Why ecommerce sites should use both SEM and SEO for acquisition.

It is well-known that in order to get a good return on investment in terms of marketing, online retailers need to be constantly in front of their customers. However, with the rise of online users, it is important these retailers adopt a multichannel approach.

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Healthcare has no doubt made giant strides in patient safety in recent years: According to an HHS report released in December, hospital-acquired condition rates dropped 17 percent from 2010 to 2014, leading to 87,000 fewer patient deaths in hospitals. However, there is always room for improvement in the journey toward zero patient harm.

read more...

The Puzzle of Home Page Design

Home page design isn’t just about headers, content, and footers. It is about asking the right questions and making sure those questions apply to your website visitors. It’s about finding solutions to problems and bringing it together within a cohesive design.

Have You Ever Wondered?

How do I make my website memorable? How do I make sure people stick when they hit my home page? How do I make sure website visitors dig into my content and explore my product or service offering? How do I make sure website visitors take a moment to reach out to us by email, phone, or inquiry form? If you read those questions and thought “yes that is exactly what I want to ask” then know you’re not alone. I know a lot of people, marketing departments, and companies who all wonder the same about the design and function of their website. If you take a step back and read through the list, you’ll notice all the questions included I or me. None of them focused on the visitor.

Best Practice in Home Page Doesn’t Include Me or I

Best practice in home page design is about website visitors, their needs, and their wants. It isn’t about an idea that is cool or something you may have seen on four other websites. It is about your target market, what they need, and how your offering can help. We receive a number of inquiries each day from people who’d like us to help create a new website or update their existing website. In most cases the inquiries go a little like this: I am inquiring to see if I can get a price for you to redo our current website. Please have a look at the link to website provided and get back to me. We are considering upgrading our website. Are you able to help us? I would like a website that looks exactly like XYZ.com. Can you create that for me? I would like my website to be more professional, can you please help? Can you look at my website and tell me what needs to change? I know my website is a mess and I’d like you to clean it up. A lot of individuals and organizations tend to design websites according to their own needs or they base it on a website they’ve visited and liked. Or, in more recent years, they think of a cool internet marketing idea and want to implement it. All of this is fine, but what they many times fail to do is compare this idea or need for update to what their website visitors need and want. I’ve found this is especially true if the website is brand-new and the idea is referred to as “cool.”

Have You Ever Asked Yourself?

Who comes to my website? Are these visitors all similar or are they broken up into groups (website personas)? What problems do these people have and what issues are they trying to solve? Can my product or service offering solve these problems? What content do I have that can best articulate my solution and provide assistance? What next step should the website visitor take so I can help solve their issues? How can the visitor and I stay in touch with each other? Can the visitor easily contact me? What we’ve done is simply take the original questions and redirect them so they are more focused on the visitor. This task is easy, but many times overlooked. Now take those above questions and apply them to your existing website. How does your website answer those questions? If it doesn’t, it is time for a refresh.

What Should You Consider in Your Website Refresh?

WThere are lots of elements that go into the core design of a website. I’m not talking about each and every page. Instead I’m referring to the main design elements, home page, header and footer. Below is a list of some website design elements we review, discuss, and plan for in early stages of our projects:

Elements of a Website Header:

Logo Tagline Social media icons and/or references Search box Primary navigation menu (core destinations) Secondary navigation menu (secondary destinations such as account or login)

Elements of the Core Home Page:

Rotator or static image Video Site introduction or overview Featured content Persona call out and directions for movement Call to actions Promotions and/or deals Recent blog posts Upcoming events

Elements of a Website Footer:

Widgets for lists to core content Contact information Site navigation to sitemap, policies, terms and conditions Disclaimers or legal notices Copyright That’s a lot stuff right? Yes it is and why I don’t expect new clients to have answers for all of the items in the list, it would be great if they’ve thought through some of it and how each would provide assistance for their target market and visitors. If they haven’t, I’m happy to walk through it with them and dissect the different elements and how they can help provide solutions for visitors.

Why ecommerce sites should use both SEM and SEO for acquisition

It is well-known that in order to get a good return on investment in terms of marketing, online retailers need to be constantly in front of their customers. However, with the rise of online users, it is important these retailers adopt a multichannel approach. Despite being similar in that SEM and SEO both aim to improve visibility through rankings on search engines, they do have significant differences. SEM is a pay-per-click (PPC) service, while SEO improves ranking organically and does not involve paying for search results. However, with Adobe’s recent Q4 Digital Advertising Report explaining that not only are CPCs in decline in Europe, but click-through rates are on the rise, all signs are pointing to a Paid Search orientated strategy. Are retailers better off investing their money in SEM or their time in SEO? Let’s explore the arguments for each technique.

Why should ecommerce retailers use SEM?

Quick results
With SEM, results can be achieved relatively quickly. Of course, you will be required to make changes in the AdWords interface, however once this has been done, you can see results almost instantly. With SEO on the other hand, you will need to implement a longer-term strategy and it can take time to reap the rewards of your efforts.

Better conversion rates

According to New Media Campaigns, PPC holds a slight edge in conversion rates as paid search results are 1.5 times more likely to convert click-throughs from the search engine.

Direct control over your visibility

Even with a significant amount of time invested into SEO, there is no guarantee that you will ever appear in the top spots on search results pages. While the same can almost be said for PPC, bidding plays a huge role in paid search campaigns and increasing your budget can take you so far in improving your visibility on search engines.

Few website optimisations

Although good website structure helps to improve your PPC ranking, it is not incremental to do so to achieve good paid search results. SEO on the other hand, requires that your website’s structure and content are optimised to achieve good results

Why use SEO as well as SEM?

While there are many arguments that may convince online retailers to rely on Paid Search, there are also many benefits to using SEO as well as SEM in their multi-channel strategies.

No direct additional costs

Besides your time and effort, SEO allows you to achieve results without any direct additional costs. SEM on the other hand, can obviously require a significant amount of investment, particularly for competitive keywords.

Organic results more likely to be clicked on

According to the same study by New Media Campaigns, organic results are 8.5 times more likely to be clicked on than paid search results!

Improve brand awareness

With organic results more likely to be clicked on, it is a no-brainer to invest in an SEO strategy. However, another added benefit is the possibility to improve brand awareness. Presuming that you are able to successfully place your ads in paid search results, also appearing in organic results will help to reinforce your message and improve the visibility of your brand. Over time, the more your brand awareness increases, the more likely consumers are to trust your brand name.

A long-term strategy

It will take time and effort to properly optimise your website for search engines, but in the long term it will help bring you continuous website traffic for free. Of course, you will need to be sure to keep up-to-date with the latest guidelines to ensure that you are not penalised and your efforts don’t end up going down the drain. As you can see, there are many advantages to both SEO and SEM, however what is important to take away is that they are complementary techniques. Online retailers are generally encouraged to start by adopting both strategies. For newly-launched businesses, SEM will accelerate brand awareness, as users start to recognise and trust your brand name. As a first step, it is wise to invest more into SEM while your SEO efforts get off the ground. You can then balance your investments once your organic visibility increases.

BMS ERP

Itech Solutions has bagged an opportunity to develop a ERP application for BMS college.

The purpose is to automate several repetitive and time-consuming tasks of the department. Developed as a web application on J2EE technologies, which is a time based and reliable option for enterprise solutions. This application helps to reduce the manual work. It provides admin to keep track the details of students as well as faculty. Admin can easily generate the excel reports.

Reports save huge amount of time and enable the department faculty to take effective and quick decisions about students and the various academic programs.

The major module includes: Login,Various Reports,Proctor and proctee management,Student end to end data handling including CIE and SEE, Pie and Bar chart representation for various reports.

The ERP application will help the department to better manage the students, closely monitor their progress and deliver value to the teaching activities.

The 10 Unique Soft Skills Employers Desire in New Hires

In a survey this spring 77 percent of employers surveyed by CareerBuilder said they were seeking candidates with soft skills -- and 16 percent of the respondents considered such qualities more crucial than hard skills. Soft skills relate to the way employees relate to and interact with other people. The Multi-Generational Job Search Study 2014 by Millennial Branding said employers ranked the following as the most highly desired qualities in candidates: communication skills, a positive attitude and the ability to work in a team, all of which can be labeled soft skills or emotional intelligence.

Hard skills, on the other hand, are teachable abilities or skill sets that are easy to quantify, such as a proficiency in a foreign language or computer programming. While hard skills might be developed on the job, employees should come to an organization already in possession of soft skills. When employees lack these basic soft skills, it can hurt the overall success of the organization. The soft skills that employers are seeking, according to CareerBuilder, Millennial Branding and others, include the following:

1. Being dependable:

Employers value workers they can rely on to get the job done. There’s nothing better than an employee who is available at the drop of a dime, arrives to work on time and delivers quality results. During the interview process, hiring managers should ask candidates about their work ethic. Dependable employee are individuals who meet deadlines, are team players and stay focused at work.

2. Pulling together a presentation:

E Regardless of their position, most employees are expected to make presentations to management, co-workers, customers and clients in some fashion. For example, an in-house graphic designer might receive an email from the head of the marketing department about a new client. Although this employee isn’t a communications professional, she might be asked to pull together branding ideas in a presentation for the client.

3. Solving problems:

Especially for fast-paced organizations, strong employees can think critically and effectively solve problems. During the job interview, hiring managers should ask candidates about a time when they had to overcome a challenge in the workplace. This will help a hiring manager gauge the candidate’s ability to solve problems, be resourceful and face obstacles at work.

4. Coaching co-workers:

According to Millennial Branding report, 92 percent of employers value strong teamwork skills. Strong employees are individuals willing to help co-workers and coach them along the way. Let’s say a new employee has been hired and added to a group project. The new employee probably doesn’t have a clue about what’s going on yet. In this scenario, an employee who’s been on the team a while should take the new worker under his wing and coach the person through the new project.

5. Fitting into the company's culture:

The Millennial Branding survey also revealed that 43 percent of employers want to hire employees who are a great cultural fit. Cutural fit refers to when a candidate's values align with the employer's. If an employer values a balance between work and fun in the office, say, then hiring managers should search for candidates who share this outlook.

6. Voicing opinions while being open to feedback:

Employees who are confident in their ideas but open to feedback can play influential roles in a workplace. During a brainstorming session, for example, such an employee would not only share ideas but also challenge others' by asking thoughtful questions. This can create a stimulating discussion and even spark innovation.erve the best interests of the company and the individuals involved."

7. Being flexible and focused:

Deadlines and projects can change at a moment's notice. Employees need to quickly adapt while remaining focused on meeting deadlines. For example, an employee may have just received an assignment and deadlines for the week. But Wednesday arrives and the manager decides everything needs to be shifted to arrive a day earlier. A flexible employee would be able to quickly adapt to these changes and focus on projects with top priority.

8. Being creative and innovative:

Whether the employee is an accountant or art director, creativity is what sparks change in the workplace. During an interview, the hiring manager should ask the candidate about a time when he or she was assigned a new project. The candidate should respond highlighting personal examples of thinking outside of the box to achieve results.

9. Developing new work processes:

Employees with the ability to analyze work processes and discover new ways to complete them efficiently are valuable to employers. Not only does this save employers time, but it can also add to the bottom line.

10. Taking initiative: An employee demonstrates initiative by coming up with an idea and putting it into action. For example, an employee might develop an idea for social-media marketing campaign that will build awareness for the organization. After a company hires an employee, managers will want to gauge whether the employee will follow through in exhibiting soft skills. Some HR technology products let employers detect who has certain skills on the job. Talentoday is a skills assessment platform that helps employers measure soft skills and personalities through a variety of tests.

10 top patient safety issues for 2016

Healthcare has no doubt made giant strides in patient safety in recent years: According to an HHS report released in December, hospital-acquired condition rates dropped 17 percent from 2010 to 2014, leading to 87,000 fewer patient deaths in hospitals. However, there is always room for improvement in the journey toward zero patient harm. Several issues arose in 2015 that shed new light on patient safety threats. The Becker's Infection Control & Clinical Quality editorial team chose the following 10 patient safety issues for providers to consider in 2016, presented below in no particular order, based on the events and trends from 2015.

Medication errors:

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality calls medication errors "one of the most common types of inpatient errors," as nearly 5 percent of hospitalized patients are affected by adverse drug events annually. New evidence uncovered in 2015 shows that medication errors are not just a problem for inpatients: They abound during surgeries as well. In fact, medication errors occur in some form in nearly half of all surgeries, according to research from Massachusetts General Hospital published in October. Mistakes in labeling, incorrect dosage, neglecting to treat a problem indicated by a patient's vital signs, and documentation errors were the medication errors that occurred most frequently. "We definitely have room for improvement in preventing perioperative medication errors, and now that we understand the types of errors that are being made and their frequencies, we can begin to develop targeted strategies to prevent them," said Karen Nanji, MD, lead author of the study.

Diagnostic errors:

Diagnostic errors were thrust into the spotlight late in 2015 thanks to an Institute of Medicine report titled "Improving Diagnosis in Health Care." The report asserts that diagnostic errors account for 6 to 17 percent of hospital adverse events and roughly 10 percent of patient deaths, indicating definite room for improvement in this space. "The report launched an important conversation about a serious patient safety issue with broad impact across the continuum of care," Tejal Gandhi, MD, president and CEO of the National Patient Safety Foundation, wrote in a December blog. The new year provides an opportunity for hospitals to focus efforts to improve this serious patient safety issue. The IOM report outlines several possible solutions to remedying diagnostic errors, including partnering with patients and their families, as well as fostering teamwork between and among healthcare providers.

Discharge practices to post-acute, home care:

Hospital discharge can be a critical moment in a patient's care. A study from the early 2000s found nearly 20 percent of patients experience an adverse event within three weeks of discharge, and many of those events could be prevented. This important safety issue necessitates more attention in 2016 thanks to the launch of the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement model in April. The CCJR will make hospitals responsible for the care quality and cost of joint replacement patients for a full 90 days post-discharge, giving hospitals a financial incentive to focus on this important patient safety issue.

Workplace safety

It is hospitals' duties to keep patients safe, but some experts argue patients cannot be safe unless healthcare workers feel safe themselves. "If healthcare providers are safe, then we will have safer patients," says Deborah Grubbe, a healthcare consultant with DuPont Sustainable Solutions. "Because healthcare providers won't have to focus on their own safety and thinking they'll get hurt, [they'll] be able to spend all their energy and alertness in providing good care for the patient." This sentiment applies to a myriad of worker safety issues, from needlestick injuries to injuries from lifting patients to fear of being assaulted by a patient. Unfortunately, these staff safety issues are still a problem moving into 2016. To that end, the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety & Health Administration launched a webpage in December 2015 providing information and strategies for healthcare workplace violence awareness and prevention.

Hospital facility safety:

Issues with hospitals' facilities can sometimes put patient safety at risk. Several times in 2015, the safety of hospital patients was compromised or nearly compromised because of building or maintenance problems. For instance, a Florida Agency for Healthcare Administration report released in April cited one Florida hospital's handling of a sewage leak as a patient safety issue, including its failure to ensure the sewage was cleaned up properly and failure to conduct an infection control risk assessment. The investigators also reported finding live rats above the affected ceiling tiles and air conditioning supply vents leaking condensation over food prep tables. Legionnaires' disease is another issue tied to the structure of a hospital, as Legionella outbreaks "are commonly associated with buildings or structures that have complex water systems, like…hospitals," according to the CDC. In 2015, several organizations from the healthcare, construction and engineering industries formed a task force to create uniform guidelines for the heating, ventilation and air condition of operating rooms, sterile processing departments and endoscope procedure rooms to ensure patient safety. In light of these issues and events, hospitals may wish to consider re-evaluating the maintenance protocols for their facilities to ensure patient safety this year.

Reprocessing issues:

The issues surrounding certain medical scopes and their link to infections resurged in 2015 and are sure to carry over in to 2016 as healthcare providers hone best practices to prevent further scope-related incidents. In fact, the ECRI Institute listed "inadequate cleaning of flexible endoscopes before disinfection" and the resulting risk of infection at the top of its 2016 Top 10 Health Technology Hazards list. Experts have emphasized the importance of using the right tools and following protocol to the letter to prevent infection, while some hospitals have begun culturing scopes after reprocessing to check for bacteria. Meanwhile, some members of an FDA advisory panel recommended mandatory sterilization of duodenoscopes to prevent spread of infection.

Sepsis:

According to the CDC, more than 1 million cases of sepsis occur each year, and up to half of people who get sepsis will die, making it the ninth leading cause of disease-related deaths. While sepsis is not a new patient safety concern, it gets a new spotlight for 2016 thanks to CMS: The agency added the Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock Early Management Bundle to the fiscal year 2016 Inpatient Prospective Payment System Final Rule. "What's driven much of CMS' response to sepsis is the gradual increase in sepsis across the nation," Edward O. Blews III, MD, assistant professor of infectious disease and associate medical director of hospital epidemiology at Loma Linda (Calif.) University Medical Center, said in a December webinar on sepsis protocols. Hospitals that meet compliance with the sepsis early management bundle can help lower sepsis mortality as well as costs associated with treating sepsis (which, according to Mike Abrams, president and CEO of the Ohio Hospital Association, can reach anywhere from $22,000 to $57,000 per case).

"Super" superbugs:

Superbugs — defined by Brian K. Coombes, PhD, of McMaster University in Ontario as bacteria that cannot be treated using two or more antibiotics — continue to pose a threat to patients, and they appear to be getting stronger: A CDC report published in December revealed a particularly dangerous set of CRE strains is cause for public health concern in the U.S. "Newly described resistance in Enterobacteriaceae…highlight[s] the continued urgency to delay the spread of CRE," the report reads. The strains have been named the "phantom menace" by some scientists, and they aren't the only superbugs infectious disease specialists and healthcare providers will be keeping an eye on in 2016 — researchers in China published data on a bacteria found in pigs, broiler chickens and humans that contains a gene that makes it resistant to all forms of antibiotics, including "last resort" drugs used to beat the toughest antimicrobial resistant bugs. The gene responsible for resistance is called mcr-1, and has also been identified in Denmark. The gene has been found in E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria, according to the Chinese study. Small steps — like boosting the focus on antibiotic stewardship — can be taken this year to help combat the spread of these surreal-sounding organisms.

The cyber-insecurity of medical devices:

In July 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an official warning to hospitals asking they reconsider using the Hospira Symbiq Infusion System, a computerized pump that is widely used to deliver general infusion therapy, after it became apparent that with some ease, hackers could remotely access the device and alter dosages. But experts have been sounding the alarm on the cybersecurity of medical devices for some time now. In 2011, Jay Radcliffe, senior security consultant and researcher for security data and analytics company Rapid7, wowed audiences at the Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas when he hacked his own Medtronic insulin pump. Cybersecurity concerns have graduated from a health IT-specific worry to one that carries patient safety risks serious enough to be on everyone's radar. Many medical devices connect to and operate on hospital networks that are already rife with vulnerabilities, and even if the goal isn't to hurt patients who may be connected to the devices, hackers can hopscotch onto the network from the device's entry point, gathering protected health information and exploiting vulnerable data. In the next year, there will likely be some organized pushes to secure those devices — or at least a push to put manufacturer, federal and healthcare providers' feet to the fire to start drumming up solutions.

Going transparent with quality data.

Most health systems query patients about their experiences and satisfaction with physicians during their hospital stays. But few opt to put those ratings online for all to see, although there's reason to believe the practice can improve patient safety. "When everyone — physicians, patients, institutions, and the press — is privy to data on performance, physicians will develop a greater sense of accountability to deliver quality care," Ashish K. Jha, MD, a patient safety researcher at Harvard University's School of Public Health in Cambridge, Mass., wrote in a post on Harvard Business Review in October. Aggregated ratings can be helpful learning tools for reviewing individual employee performance, and they also incentivize medical staff to double check their work and pay more attention to areas where slip-ups can impact their ratings, and ultimately the safety of those in their care. At some institutions, ratings are displayed internally, enabling side-by-side comparisons that might produce insights into best practices or encourage a healthy sense of competition. In the future, this kind of openness could become a necessity for hospitals and health systems who want to compete in a market with an increasing focus on transparency. In addition to fostering quality improvement, facilitating this kind of feedback and discussion has the capacity to highlight low points in patient care of which administration may not have previously been aware.