress, The New York Times
it's this community itself that bundled up an ecosystem of no less than 16.000 libraries around it
its different approach to virtual DOM (Document Object Model): it “detects” precisely those virtual DOM objects that need to be updated and it's strictly those parts of the real DOM that it updates (instead of updating the entire DOM tree); a major performance boost indeed
it poses no problems working with it thanks to its rather straightforward programming approach
it “plays well” with all the other JS frameworks
licensing issues reported in the past have been resolved
it's widely used by the JavaScript developers
Expected Challenges of Working With React JS
For there are challenges that the Drupal's main contributors are planning out for when it comes to using React JS for Drupal's core. And so should you:
modularity, itself, will turn out to be a major challenge to plan out for
Drupal will need to “keep up with” React's much more alert release cycle
Drupal theming for decoupled UIs will never be the same again: React's approach will prevail
Using React JS for Drupal's Administrative Interfaces: What's in It for You?
For adopting a JS framework for Drupal's own administrative UIs (and React seems to be the winning “competitor), does translate into key benefits for you, as well:
whether you're a Drupal site builder or a content creator, using Drupal will get much easier (talking about addressing its old UX issues right?) in a reversible, incremental way
building modern UIs will get a lot more streamlined when you have a modern, JS toolbox right at hand... in Drupal core!
a JavaScript framework would automatically speed up (“app-like speed”) content modeling, configuration tools, content listing
if you're a Drupal developer, you can stay reassured that your Drupal expertise will stay relevant in a JavaScript technologies-centered web
... that, your future React-focused sills will be future-proofed (thanks to this JS technology's high popularity among web developers)
What do you think? Do you find adding a JavaScript framework to Drupal core a good idea or not?
And what about using React JS for Drupal? Would you have gone for another JS technology instead if you could have chosen the one to power your administrative UIs from now on?
Adrian Ababei / Oct 09'2017
Is your enterprise “ecosystem” of apps, systems, and IT components getting overwhelmingly complex? Is managing it and leveraging it getting increasingly challenging? Then it's a fact: you need to get them organized in a more effective infrastructure. One that should bridge them all together and enable a continuous flow of data across the whole structure. You need to move away from the traditional point-to-point integration system and go for an ESB instead. "But why Mule ESB?"
A more than valid question. Here are 5 top reasons why it stands out from all the other ESB products. Why you should consider using it as your future integration platform:
But First: What Is an ESB More Precisely?
Take it as a set of principles rather than as a software on its own. A set of “rules” for building out your bus-like infrastructure where your disparate systems:
get bridged together
exchange data via the communication bus that this ESB system provides; and it's a two-way communication process that takes place: the systems share data among them and they all communicate with the bus individually, as well
are independent of one another
And it's this very last feature that what makes the ESB architecture such a big “leap” ahead from the traditional point-to-point integration system.
But how does this type of bus-like infrastructure for organizing your apps and systems benefit you precisely:
it speeds up marketing your new initiatives
it enhances productivity, translated into more apps developed within your organization
it allows you to leverage your existing systems during app development thanks to all the pre-built communication and transformation capabilities
Why Move Away From a Traditional Point-to-Point Integration?
Because in a point-to-point integration system your apps are tightly dependent on one another. And this “dependency relation” does interfere with the very principle of organizational agility, doesn't it?
What Is Mule ESB? What Sets It Apart from Other ESB Products?
To answer your first question: Mule Soft is a lightweight, highly scalable Java-based service bus (or integration platform, if you prefer) which:
enables developers to connect a whole ecosystem of Saas, on-premises apps and disparate systems quick and easy
… and to enhance communication between them, a continuous data flow alongside the infrastructure
“And what makes Mule as an ESB stand out from the crowd of other ESB products?”
Let's point out those key features that set Mule ESB apart from the its “competitors:
it's, in fact, a component part of a larger structure of API design management capabilities
it comes with a pre-built library of templates
… and with out-of-the-box connectors enhancing the reusability of components (and this is big)
it comes with built-in agile software development methods and multiple toolchains boosting your developers' productivity
Why Mule ESB? Top 5 Reasons to Consider Using It as Your App Integration Technology
1. It Scales Effectively, Both Up and Down
And this key feature translates into unlimited freedom for your teams to bridge together as many apps and systems as needed. Mule ESB will scale to efficiently incorporate them all!
In addition to being effectively scalable, Mule ESB's ideally embeddable, as well:
you can embed it into a single app, directly
or you can plug it into your app server (JBoss, WAS, Tomcat) instead
and even into a JUnit test case (for yes, it does come with built-in JUnit support, as well)
2. It Perfectly Integrates All Components, Irrespective of the Technology Used
And this is a strong argument to consider when you're asking yourself: “Why Mule ESB over another ESB product?”
It's definitely not a restrictive or “picky” ESB: it will incorporate all the existing systems regardless of the technologies that they might be running on: Web Services, JMS, HTTP, JDBC, you name it.
… from a “POJO” to a component coming from a different framework!
Moreover, not only that it integrates them all under its “umbrella”, but it enhances communication across this infrastructure of various apps and multiple systems. It allows data flows between the bridged apps within your organization and across the web.
3. It's Highly Accessible, Supporting a Wide Variety of Code Languages
And this is great news for your Java developers!
Since it:
comes with a set of widely used tools (Maven, Eclipse, Spring, JUnit) that your team's already familiar with
uses an XML transformation language for presenting logic layers
supports multiple code languages: JavaScript, Ruby, Java, Python...
In short: your development team will face no problems writing custom code.
4. It Enables You to Reuse Your Components
Here's another reason that makes a great answer, alone, to your “Why Mule ESB?” question! Unlike other integration platforms out there, this one enables reusability!
Your team's empowered to reuse your infrastructure's components. Therefore, it enables them to run the existing ones since it doesn't call for Mule-specific code.
5. It's Ideally Lightweight
Mule ESB does, indeed, stand out from a “weight” point of view. Moreover, thanks to its modular design you get to make it even lighter by removing all the modules that you won't use.
While thanks to its configuration model you get to easily add, re-order and upgrade functionality sparing the time you'd otherwise invest in implementing changes to your existing integrations instead.
And this is THE list! The one including 5 key reasons why Mule ESB could make a great choice when you consider using an integration platform within your company.
Are there any other ESB products competing with it for your appreciation? Are these 5 reasons not convincing enough or have you already identified possible drawbacks balancing them? Do share your thoughts!
Adrian Ababei / Oct 05'2017
To Shopify or not to Shopify? And why shouldn't you? It's an all-in-one, turn-key shopping cart solution after all: it takes care of all there's needed for your store to run smoothly, while you get to focus on those details that will make it stand out from the crowd. Yet, convenience does come with a cost (or several of them): a customization cost, the cost of having only basic discount and shipping cost models, per order transaction fees and so on. So is Shopify the best option for your own online store or not?
There's only one simple way to answer it: weighing its most tempting pros and its most discouraging cons.
Here are 6 of each that our team at our web design company in Toronto, has selected for you:
6 Reasons for Running Your Online Store on Shopify
1. You Get an Impressive Collection of Great Looking Themes to Choose From
And you should, indeed, feel “spoiled” by such a wide collection of themes at your fingertip! Both free and premium.
If you're a start-up, stay reassured: your e-commerce website will still look sharp and professional with a free Shopify theme. This way, you can take off the table the costs of hiring a designer when you plan your initial financing.
As you grow, as a business, you can always jazz up your store with fancy, visually-arresting upgrades.
Note: The time you'd spend looking for a good and “not so expensive” designer you could invest in high-quality photography and other visual assets instead!
And the great thing when you start small and plan to grow your e-commerce business organically is that Shopify makes its theme system ideally accessible for designers. It will get easier for the design team that you'll choose, later on, to fine tune your virtual storefront.
2. It Provides Your Store With Security Features and Top Speed, By Default
“Is Shopify the best option for me?” When asking yourself this question the security and performance factors should weight heavy in your decision-making process:
you expect your online store to be 100% safe for your customers; it should inspire trust so that they get confident enough to enter their card details
you expect it to load fast; online shoppers are remorselessly “stingy” when it comes to the time they'd invest in waiting for a page to load
Well, you hit the nail right on the head with your two-in-one expectation here: Shopify takes off caching, compliance, worrying about hackers etc. off your shoulders.
And it lets you focus on running and growing your business instead!
Note: Money talks and... gets your back covered! It's no news that Shopify's been investing huge sums in software and security engineering.
3. It's an “All-Features-in-One” E-Commerce Platform
Are you quite “greedy” when it comes to the features that you'd want your e-commerce platform to provide you with, right out-of-the-box?
No need to be “reasonably demanding”. And no need to look any further than... Shopify.
It makes the “Swiss knife” type of shopping cart solution that you need for setting up and running your store, fully fledged, in no time:
it has built-in payment gateways support
its themes are easily customizable
it makes implementing Google Analytics effortless
it empowers you to add and to remove your products nice and easy
And there's so much more to this bundle of conveniences that Shopify “spoils” you with as soon as you “unwrap” it!
4. You Can Rely on Its Excellent Customer Support Services
“Is Shopify the best option for my online store?” should turn into “Is there always a Shopify expert to get my back whenever I'm facing a problem?”
Luckily, Shopify's customer service is simply... outstanding! And it's the platform's own users' reviews that support our opinion: there's always an easy to reach Shopify expert ready to help you out... fast.
And this aspect gets particularly critical when you're tempted with tons of upgrades which, at some point, risk to guide you towards a dead end. Then you just need to call someone to... save the day!
5. You Get to Leverage Its Pre-Built Marketing Essentials Toolkit
So Shopify “spoils” you with outstanding customer service. On the other hand, its built-in digital marketing tools aren't out of the ordinary! Yet, they do make the utterly effective essential kit to meet all your online store's marketing needs:
it makes putting together landing pages easy
it's perfectly equipped for SEO: it allows meta descriptions, title tags, it's written in a clean, easy to crawl code
it handles issues of critical SEO importance for you by default (sitemap, Search Console, SSL, canonicals etc.)
In a few words: Shopify's marketing “toolbox” is limited to the essentials, the critically important ones, that it handles to perfection!
6. It “Bundles Up” Tones of Add-Ons In Its App Store
Here's another strong pro to help you come up with a quick answer to your “Is Shopify the best option for my business?” dilemma: The Shopify App Store itself!
It's online store owners' “Wonderland”. An impressive collection of fancy apps that they get to plug right into their online stores.
It's also the meeting point between third-party developers and business owners looking to enhance their stores' out-of-the-box functionality. To make them stand out in their respective industries.
Some apps are free and some of them come with a price tag on.
Is there an app perfectly tailored to your online store's needs that you're searching for?
you could search for a developer to build if for you
but not before you've dug through the wide collection of add-ons already available in the Shopify App Store
Note: by far the most intriguing add-on that Shopify “tempts” you with” is its Buy button itself:
the idea of selling your products outside your online store might be... puzzling you at first
and still, it provides you with so much flexibility: you get to sell your products wherever on the web without the need to actually set up an online store
“Is Shopify The Best Option for My Business?” 6 Reasons To Doubt It
1. It Limits Your Customization Options
Out-of-the-box convenience does come with a price when using Shopify as your e-commerce platform! And this price is given by all the restrictions imposed on your site's architecture.
And implicitly by the customization limitations deriving from there!
It's true, though, you can still hire a good developer to tweak things on your store, yet... this comes with a risk, as well: that of messing up the core code.
A major con, indeed, when you expect to get unlimited freedom for fine tuning your e-commerce site's functionality to your liking!
2. Customization Does Come, But At a Cost
And your legitimate question, “Is Shopify the best option for me?” becomes “Is Shopify, in fact, a restrictive, risky and costly e-commerce solution?”
On one hand, you have a huge community of third-party developers ready to get any “tweaking job” done for you.
Yet, on the other hand:
Shopify comes with its proprietary code language, Liquid: so the chosen developer(s) will need to know Liquid to be able to customize anything about your store; they can't “get away” with using PHP when “maneuvering” templates
needless to add that overly specialized developers are more expensive
you can't make just small tweaks: you need to engage in full customization processes
getting your hands (or your developers' hands) dirty in Shopify's base code does interfere with the software's warranty
by tweaking your Shopify's store base code you run the risk to ruin it and to find it challenging plugging in future add-ons (which call for the out-of-the-box Shopify code to work)
Decisions, decisions!
3. Its Built-In Blogging Features Are Simply... Unremarkable
Can you imagine your content strategy without a blog?
Unfortunately, Shopify's out-of-the-box blogging capabilities could be better. If compared with Wordpress's, for instance, they seem... basic.
So, if you have big plans for your blog:
to turn it into a true organic traffic “magnet”
into a “channel” for informing customers about your products and about your brand's values
into a tool for increasing social shares
… and for building customer communities
… then Shopify's blogging software is not built to properly “fuel” your plans.
Just make sure you're prepared for this inconvenience!
4. It Can Handle Basic Discount Scenarios Only
Don't expect Shopify to cope with all your upsell scenarios, with all those complex discount models that you might have in mind.
For it can handle “one discount per order” models only. So, it's pointless to put together all kinds of complex (“buy one get one free”, multiple discount codes per order etc.) types of structures.
Not only that Shopify's not built to handle them, but you might be tempted to “adapt” your discount models to this inconvenience. To create several variants of a product, each one with its own price.
Don't! You will only end up messing your inventory system!
5. It Charges a Per Sale Transaction Fee
These fees add up to your monthly store plan and come on top of the credit card fees.
And from this point of view Shopify can be discouraging both for a start-up business owner and for one already selling in a high volume on his/her online store:
as a start-up, you don't know, from the start, how much you'll end up selling on your e-commerce website
as a business already selling in high volumes the calculation of these transaction fees changes, so fees will start to add up gradually
In short: you can't avoid transaction fees, no matter how much you're actually selling on your Shopify store; still, if you want to save a percentage point you'll need to increase your sales to make those “savings” count.
6. It Can't Handle Complex Shipping Cost Models
Unfortunately, it's true! Since Shopify's built primarily as a shopping cart solution for small to medium-sized business, it's designed to handle basic, single orders only.
In other words, it's not well equipped for all the complexities that wholesalers' orders involve:
calculating real-time shipping cost
orders that include multiple product sizes, multiple boxes
In conclusion: Shopify's out-of-the-box shipping models can handle basic shipping needs only. If you're dealing with more complex ones on your online store, you might consider having a third-party app developed for you!
The END! What do you say? Have we succeeded, through our Shopify pros and cons list here, in helping you find the answer to your valid question: “Is Shopify the best option for my business?”
Adrian Ababei / Oct 05'2017