Big data has led to a number of changes in the world of finance. Global companies are expected to spend over $11 billion on financial analytics services by 2026. One of the biggest reasons companies are spending so much on financial analytics is to improve investing opportunities. They aren’t just using data to make better stock trades. They also are optimizing nontraditional investment decisions.
Can Big Data Help Investors With Contracts For Differences?
The contract for difference market is one of the investing opportunities that is being influenced by big data. However, before you can learn how to use big data to make these trades, it is important to appreciate what contract for differences are.
It’s well known that the stock market offers the potential to make significant amounts of money. Unfortunately, the amount you need to invest is too high for most people. That’s why brokers invest other people’s money and the reason other investment opportunities have become possible. One of the newest investing opportunities is known as contract for differences.
Contract For Differences (CFD) is a way to start investing without the need for huge amounts of capital. Instead of purchasing shares, you decide whether the price of a share will rise or fall in a given time period.
You can then make a contract with a reputable CFD broker, one that thinks the price will move in the opposite direction. Contracts are for specific timescales, as soon as the contract finishes the difference is settled. If it moved in your favor then you’ll net the difference, if so, you need to settle with the CFD broker.
It’s easy to get started and, with practice, offers the opportunity to generate sizeable returns. However, as with all investing, it’s possible to lose money and funds should never be invested that can’t afford to be lost. This is why it is a good idea to use big data to optimize your trades.
The good news about CFDs is that you don’t need to buy the shares or any product, just speculate on the price movement.
CFD Is Different than Forex
Anyone with knowledge of Forex may be wondering what the difference is. After all, Forex trading effectively creates returns on the back of currency movements, regardless of whether they are up or down.
However, forex trading is limited to currencies, in many cases just the main eight trading currencies. In contrast, CFDs can be purchased on a huge range of assets. This means you can focus on the markets that appeal to you or that you know enough about, effectively increasing your likelihood of generating good returns.
Otherwise, many of the same dynamics apply, which explains the benefits of using big data. After all, big data helps a lot with making forex trades.
Why Big Data Matters
Data has always been created but, as the world has become more digitalized there have been much larger volumes of data to deal with. It’s difficult to process the data in real-time and ensure it is useful to anyone without the advent of big data processing.
But big data can help identify trends, potential issues, and it can be used to assess how the markets will react to certain types of news. That’s why it’s important to all types of traders, including those specializing in CFDs.
The Role Of Big Data
Big data is the term used when there are large amounts of data, too much too reasonably process by hand or via a standard software program. This data can be useful for many reasons, especially if you’re trading in CFDs.
Movements Over Long Periods
Trading in contract for differences means you’re focused on how the share price of a given asset will change in a very short period of time. Big data may seem irrelevant. But, you’ll never be able to process all the fluctuations in price and reasons for fluctuations by yourself. Big data can show you how a company reacts in different markets and the likelihood of its value increasing or declining.
Using it to help you understand a product can improve the accuracy of your CFD trade.
Global Events
Big data doesn’t just look at the stock market, it is used across the globe to analyze all sorts of things, from jet engines to social media activity. Oracle has a report on how predictive analytics helps make these forecasts.
Applying big data to global events will help you to understand how these events can affect your CFD trades, and allow you to adjust your trades accordingly. It can make the difference between a return and a loss.
It’s Easy To Use
Big data is assessed on specialist software, allowing you to simply ask it questions and get the answers you need. It’s never been easier to access big data. In fact, there are hundreds of sites that provide free access to big data. You simply need to decide which sites are most relevant to your intended CFDs.
Once you access big data and learn which information is useful to your trades, you’ll find it allows you to streamline decision making, optimize your returns, and provides you with additional opportunities as you start to develop a deeper understanding of how the CFD market, and individual companies, work.
It is no secret that cyberattacks are escalating in frequency and severity each year. They have led to a growing number of data breaches, which are creating major concerns for people all over the world. IBM reports that the average data breach cost over $4.2 million in 2021, which is a figure that grows every year.
Malicious actors are becoming increasingly crafty at intercepting communication and penetrating organizations to steal valuable data. The fact of the matter is that no one will ever be completely safe from these types of attacks, and when they do happen, response time is the most valuable vector organizations have under their control.
Take the Marriott data breach in 2014, for example. Before Marriot acquired the Starwood hotel group, Starwood suffered a major data breach of its customer database. Because no internal threat detection mechanisms existed, the malicious actors had access to massive volumes containing personal customer information. This breach was not discovered until 2018. Granting the malicious actors open access to more and more data as the Marriott hotel group was doing business.
Had this data breach been detected earlier, countermeasures could have been put into place and protected many of their clients.
How can organizations protect themselves from this kind of data breach?
Luckily modern solutions exist that arms organizations with the necessary tools to avoid these kinds of data breaches. An extremely good principle and starting point would be to honestly quantify the cybersecurity risk in your organization.
For organizations who need expert advice in this area, there are automated software solutions from specialized third-party vendors that offer this kind of quantification. They are crucial for data protection.
Being aware of the possible shortcomings in organizational security not only highlights problems that need to be addressed in the short term but also allows the organization to develop sound data security policies for consistent fortification.
Policies will go a long way to grow a culture of security awareness among employees, giving guidance on best data protection practices and opening channels of honest communication in the case of the inadvertent introduction of vulnerabilities.
To help administrators secure hosts consistently and efficiently, organizations should consider combining data security automation solutions with OS and application setup checklists. Checklists can be used by security automation technologies to apply configuration settings that improve the default level of security and to monitor the hosts’ settings to ensure that they are still in compliance with the checklist settings. Hardening principles when it comes to security setups should also be considered.
Since response time plays such an important role during a data breach, what actions are needed to reduce the overall incident response time?
The speed of incident response during a data breach can be affected by four distinct parameters:
PreparationDetection and AnalysisThreat containment and RecoveryIncident post-mortem
Organizations are encouraged as part of their preparation process to continually improve their internal knowledge about malware found in the wild and prevent data theft. Keeping up with the ever-changing landscape of malware threats and technologies is essential. Preparation would also include having dedicated channels of communication between users and IT or SOC where possible. Users should also receive regular training in best practices and security policy to avoid possible attacks stemming from social engineering.
To reduce the number of infected hosts and the amount of harm sustained by the company, organizations should aim to detect and confirm malware outbreaks as quickly as possible. Because malware can take many forms and be disseminated in a variety of ways, there are numerous possible symptoms of a malware occurrence, as well as numerous locations within an organization where they can be recorded or observed.
Organizations should have strategies and procedures in place for making risk-related choices that represent the organization’s risk tolerance for data theft. For example, if the likely damage to the organization from those functions being unavailable is greater than the security risks posed by not isolating or shutting down infected hosts performing critical functions, an organization may decide that they should not be disconnected from networks or shut down.
Incident handling should always be followed up by a thorough post-mortem investigation. The purpose of this investigation is never to place blame on a person for the breach but rather to measure the effectiveness of existing security practices. Policies should be amended accordingly after the post-mortem investigation to improve both security and incident response time in the future.
Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Incident Response Time During a Data Breach
Data breaches are not going away anytime soon. However, your company can survive a breach more easily by understanding the importance of incident response time. Incident response time can mean the difference between a data breach resulting in minor side effects and a breach becoming a major setback to an organization.
Artificial intelligence technology has become very important in recent years. One of the many benefits of AI technology is that it can help with reputation management. A growing number of companies are using AI technology to screen the Internet to find mentions of their company and address anything that doesn’t align with their desired brand image.
However, there are other important reputation management techniques that use AI that don’t get as much attention. One of them is email validation for email marketing.
We have talked in depth about the benefits of using big data and AI in email marketing in the past. However, we didn’t talk as extensively about the role of using this technology for email validation.
One of the most basic lessons of email marketing is not to send emails out en masse without regard for who you’re sending them to. This is one of the key flags that internet service providers (ISPs) use to identify spammers and people who send malware, so doing it is a sure-fire way to reduce your reach despite sending more emails out.
So, how do you make sure that your email lists are clean of bad IPs and keep your reputation healthy? Email validation is your friend.
Email validation tools use AI technology to verify the authenticity of emails before you send them. Companies that recognize the value of AI technology will get a lot more traction with their email marketing strategy.
AI Makes Email Validation Possible
Email validation is the process of making sure that email addresses not only exist but are valid and capable of accepting mail. Advances in AI technology has made this a lot more feasible. It’s also the process of checking that the email address in question is connected to a real person and not simply a bot or spam trap, since while these are not active accounts they can still hurt your reputation.
Capterra has an article that talks about the role of AI in email validation. Here is an excerpt of the most important details:
“AI technology can help identify catch-all email addresses. It can detect the level of interaction a recipient has with emails to identify if the recipient is a real person. Based on this information, [the AI] allocates a score to each email address. This score can be used to decide whether or not to keep an address on the mailing list.”
Now that you appreciate the capability of AI to distinguish between valid and invalid emails, you can start learning why it can be useful.
The need for using AI to validate emails is pretty clear – high rates of unopened, bounced or spam filtered emails hurts your sender reputation, and can even get you labeled as a potential spammer by ISPs. If this happens, they’ll likely flag your message as suspicious or send it straight to the spam box, which is exactly what you don’t want with an email marketing campaign.
The types of email validation and how to begin them
There are two types of email validation you can perform. The first is simple, and is known as real-time validation, whereas the second is more complex and is referred to as batch validation. Both methods are useful, but catch out different things so you’ll likely want to use both for email hygiene purposes.
Real-time validation is simple. I’m sure you’ve come across a sign-up form that asks you to enter your email, then sends a code for you to enter or a link for you to click to that email address in order to verify that it actually exists.
This is a great way of stopping subscribers from entering incorrect emails by mistake, or nonsense emails on purpose – some cruel people try to do this in masse in order to take down your servers!
Batch validation is a different beast and is usually done by an outside service provider unless you’re a whiz in the field. Essentially, the provider will look at the list of subscriber emails and validate them, that is to say make sure that they are still active and capable of receiving emails. Note that this process isn’t perfect, but when you’re dealing with a list of hundreds of thousands of emails you can afford to have one or two slip-ups.
How the batch validation process is done with AI
Batch validation uses AI to check the email addresses on your list for several factors, starting with simple checks and working its way up to more complex ones. The steps can theoretically be done in any order, but the recommendation is to do certain steps first in order to save time.
The most common order of operations is as follows:
Check syntax
Email addresses have to be formatted a certain way if they’re going to be understood by the servers receiving their messages. The valid format consists of a username, the @ symbol then a domain name such as “google.com” afterwards. Any email address that isn’t formatted in this way is invalid and as such should be cut.
Check domain(s)
Having a domain in the address is all well and good, but if it doesn’t actually exist then the email won’t be valid. Domains can also expire over time, so what was once valid can become invalid between checks.
Check MX records
Mail exchange (MX) records will tell you if the domain in question is still receiving emails, after all even if it exists it might not be active.
Check SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is the term used for the most common channels of communication between email servers. If a domain has an SMTP it will show up in the MX check, but you can further validate the individual email address with an SMTP “ping” which will see if that specific address is still connected to the server’s channels of communication.
Check for common bot addresses
Bot’s aren’t very creative or good at coming up with believable usernames, and when spammers and other malicious persons use bots to create email addresses you can usually spot them. I’m sure you’ve received a suspicious email from an address that’s just a string of hexadecimal code @ google.com – this is what this step checks for.
Check for undesirable domains
Some domains are known to be spam traps, temporary account providers or mail forwarding services. While the latter two aren’t actively trying to hurt your sender reputation, they lead to a lot of unopened or bounced emails in the long run which can hurt your reputation.
AI is Very Important for Email Validation
Email validation is an absolutely necessary step for anyone performing mass email marketing campaigns. Fortunately, new advances in AI have made it possible. Even one in a thousand bad emails can get you flagged as suspicious by internet service providers, which is the last thing you want. Using email validation and other methods of hygiene keeps your reputation strong and the emails flowing.
Data protection is becoming more important than ever. The risk of cyberattacks has risen sharply, as more people are working from home even as the pandemic subsides. A recent report showed data breaches jumped 68% in 2021 to the highest level ever. That figure is likely to rise even more in the coming months.
One of the most unusual consequences of the war in Ukraine is the increased cybersecurity risk, with one report suggesting that Russia is preparing to launch destructive attacks on the US and similar western infrastructures.
This could put small businesses, sole traders and even remote workers at risk in some instances, so there’s no doubt that those of you with a home office should consider safeguarding this as a matter of urgency. If you want to work from home, then data protection is going to be vital.
One way that you can achieve this is through the use of a so-called VPN (virtual private network). But how exactly can a VPN protect your home office and its most sensitive data? Let’s find out!
#1. VPNs Help to Secure Your Data
One of the main security benefits of using a VPN is that it safeguards the transfer and storage of data. This is thanks to the main functionality of a VPN, which works by establishing a fully encrypted connection between two devices.
So, when you download a VPN onto your PC or laptop, your device will establish encryption keys that are used to encrypt (and potentially decrypt) any information that’s sent to another computer.
VPNs typically use secure SSL/TLS encryption protocols, which effectively routes all data through a virtual tunnel that masks both the nature of the content and your unique IP address.
Because of this, VPNs ensure that your Internet service provider will only ever see an encoded stream of data that’s being sent to a target server, making it largely impervious to the attention of hackers and cyberthieves.
So, even your most sensitive home office data can be stored and sent securely through a VPN connection, as it will appear as completely random and indistinguishable code to anyone who strives to intercept it.
#2. VPNs Allow You to Work Securely Out of the Home
A popular advantage of working from home is the flexibility that it brings, particularly if you ever want to visit a coffee shop and work from there while enjoying a much-needed change of scenery.
However, once you take your laptop out of the home, you’re placing your device and most sensitive data at the mercy of random public networks. Not only are these inherently insecure by themselves, but sophisticated hackers are known to target such networks by establishing familiar sounding access points through which unsuspecting users connect.
From this moment, the hacker can access your device and web traffic, potentially intercepting private data along the way.
However, the use of a VPN on your laptop can help in this respect, with the deployment of an encrypted tunnel blocking anyone on the same network (even the person responsible for managing it) from monitoring your activity or web traffic.
This effectively enables you to create a private and secure network on a public infrastructure, which is common at locations such as Costa Coffee or Starbucks.
#3. VPNs Allow You to Access a Work PC Securely
In some cases, you may use your home office setup to work remotely or establish a ‘hybrid’ working arrangement with your employer (which will require you to split your time evenly between the office and your home).
In this instance, you may need to connect to your work PC from a home office device, with this creating significant security and productivity risks in instances where it isn’t done particularly well.
Fortunately, a VPN enables you to connect seamlessly to your work PC using remote access software, without compromising on security or the integrity of the data stored on either device. This type of software is widely used on systems such as Windows 10, so executing a free VPN download for your home PC can genuinely empower accessible remote working.
All that’s required is for a private VPN to be installed and active on your home device, while a colleague will need to ensure that your work computer is switched on. They can also protect your device on a free Wi-Fi network.
As a note of caution, however, it may be worth reviewing your employer’s IT policy to ensure that it allows VPN access remotely. This shouldn’t be an issue in an age of hybrid and remote working, but if this practice is prohibited, you won’t be able to connect from your home PC.
When you add this number to the huge army of freelancers working remotely and in the thriving gig economy, you’ll see that the need for secure and functional home office spaces is becoming more pressing with every passing year.
At the heart of every secure home office should be a VPN connection, which can help you to secure your data, connect safely to public networks and even access your work PC remotely.
The key is to find and download the best and most competitively priced VPN, which also offers excellent network coverage and reduced latency where possible.
The market for AI is growing due to its obvious benefits. However, many companies don’t know how to utilize it properly.
New businesses are frequently perplexed and unsure which AI applications are best for them. Many of them have utilized many management programs but finding the most best application without the assistance of an experienced consultant can be a challenge.
Some new consulting agencies specialize in helping companies select the best applications. They understand the role that AI has in modern business, so they want to make sure their clients can find the applications with state-of-the-art AI algorithms to solve their challenges. These consultants can help determine the root of the problem and recommend the best line of action.
This post will show you how application development consulting services can help your business find the best applications to leverage the power of AI.
What are application consulting services and can they help with your AI strategy?
Application development consulting services are a newer service. Due to the growing importance of AI, many companies are using application that can utilize sophisticated machine learning algorithms.
The rapid evolution of this technology has left many businesses and individuals without a technical background perplexed. Application consulting services were created to listen to the demands of organizations seeking application solutions. They can try to understand the challenges companies face and the role of AI in addressing them. They can educate customers on the potential of AI and the types of applications that help them leverage it.
A consulting team’s responsibilities include picking the best available application or designing unique applications with valuable AI capabilities to meet the demands of customers. Businesses that need external and impartial opinions about AI-related issues employ application development consulting services offered by well-known application development companies.
Benefits of hiring Application development consulting to take advantage of the power of AI
● Address the right problems
Finding an application development consulting firm is critical, especially because of their skills, broad viewpoint, and experience. Experts will gather all of the company’s requirements, initiatives, and difficulties in order to develop the most specialized and cost-effective enterprise solutions. AI technology can be incredibly valuable for companies trying to address a variety of problems, but it is worthless if it is used to handle the wrong issues. Without a clear picture of the problem, internal and external conflicts in functionality and user experience might occur fast.
● Improve the management of your company
AI technology can identify breakdowns in your normal business processes, so you can take proper action. Tracking work progress becomes much easier with new management software technologies. Finding an appropriate management software solution, on the other hand, would require a significant amount of work and testing. Why not hire application development consulting services to handle all of the heavy lifting? Experts would examine your company’s characteristics to identify the most up-to-date, most appropriate, and cost-effective AI solutions to your most pressing challenges.
● Allow you to concentrate on what you do the best
AI technology is also great for automating a lot of mundane tasks that can unnecessarily waste your time. You will have more time to focus on more important endeavors.
A software development consulting firm can help your company save time to focus on its key competencies. IT is not the major priority in most firms, which is a worry at the corporate, regional, and worldwide levels. If you require IT, business software, subject matter expertise, or even experience in business processes, organizational transformation, programs, or risk management, the consultant fills in the gaps. They can identify the best AI applications to automate these processes.
● Build AI software that is specific to your business
A consultant may assist you in creating a business case and determining the expected outcomes. Furthermore, they may increase the profitability of your programming venture by using exclusive management software. They can create software from scratch that uses AI technology to solve your biggest issues.
Consultants Can Help You Leverage AI Technology by Finding the Right Applications
Are you looking to leverage the potential of AI, but don’t know what application to use? Application development consulting services can provide the most appropriate and cost-effective solution for your company. Except for issues like software maintenance, there isn’t anything to be concerned about. The right application consulting team will provide the most cost-effective solutions to difficulties that organizations face.
Any company that wants to implement a successful marketing strategy needs to invest in analytics technology. We have talked extensively about the importance of analytics in online marketing, but it can be just as important for traditional marketing strategies as well. Telemarketing is one of the areas where analytics can be very useful.
A team of researchers from Jordan conducted a study on the use of analytics in telemarketing. They discovered that analytics helped banks improve their ability to successfully convert customers looking for loans and get the best services.
A growing number of companies are discovering the benefits of using analytics as part of their telemarketing strategy. You may be looking for a company that offers great telemarketing services for small businesses. While looking for the right company, it is important to ensure they have a sound analytics strategy in place to help you get the most of your telemarketing efforts.
Analytics is the Basis for Successful Telemarketing Strategies
Many small businesses still invest in B2B telemarketing services. Despite the naysayers emphasizing the importance of shifting towards an online marketing model, they realize it is still an incredible method for finding out what your clients need and how to readily speak to them. Any B2B organization can benefit from outsourcing to a dependable telemarketing firm.
Unfortunately, not all telemarketing services are created equally. The best ones know how to tap the power of state-of-the-art call center analytics technology to properly optimize their leads.
Analytics-driven companies that offer telemarketing services for small businesses usually offer a variety of services. The following are some of the biggest benefits of finding a telemarketing company with a sound understanding of data analytics.
1. Generate More Qualified Leads
Telemarketing companies can help their clients generate leads. They are going to get more valuable leads if they take advantage of analytics technology. Here is an overview of the process and benefits:
In order to create a profitable business model, it is important to attract the best clients. The first step in the process is generating leads and convert them into paying customers.
Telemarketing services help business and brands produce leads through outbound and inbound outreach. By outsourcing their outbound decisions to a firm with the right expertise, they can identify prospects and check qualify their leads.Companies that engage with customers who call them or fill a request structure can transform cold possibilities into leads too.Telemarketing is also a scalable approach to increasing their customer base.
Analytics helps telemarketing companies generate the best leads for their clients. They can use analytics to segment the demographics and geographics of prospective leads to decide which are worth the investment.
2. Get a Better Conversion Rate
Analytics technology also helps companies get a better conversion rate. Before you can understand the role it plays, consider the following benefits of traditional telemarketing:
Tele-marketing is one the oldest methods of selling goods and services to potential customers.Agents can make cold calls to numbers in their database and try to convert them to customers. Tele-sales is a much faster approach than door-to-door sales of going through a list, qualifying prospects, and connecting with them to reach a good result.This is a more private approach that has a better conversion rate. Tele-sales is a great supplement to other marketing strategies.
Analytics technology helps telemarketing businesses improve their conversion rates. They can collect data from previous calls to get a better understanding of customer preferences and adapt their strategies accordingly.
3. Sharing Valuable Information Scheduling Appointments
Telemarketers can also use analytics to execute the best indirect marketing strategies. Here is a brief overview of this process:
The majority of clients dislike being sold anything during the first discussion. This is why tele-sales has such a poor success rate.Telemarketers, on the other hand, can act as a source of beneficial information. For example, they provide contact information for channel partners to prospects in various geographic regions.They can notify leads that are interested in future seminars and webinars, as well as new programs and offers. They can also schedule meetings with clients for the salesperson.
With a scope of activity that extends beyond making phone calls, telemarketing may provide value to current clients.
What role does analytics play? Companies can ensure they have a detailed database of information that call center employees need to answer questions. They can also use analytics tools to see which questions come up to the most to have the right replies available.
4. Surveys of client satisfaction
Analytics is also very important for keeping track of customer feedback. Here are some of the benefits of this:
Retaining consumers is advantageous to firms since it lowers marketing costs and boosts profits.Surveys of customer satisfaction go a long way toward helping brands determine what they can do to keep their customers. Operators can ask clients open-ended but specific questions to get vital information about what they like and don’t like about the product.This goes a long way toward assisting organizations and brands in identifying ways to improve customer support and remain ahead of the competition.
You can have databases of customer responses and use analytics tools to track their feedback over time.
5. Improving pitches
Call center analytics also helps companies improve their pitches. They can see what types of pitches have gotten the best responses in the past. Here are some of the benefits of this:
Upselling and cross-selling are tried and true methods for increasing consumer offerings accordingly.Telemarketers can phone consumers who have purchased certain items to upsell yearly maintenance plans, warranties renewals, upgrades, and other services.Alternatively, they can cross-sell related items to clients who will profit from their acquisition. This is why companies must utilize software to monitor and analyze client purchasing behavioral patterns with analytics data.Alternatively, during customer satisfaction surveys, telemarketers gather recommendations from pleased customers and add them to the prospective lists
As a result, telemarketing services for small businesses are an excellent approach to learn more about your clients’ requirements and how to better serve them.
We have pointed out in the past that big data offers a number of benefits for online commerce. One of the most important benefits of data analytics pertains to optimizing websites for a good user experience.
User experience optimization (UX) is becoming more important than ever. One study found that the ROI of UX strategies is 9,900%. As more companies realize the importance of offering a stellar web experience, they will invest in big data as part of their UX strategies.
If you’re like most business owners, you want your website to be effective in driving sales and leads. However, if your website isn’t user-friendly, then people won’t stick around long enough to make a purchase. The UX of your website is essential to its success, so it’s important to take the time to optimize it.
Data analytics can help with the UX process. However, you have to have the right data strategy in place to do this effectively.
Here are five ways you can improve the UX of your website with big data.
Machine learning can be used to study user behavior and identify patterns. This information can then be used to make predictions about what users want and need. As a result, you can design a website that is more likely to meet their needs and expectations with the right machine learning tools in place.
Automating the design process with machine learning is something that can help you improve the user experience of your website. Wix, WordPress, Adobe, and other web design software have all been leveraging on ways to improve their machine learning capabilities.
Review Analytics Reports to See How Customers Interact with Negative Space
Negative space, also known as white space, is the empty space on a web page. It’s often underestimated, but the truth is that negative space plays an important role in the overall design of a website. When used correctly, it can help to focus the user’s attention on specific elements and improve the overall readability of a page.
If you have too much content on one of your landing pages, the user won’t be able to focus on anything. That’s why it’s important to use negative space to your advantage. By including more white space, you can make sure that the user can focus on the most important elements of your page.
Data analytics can help you figure out how customers are interacting with your negative space. You can run split tests with different amounts of negative space to see how it affects conversions and user engagement metrics. Google Analytics and other data analytics tools allow you to run these kinds of experiments.
You can figure out how well your overall design and placement works on your site by using analytics software that tracks user engagement. If you see that users are bouncing off the page quickly, it may be an indication that your design isn’t effective in keeping their attention.
Data-Driven Design Tools Help You Create High-Quality Images
Images are a vital part of any website design, and they can help to set the tone of a site and give visitors a visual representation of your brand. Using low-quality images will make your site look unprofessional, and they can also turn users away from your site altogether.
It’s important to use high-quality images that are relevant to your brand and website design. Pixabay and Unsplash are great sources for free, high-quality images.
Unfortunately, most free or low-cost images don’t meet the quality standards you are looking for. You might want to use a data-driven design tool to improve the quality. Adobe Lightroom is a great example. It uses complex big data algorithms to enhance photos in various ways, which helps make them more presentable.
Include a Search Bar and Searchable Database
You may want to try offering a searchable database for your users. However, you have to make it as easy to interact with as possible. Adding a search bar can help.
With a search bar, users can quickly and easily find the information they’re looking for. A search bar can also be used to help users filter through your content. For example, if you have a blog with hundreds of articles, you can use a search bar to help users find the specific article they’re looking for.
Make sure the search bar is prominently displayed on your website and that it’s easy to use. It should also direct users to different pages on your site, depending on their search query.
Implement an Online Chatbot with AI
Chatbots use AI to help to answer questions, provide support, and even make recommendations. They’re always available, so users can always get the help they need. When choosing a chatbot for your website, it’s important to consider its features and capabilities. You’ll also want to make sure that it’s compatible with your website design. Free live chat software is available, but you may want to consider a paid option if you need more features.
Big Data is the Key to Improving the User Experience
These are just a few of the ways you can improve the user experience of your website by leveraging big data technology. By taking the time to implement these changes, you’ll be sure to see an improvement in your website’s overall performance.
The Internet of Things is one of the fastest growing industries. It grew 22% last year and is projected to grow further in the future.
Many industries are helping drive growth for the IoT. One of the most significant is the solar energy sector. More solar manufacturers are turning to the IoT to get the most output for their customers.
Smart Solar is the Future of Renewable Energy
Currently, the energy sector is undergoing significant transformations due to growing environmental issues. In this case, there is a rapid transition towards sustainable power resources. The global supply of renewable electricity is increasing day in and day out. This is why most of the power sectors are focusing on the usage of solar power as an integral part of the world’s energy grid.
However, as the solar farm ramps up, energy companies are taking a new approach to manage their assets to ensure the smooth integration of renewables into the grid. This is why there is a need for expanding IoT applications in the power sector. The global smart solar market was worth over $8.5 billion in 2019 and is growing rapidly.
The challenges of Utility-Scale solar farms
It is quite a huge project to integrate and run on a utility scale. Photovoltaic solar energy can come with high unpredictability. Any changes in weather conditions such as the solar radiations and ambient temperature can cause fluctuations and instabilities in the power outputs.
In this case, there is a need for conscious environmental monitoring at solar farms to ensure that consistency is maintained. This will as well ensure accuracy in forecasting power generation rates and respective grid adjustments.
To handle large-scale solar operations requires something more than dependable external conditions. To properly optimize the overall solar farm efficiency, every solar panel must operate at its peak capacity. This explains the growing number of solar companies turning to big data. Measuring the total power output of the farm is not the only issue. The most challenging part is recording all that is happening at every individual module. To optimize solar farm operations, the farm will require the incorporation of IoT technologies.
The IoT is quite a breakthrough in remote monitoring helping energy companies to manage their solar power production effectively. The reduced sensor costs and the emergence of innovative connectivity can enable the simple and affordable deployment of granular monitoring networks in large-scale solar farms. Such networks enable operators to collect external and production parameters panel-by-panel and as well access this data from a central interface. It has opened the possibilities of improving the efficiency and reliability of solar energy systems.
Here are 3 major ways in which the IoT is changing the solar industry.
1. It improves asset performance
The IoT technologies enable the integration of more distributed resources into the grid. There are other different known ways in which the IOT technologies can improve grid management. By placing sensors at substations and along distribution lines the system can provide real-time power consumption data that is of great help to the energy companies when making decisions on energy control, load switching, network configurations, and many more.
2. Prevent theft and vandalism
Monitoring your solar and battery systems through the IoT system is a powerful tool to secure your power systems against theft and vandalism attempts. This is especially so if you live in rural areas. Here, the IoT sensor can detect suspicious movements around the power equipment and know when it is dismantled from the supporting structure. After such detection, the system will trigger an automatic alarm to alert the operators who will immediately take action.
3. Effective production forecast
Apart from the reactive response, the IoT for renewable energy includes effective production forecasts and improves grid stability. Since there is enough historical data, the energy companies can apply analytical and predictive models to calculate power generation rates under certain weather conditions.
This can help them anticipate how much solar energy can be produced on certain days and how other energy resource inputs can be adjusted. In connection to this, Tesla home power battery technology is one of the most used energy supply programs to supply energy power. Tesla Powerwall has gone IoT direction. With the help of the IoT, the Tesla Powerwall can give solar battery users a closely monitored way of storing energy for later use. Their powerwall system is equipped with energy monitoring and smart control of owner customization through the use of the Tesla app.
The system learns and adapts to your energy use and receives updates to add new features and enhance existing ones. These Tesla Powerwalls rechargeable home battery systems are installed alongside solar panels and integrated with IoT technologies. A powerwall system can be composed of up to 10 powerwalls including the combination of the modern powerwall + and the traditional powerwalls. The Tesla Powerwalls can intelligently power heavy equipment.
Through integrated revenue-grade metering, you can monitor your solar production and your home energy consumption.
Data mining technology has become very important for modern businesses. Companies use data mining technology for a variety of purposes. One of the most important is collecting revenue data to draft financial statements, forecast future sales and make decisions to address revenue shortfalls. These factors are why companies will spend over $12 billion on data analytics for marketing solutions by 2027.
Excel is one of the tools that can help companies use mined revenue data. After aggregating data, you can create a sales report with ODBC.
Merging Excel with Data Mining Technology Can Help You Create Stellar Sales Reports
Anyone who has worked in sales knows how important it is to keep track of sales data on a regular basis. Nonetheless, because of the rapid nature of sales, reps and decision-makers have almost no time to pause and revise their work and outcomes. Consequently, it’s difficult to make accurate estimations or identify significant tendencies in your sales procedures.
Sales departments benefit from having a robust sales reporting system because of these time restrictions. A well-designed system, for example, can assist sales staff in tracking leads and best-selling products and services. As a result, employees who work in sales acquire a lot of useful data from a sales report solution. This is one of the major bases for data-driven marketing strategies.
It can be difficult for businesses to determine which software to use among the many options available. In fact, for many SMEs and start-ups, specialist software can be prohibitively expensive and prove to be a waste of money. Aside from that, these sorts of software have a severe learning curve.
Create your own automated sales report template in Excel as an alternative. Companies may simply construct a sales report by using spreadsheets, a widely used technology.
Every sales process involves a large amount of data, such as lead count and sales goals. As a result, you’ll be able to generate a wide range of sales reports, including lead source reports and revenue reports. The reports you include in your dashboard are determined by your goal and how you intend to use them:
Report on Revenue Growth
The income your company earns is the focus of revenue performance reports, which give you an overall picture of how well your organization is doing. It shows the revenue made by clients and customers, as well as the total revenue for a certain period.
Report on Sales Forecasts
Sales forecast reports are estimates of how much money your company will make in the near future. These reports are frequently based on ongoing negotiations with your clients and leads, and they anticipate the amount of money they could generate for your company. To see the discrepancy between your estimates and actual earnings, sales forecast reports are generally reconciled with revenue reports.
Sales Predictions Report
A sales forecast report is an estimate of how much money your company will make in the near future. Customers and leads are often the focus of these reports, which anticipate the revenue they could generate for your company. In most cases, sales forecast reports are compared with revenue reports in order to assess how your estimates compare to actual results.
Report on the Performance of Sales Reps
In order to monitor and measure the productivity and profitability of each of your sales reps, you can compile a performance report. For each opportunity, the number of calls made to potential customers and the number of new leads created is included in these reports. Your best sales reps and those who need more sales training can be identified with the help of performance reports for sales representatives.
Report on Lead Conversion
Your sales pipeline data is used to generate lead conversion reports. It is possible to view the average path a lead takes through the various phases of your sales funnels, the number of leads converted, and the number of leads lost.
Report on Competitive Analysis
You cannot overlook the importance of competitive analysis. Over 90% of Fortune 500 companies use it, so you should incorporate it into your data-driven business model.
A competitive analysis report helps users to discover and assess important competitors, as well as their products, sales, and marketing strategy. It gives users a clear picture of how their products stack up against those of their competitors and how to improve upon those results. Product creation and enhancement, as well as marketing techniques, are all aspects of this report’s focus.
Microsoft Excel includes the ability to import live data from a database using an Excel ODBC connection. You can easily import sales data from an online database into your Excel spreadsheet. Once the data is in the spreadsheet, you can use Excel to perform further analysis of your sales data. Access databases and plain text files (such as csv files) are all supported as well as ODBC data sources, and many more. It’s necessary to have an ODBC driver for the source in order to load data into Excel.
With an ODBC driver, Excel can access both traditional databases and cloud-based services. Excel ODBC can connect to databases such as Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and cloud services such as Salesforce, QuickBooks, and Zoho CRM without the need for client software.
To boost the effectiveness while connecting to the Oracle database, it’s a good idea to use an Oracle ODBC driver. ODBC-aware programs can connect directly to Oracle Server and Oracle Cloud through TCP/IP, eliminating the requirement for Oracle Client. For real-time analytics, a direct link between an external application and Oracle speeds up data delivery. It also simplifies deployment because no additional client software is required to be distributed along with the driver. Oracle’s native client library can also be used to establish a connection that makes the process of creating a sales report using ODBC much easier.
Estimates of your company’s future revenue are included in a sales report. It provides users with a clear picture of how their products, sales, and marketing are compared to those of their rivals in the marketplace. The Excel ODBC connection in Microsoft Excel can be used to import live data from both on-premises databases and cloud-based services.
Machine learning technology has led to some major changes in the world of online commerce. Many web developers are using machine learning to streamline many aspects of the design process. They are also using AI to improve the quality of their designs and create more engaging features that wouldn’t have been possible with traditional JavaScript or other programming language code.
Sophia Martin talked about some of the benefits of machine learning in web development in a post on Towards Data Science. She covered a number of advantages of AI, such as making coding easier, creating smart chatbots, better understanding customer behavior and improving the testing process.
Selenium is one of the newest tools that uses machine learning to help developers create stellar designs. Keep reading to learn how this open-source machine learning tool is disrupting web development for the better.
Selenium – an Open Source Web Development Tool that Uses AI to Transform Web Development
Selenium is an open-source tool primarily used for automating tasks in web browsers. Selenium testing is has become crucial in the web development profession, since more users rely on it. If your business depends on a website or web application to engage with customers, there is a good chance that Selenium is already being used to test their experience.
It is a single interface that supports many programming languages, including Ruby, Java, NodeJS, PHP, Perl, and Python. Since it supports multiple languages, the tool is not restricted to testers alone. Even developers use it to automate unit tests. Machine learning has made this process much easier.
Selenium is not only restricted to unit testing. It is also possible to perform multiple tests with Selenium, since AI technology has made automation much more feasible.
Here is an exhaustive list of the types of tasks that Selenium can automate with AI:
Unit Testing: Developers can perform unit testing when a feature enhancement or a bug repair is applied to a web application module. Unit testing might be difficult when a developer has to work on several code modifications for separate modules. However, due to its sophisticated AI algorithms, Selenium is interoperable with several unit testing frameworks, which allows developers to quickly validate their unit testing across various browsers and operating systems.Performance Testing: QA testers conduct performance testing to ensure the project satisfies the set benchmark. Advances in machine learning have made these tests more reliable than ever. The developer creates a script that uses AI to evaluate whether all components on the homepage load in less than two seconds in various browsers and browser versions.Integration Testing: The QA team uses integration testing to ensure that components or units that work well alone also work well when integrated with each other. Even after the components have been integrated, testers ensure that they produce the same results. This occurs when more than one module is integrated to demonstrate functionality.Creating Testing Scripts: The AI algorithms embedded in the Selenium interface can also help with creating black-box testing scripts, which frees up time to create more novel test cases. This is one of the biggest benefits of using AI to improve testing capabilities with Selenium. Having understood what is Selenium and what are the types of testing Selenium supports, it is time to start using Selenium or the similar QA tools in your way to test automation.
End-to-end Testing: The testing is done from the perspective of the end user. All the application areas are tested in end-to-end testing starting from the sign-in or login page. The goal is to make sure that all of the web app’s touch points work.Cross-browser Testing: Selenium’s success stems mostly from its ability to perform cross-browser testing. Selenium supports all major browsers and allows you to use a Selenium Grid to use machine learning to conduct browser automation to test your website across several browsers simultaneously.Black box Testing: System testing, also known as “black box” testing, is a type of testing in which testers examine the system’s compliance with particular standards during system testing. It uses complex AI algorithms to evaluate a module’s functioning from beginning to end. A QA expert could write a script to test the system’s overall functionality. The testers have never run any tests before and have no knowledge of the code’s context.Regression Testing: Regression testing is an important part of every release cycle for this reason. It ensures that new features may be seamlessly integrated into the existing system. It is, nevertheless, the most time-consuming procedure. You’d have to retest the entire web application if you made even a minor change. Regression testing is used to assess a web application’s or website’s end-to-end functionality once a code update is moved from one staging environment to another.
Machine learning technology has revolutionized the web development profession. Despite some of the misconceptions, more companies are going to use AI to automate web development tasks. Selenium is one of the tools these developers will need to rely on.
