What to Look for with a Free Email Marketing Service

Email marketing is the most efficient way to communicate and build a relationship with your audience. It allows you to speak with them directly through their inbox, at a time that’s convenient for them. 

Email marketing is such a valuable tool for small businesses, in fact, 79% of small business owners say email marketing is important to their success.

Did you know that email marketing done right, can actually increase your revenue, create more loyalty between your customers and increase your brand awareness. Yet, despite the impact it can have on a business, only 46% of small businesses are using email marketing. 

Why?

Maybe it’s the time it takes to build an email campaign. Or maybe you're simply not sure how. Maybe it’s the cost.

If you know what to look for with an email service provider, then these should no longer be a factor.

Here at AWeber, we want to see your business thrive. So to help, we’ve put together a comprehensive list of what to look for with a free email marketing service provider.

What Should You Look For with a Free Email Marketing Service Provider

This is a bit of a tricky question because every business' needs are going to be different. So we’ll do our best to highlight the pros, cons, and main features of each online email marketing company in order for you to weigh what is most important to the success of your business. 

Now that we’ve identified some free email marketing service providers, let's take a deeper dive into each one so you can make a decision that’s best for you. 

AWeber

I’ll admit, I may be a little biased when writing about AWeber, so I just let all the powerfully-simple extra features, award winning customer service, and world-class platform do the talking.

AWeber is one of the leading email providers, helping over 1 million small businesses successfully grow their business. And we’ve done it longer than anyone else (we were founded in 1998). 

What makes this free version stand out above everyone else is our commitment to you. We truly care about the success of your business.  When you open an account with AWeber, you get the same level of service we provide all of our customers. AWeber Free delivers powerfully-simple, industry-leading features at no cost to you. That’s right — no credit card and no payment with AWeber Free. Ever.

Plus, you get our Industry-Leading Deliverability. We are experts in making sure your message hits people’s inbox. We don’t outsource email processing, ensuring we control deliverability from end-to-end.

Need to move from another email service provider? No problem, we’ll migrate your contacts and email templates to your new platform. Plus, you’ll have access to 100s of email templates (and climbing), our easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, and our landing page builder with free templates included. 

And we don’t stop there. AWeber is constantly expanding our platform based on feedback we receive from our customers. Whether that’s to add more features to help your business grow or to create a better user experience. 

Our mission is simple: to provide you with an easy to use email marketing platform that does 90% of the work for you.

AWeber’s Free Email Marketing Tools

AWeber has everything you need to start growing your business — for free. We offer marketing features in our free plan that actually matter to the success of your business, including:

• All email design tools (including Smart Designer)
• Campaign automations
• Sign up forms
• Landing page builder
• Native integration with leading ecommerce and small business solutions 
• Free migration from your current email marketing provider
• 24/7 phone/email/chat access to customer solutions

AWeber Free Email Platform Pros

With so many advantages it’s tough to narrow it down to just a few pros but I’ll give it my best shot. With AWeber Free, you have everything you need to create amazing looking emails AND landing pages, you’ll be able to automate your email marketing, and integrate with 100s of other businesses.

• Drag-and-Drop editor. This could possibly be one of the easiest drag and drop email and landing page editing tools you will ever use. Create custom emails and landing pages in just minutes without ever writing a line of code.

• Landing Page Templates & unlimited landing pages. Many platforms will limit the number of landing pages that you can build. Not us. We know a landing page could be the foundation for your business to increase their leads flow. Part of our mission is to help you grow your business, so why not give you every advantage to power you forward.

• Access to our Smart Designer, an AI-powered design assistant that automatically builds you amazing-looking branded email templates in seconds. We understand not everyone is a graphic designer, so we make creating beautiful email templates super easy. 

• Get started even faster with a huge library of pre-built email templates. Again, we try to make your job easy by doing 90% of the work. Simply add your logo and you're ready to send your emails.

• Access to our Award-Winning Customer Service Team. Ask our award-winning customer solutions team any question by phone, chat or email. They’re available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to help you succeed with email marketing.

I can go on forever talking about the fanatic benefits and features that AWeber Free has available. But why go on when you can see for yourself. Sign up today for AWeber Free. No credit card, no commitment, no worries once you’re part of the AWeber family.

Get Started with AWeber Free

AWeber Free Email Platform Cons

I’d be lying if I told you we didn’t have any cons with our free email services. We don’t offer email split testing on the free plan. Plus there are some other fantastic features that you will only have access to with our Pro plan. But we can’t give the farm away, even though we tried.

But the biggest con with AWeber Free is that you didn’t discover it earlier. Really, it’s that good.

Mailchimp

When you think of email service providers, MailChimp is usually at the top of the list due to their brand awareness and how long they’ve been supporting small businesses. Overall MailChimp’s free email platform is solid. In fact, of all the email marketing platforms we evaluated, MailChimp may be the second best option.

MailChimp’s Free Email Marketing Tools

You get access to several of MailChimp’s features with the free plan. However for those tools you receive access to, MailChimp puts a limit on what you can use. 

Some of the key features you get with the free plan include:

• Segmentation
• Website builder
• Landing page builder
• Marketing CRM
• Integrations with over 200 apps

Mailchimp Email Platform Pros

You don’t last 20 years in business without knowing what you’re doing, and we’ll give it to MailChimp they have a very robust platform with several benefits with their free plan. Yes, it does have it’s limitations, such as saving most of their main tools for paying customers. 

The marketing CRM tool is a nice touch that you won’t see with many other free platforms. You can also build and publish a basic website.

Mailchimp Email Platform Cons

If you value customer support, then Mailchimp may not be for you. You’ll receive 30 days of email support once you sign up, but after that you’re on your own. You’ll receive no phone, no email, or no chat support.

Not everybody has a creative background and can build emails or landing pages that look amazing and can convert, so they rely on the templates provided by their email marketing provider. With MailChimp, you only have access to their “basic” templates.

And while MailChimp’s free plan has some advantages, MailChimp can quickly begin getting pricey as you begin growing your business and need more support and features.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit is an email marketing service provider that’s built by a blogger for bloggers, although the platform is not limited to bloggers. The free plan starts at 100 subscribers for free, but that can jump to 1,000 through their referral program where you can earn an additional 100 subscribers for every referral who also signs up for a ConvertKit account. 

ConvertKit’s Free Email Marketing Tools

On ConvertKit’s pricing comparison page they state their free tools as including:

• Landing page builder
• Form builder
• Segmentation
• Subscriber tagging

ConvertKit Email Platform Pros

The biggest pro that I can find with this platform is a tool that is not yet released. ConvertKit recently announced a brand new tool called ConvertKit Commerce. This feature will let you sell digital products right inside ConvertKit’s platform.

Outside of ConvertKit Commerce, there aren’t many pros to ConvertKit’s platform that you couldn’t find in other email service providers. 

They provide free migration services, so if you need to move from another email marketing platform, they will assist in moving you to ConvertKit. But you will need to have 5,000+ subscribers for it to be worth their time and effort.

ConvertKit Email Platform Cons

ConvertKit is a very basic platform. There are no drag-and-drop email templates or builders. In fact, you only have two templates to choose from — a plain text version and a very plain-looking HTML version. And with the HTML version, you are limited with what you can customize.

The free plan also does not include email automation, which can be frustrating if you want to begin cultivating a relationship with your clients by sending welcome or thank you emails.

While their landing page builder may be fully customizable, you have far fewer templates to choose from compared to other email marketing platforms such as AWeber.

And they outsource their customer support so it can take hours to days for you to get a response.  There is no email or phone support, instead you leave a message in their app and someone will email you a response.

Overall, ConvertKit lacks the bells and whistles that you can get with most other free email marketing services like MailChimp and AWeber.

SendInBlue

SendInBlue was actually founded as a digital agency. They switched to become an email marketing provider when they realized an opportunity to help marketers automate email marketing on a budget.

SendInBlue is a good tool for ecommerce marketers with customized triggers based on purchase behavior and the ability to import customer orders.

SendInBlue Free Email Marketing Tools

While SendInBlue has some very good email marketing features, many of those are only available with their paid plans. Here are some of the better features available with the free plan:

• Unlimited contacts
• Customizable signup forms
• Advanced segmentation
• Marketing automation workflows (up to 2,000 contacts)

SendInBlue Email Platform Pros

SendInBlue possibly has one of the best marketing automation tools. Their automation features are advanced and user-friendly. In fact, they are able to track your customers’ website behavior and trigger an email message at just the right time.

SendInBlue’s email builder is also a very easy and convenient tool to use. You have the option to use one of their 140 email templates, or you can build your email campaign with their easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor.

SendInBlue Email Platform Cons

While SendInBlue is a solid email marketing platform with good tools, they still lack a number of features you can get with other email providers. And they save their core features for their paid customers. You need to be on the Essential plan to start getting some of the real, juicy features, such as A/B testing, more detailed reporting, and better support.

SendInBlue is also limited in the number of integrations with their platform.

Despite these limitations, the biggest con for the SendInBlue platform would have to be their daily email send limit. While you can have an unlimited number of subscribers, you can only send 300 emails a day, up to 9,000 for the month. This makes it nearly impossible to grow on the free plan before you need to upgrade.

MailerLite

MailerLite offers good value and a solid platform. Their email campaigns were easy to set up and use. They cater to small businesses, as roughly 90% of their subscribers have 50 employees or less.

MailerLite Free Email Marketing Tools

The MailerLite free email plan includes access to features like automation, landing pages, and advanced segmentation. However, like other providers, some key features are gated and live chat and phone support are not available. 

Some tools that you do get include:

• Landing pages, but limited number of templates
• Drag-and-drop editor
• Built-in photo editing 
• Pop-up subscribe forms
• Email automation 
• Advanced segmentation

MailerLite Email Platform Pros

MailerLite was one of the easiest to use platforms we evaluated. You don’t need a technical background to set up and send emails. And their email campaign reports are clear and easy to understand.

You also get full access to their marketing automation options which is a convenient option for those more sophisticated marketers.

They also have a popup creator which you can have set up and ready to go with just a few clicks.

MailerLite Email Platform Cons

While the reporting and email setup are really easy to use and navigate, their segments and grouping can be pretty confusing.

And like so many other email marketing platforms we evaluated, you can only build up to 5 landing pages. And they have a very limited number of email and landing page templates. If you don’t have a creative background, you may find this very frustrating.

MailJet

If your main goal is to find a solid platform that is cheap once you graduate past the free plan, then MailJet may be for you. MailJet is one of the most basic email service providers that we researched, especially when it comes to their free email plan.

MailJet Free Email Marketing Tools

MailJet’s free email marketing features are very, very limited. Like SendInBlue, you won’t have to worry about upgrading your account as your subscribers increase, since you get unlimited contacts. However, also like SendInBlue, they limit you to a certain number of sends per day.

Other features in the free plan include:

• API’s, SMTP Relay, Webhooks
• An advanced email editor
• Advanced statistics

MailJet Email Platform Pros

The pros for the free email platform are few and far between. There’s obviously the unlimited contacts, which is a big plus. They also have a very easy to use drag-and-drop editor which is great for a new user. Outside of that, we didn’t find too many pros that would separate MailJet from the competition.

One pro worth noting is a multi-user collaboration feature, which allows multiple users to work together in real-time on the same email. Think Google Docs. However, this is only available on the Premium or Enterprise paid programs.

MailJet Email Platform Cons

MailJet is a very basic email service provider with no added benefits outside of email sending. Many of the other email marketing companies we reviewed have extra features such as a landing page builder or pop up builder. These extra features could be important as you look to grow your business and save money in the process.

And, as mentioned above, although you can have unlimited contacts, MailJet does limit the number of emails you can send in a day to only 200 or a max of 6,000 per month. You may find it tough to grow your business sending to only 200 a day.

Moosend

If you’re looking for a platform with email automation options, but don’t need landing pages as an option for collecting subscribers, then it might be worth checking out Moosend. 

Moosend Free Email Marketing Tools

Moosend is relatively new when it comes to providing free email marketing services. And the available features are on par with some of the more well known platforms.

• Unlimited emails
• Sign up and subscription forms
• Reporting and analytics
• Drag-and-drop editor
• Email automation

Moosend Email Platform Pros

Moosend’s free email marketing platform offers a number of features not offered on other free platforms. Marketing automation features like onboarding and abandoned cart sequences and list segmentation, a/b testing options and spam testing are available.

Moosend’s Drag-and-Drop builder and templates also help email marketers get started with email design without worrying about coding. 

Moosend Email Platform Cons

Moosend’s platform allows up to 1,000 unique subscribers on the free tier. However, when your subscriber count starts to climb, so does Moosend’s cost. 

Other typically important features like the ability to send transactional emails and create landing pages are missing from Moosend’s free email platform. Phone support is also left out of the free plan, and is reserved for enterprise level users. 

SendPulse

If you’re looking for a marketing automation platform that lets you do more than just email, SendPulse has options for you. SendPulse offers SMS messaging, transactional email capabilities, chatbots and web push notifications. 

SendPulse Free Email Marketing Tools

SendPulse has a good number of available tools, including:

• Email marketing automation
• Web push notifications
• SMS marketing
• Viber marketing
• Chatbot messaging

SendPulse Email Platform Pros

SendPulse lets you send up to 15,000 emails to 500 subscribers. However, the free plan limits the number of sender addresses you can have. Plus, while SendPulse offers some cool features like its Automation360 tool and the ability to resend to subscribers who haven’t opened your messages, SendPulse limits the storage volume for files up to 20Mb.

SendPulse Email Platform Cons

In addition to the limited sender addresses and storage volume, SendPulse doesn’t allow you to bulk manage email addresses — i.e. you can’t export your mailing lists to Excel or other spreadsheets. And if you want to use SendPulse because of its SMS capabilities, you should know that you can only send 10 free SMS text messages through its free plan.

EmailOctopus

EmailOctopus has a solid sender reputation with emails being sent through Amazon SES. Once you move past the free version, EmailOctopus is fairly affordable, but you get what you pay for in terms of features. If all you need are basic email features, then this email marketing service provider worth considering.

EmailOctopus Free Email Marketing Tools

They don't have a large number of features, but those they do have are solid.

• Email marketing automation
• Segmentation
• Sign up forms

EmailOctopus Email Platform Pros

Yes, EmailOctopus has one of the more generous free plans in terms of subscriber count. Free users can send 10,000 emails each month to up to 2,500 contacts, which is great if you want to send a weekly newsletter. Plus, with an easy-to-use WISIWYG email builder, creating good looking email newsletters isn’t difficult. 

EmailOctopus Email Platform Cons

EmailOctopus’ simplicity — which some could view positively — is also one of its main downsides. Their feature set is extremely limited and their usability is not that strong.  The tool also stores your statistics for only 30 days at a time.

So, if you want to take a more strategic approach to email marketing beyond weekly newsletters and analyze your email marketing results, it may be best to look elsewhere. 

BenchMark

BenchMark provides a simple email marketing service, but that's just how they want it. They designed their email builder to be simple and straightforward. Their email editor is super easy to use, one definitely doesn’t need a technical background to use this feature. 

They pride themselves on being international as they have a presence in fifteen countries around the world. Plus, from a useability standpoint, BenchMark gets it right.

BenchMark Free Email Marketing Tools

If you are just starting out with email sending and have a very small email list, then the available features may work for you. However, compared to the competition, BenchMark’s available features on their free plan are very lite.

• Basic Email Marketing
• Lite Marketing Automation
• Signup Forms
• Basic Drip Campaigns
• Heatmap reporting

BenchMark Email Platform Pros

BenchMark’s biggest pro is their, as they put it, insanely simple drag & drop editor. And you’ll get no argument from me. This editor is as simple as it gets. 

Automation Pro is a tool developed by Benchmark Email to create automations for your email subscribers. Automations are a set of elements or modules that automatically perform specific tasks based on your subscribers’ interactions with your emails and website. Within Automation Pro, automations can add or remove subscribers from lists or automatically send an email based on website activity, which are tasks that regular automations can’t do.

Their heatmap reporting is a nice touch for the more sophisticated marketer. And they have a basic, but solid marketing automation tool where you can set up simple behavior-based email campaigns.

BenchMark Email Platform Cons

As nice of a platform the BenchMark has to offer, they have their cons. For starters, you can only send 250 emails per month. I don’t know about you, but that’s not enough for me to send one email to my list. 

The free plan is also missing a lot of key features needed to grow your business such as their landing page builder, more advanced email automation, and priority support.

So, how do you decide what’s right for you?

We know, that’s a lot to take in. But putting in the time upfront to figure out what email marketing service is best for you will pay off in the long run. Just want a quick comparison of the most important features? Check out the table we put together at the top of this article. 

Ultimately, make sure you choose a provider who has — and will — stand the test of time. While migrating to AWeber from another platform is painless, we can’t promise the same for the other guys. So do your due diligence upfront to make sure you’re choosing a platform that’s powerfully-simple and gives you the features you need now and in the future. 

Get Started with AWeber Free

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Foresight’s AI-powered wearable helps low-vision users feel the world

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Users with impaired vision will gain a new tool for navigating physical spaces, using computer vision to turn nearby objects into tactile vest sensations.Read More

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Envira Gallery Review: The Best WordPress Image Gallery Plugin?

In this post, we’ll be reviewing one of the WordPress platform’s most popular image gallery plugins: Envira Gallery. Read on to learn about the plugin’s best features, how to use it, and whether or not it’s a plugin worth paying for. As a webmaster, it’s your job to satisfy internet users’ obsession with photos and... View Article

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Podcasts and internet marketing: Are you missing the boat?

30-second summary:

• The drive to be more productive, the thirst to learn something new – these are the primary reasons behind the rising popularity of podcasts.
• One in every four Americans over the age of 12 listens to podcasts religiously. 
• Podcasts’ share of the ear is projected to increase by 120% in the next few years, with the total number of listeners exceeding 100 million by 2021.
• But how exactly can you use podcasts to boost your internet marketing campaign?
• How can you ensure that creating audio content is a rewarding investment for your particular business? 
• Internet marketing specialist, Nasirabadi Reza, decode the answers to a lot of these key questions. Hop on!

Not so long ago, commuting was my favorite part of the day. Driving and traffic jams aside, it was the time when I could relax my mind. With music blasting on the car’s audio system (which I had specially upgraded – just so you know), I would zone out and temporarily free myself from thinking about all the workload/household chores waiting for me at the end of the journey.

But then that wave of boosting productivity, managing time, and whatnot hit. And I found myself trading my playlist for podcasts.

Make no mistake, commuting is still my favorite part of the day, but not because the idleness is a welcome change.  

I now love the commute because it’s the most enriching part of my day. Every day is a new learning experience as I tune in to a marketing podcast and get deeper insights into my line of work. If I am not in the mood for that, I just switch to a radio drama or a talk show instead and get entertained on the go. 

People in innumerable quantities all around the world are showing a similar change in preferences.  

And for marketers, this presents the next growth opportunity as podcasting promises to open the door to the future. 

Podcasts paving the path to the future of internet marketing

The drive to be more productive, the thirst to learn something new – these are the primary reasons behind the rising popularity of podcasts. Of course, their convenience and accessibility, and the fact that podcasts present the info in easily digestible pieces, make them all the more crowd-pleasing.  

In the U.S. alone, there were reported to be around 75 million podcast listeners during the last year. One in every four Americans over the age of 12 listens to podcasts religiously. And the trend has only started to pick up pace.  

Based on statistical analysis, podcasts’ share of the ear is projected to increase by 120% in the next few years, with the total number of listeners exceeding 100 million by 2021.

But how exactly can you use podcasts to boost your marketing campaign? How can you leverage these findings in your favor? And how can you ensure that creating audio content is a rewarding investment for your particular business? 

These were the main questions that came up in a discussion with a few of my fellow workers when we sat down to reconsider our branding strategies. One of them held the staunch belief that podcasting works for media brands only.  

When a logical explanation couldn’t convince him, that’s when I had to pull out my phone and show him various non-media brands that have successfully integrated podcast marketing into their internet marketing campaigns. 

If you share a similar viewpoint or are still confused about how podcasting can benefit your brand, consider the following businesses that continue to gain popularity amongst the masses by jumping onto the podcasting bandwagon. 

Examples of brands using podcast marketing

1. General Electric

If you aren’t already aware of ‘The Message’ and ‘Life After’, you must be thinking, “wait, an electric company promoting machines and tech-solutions through podcasts?”

As absurd as it may sound, that’s still happening nonetheless.  

‘The Message’ and ‘Life After’ are two series of a science fiction podcast that follows a journalistic style. The first series follows the work of scientists trying to decode extraterrestrial messages using high-end technology developed by- yes you guessed it – General Electric.

Talk about marketers whose creativity knows no bounds.

The second podcast series has a different storyline, but the same method for bringing GE’s products into the public eye. 

This is an incredible technique to create brand awareness not just among the products’ direct buyers, but way beyond. 

The use of podcasting to promote your business is limited only by your imagination. And these audio dramas created by General Electric are the ultimate proof of this statement. 

2. McDonald’s

McDonald’s podcast marketing serves as a great example for companies that might fall prey to public relations (PR) problems.

Remember the saga of the Szechuan sauce? The special sauce was being sold at McDonald’s outlets for a limited time period when things went out of control. People started fighting with each other to get their share of the popular sauce eventually creating a bad image for the retail chain for poor management and not creating a sufficiently large batch in the first place. 

McDonald’s took an ingenious approach to address the issue and restoring the damage done to its brand image.  

The highly popular yet super-limited Szechuan sauce became the subject of an investigative podcast called ‘The Sauce.’ 

Consisting of just three parts, the series might have been short, but it effectively used the power of audio content to rebuild the brand image in no time. 

Keep in mind this brilliant marketing hack from McDonald’s for times when a seemingly minor customer complaint starts to wreak havoc for your business by going viral. 

3. Sephora collection

Sephora launched a podcast titled #LIPSTORIES in partnership with Girlboss Radio. The main aim was to celebrate the company’s line of lipsticks.  

Each episode of the series revolved around women who either served as an inspiration behind the product or other influential female workers who were inspired by the product itself.  

This is a powerful example for businesses trying to upsell their goods or services while establishing a positive image among their customers at the same time.  

Podcasts that you definitely need to listen

If you are unsure how to get started on podcast marketing, consider tuning in to the following channels to let the tricks of the trade:  

1. IdeaCast by HBR

Who wouldn’t be interested in reading Harvard Business Review? But it can be hard to find the time. If that’s the case, you can explore new ideas and actionable advice on innovation and market leadership by signing up at IdeaCast – HBR’s official podcasting channel. These informative podcasts are based on interviews with renowned entities such as Eric Schmidt and focus on bringing something new in every episode. 

2. Outside In

The Outside In podcast aims to reveal the secrets behind some of the world’s most renowned brands. It discusses their customer-centered approach and gives listeners deep insight into how they can implement those strategies on their own. 

Blogging might still be the favored technique for content marketing. But you cannot simply deny the fact that podcasting is climbing the charts incredibly fast. It is a viable marketing channel that you can easily leverage in your business’s favor.  

Nasirabadi Reza is an internet marketing specialist with a passion for writing and sharing valuable insights gained through years of experience in the industry. He manages the content delivery hub at Zigma and is dedicated to creating smart strategies for clients who want to take their business to the next level. Reza can be found at @MarketingZigma.

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Another Five for the Future in Our Forecast

Not only are rising summer temperatures in the forecast as July comes to an end, but there is another Five for the Future Friday scheduled in ours. Tomorrow, the final day of July, WebDevStudios (WDS) will devote the day to giving back to WordPress. This open-source platform continues to evolve, with a new release set to launch next month, and the team at WDS enjoys being a part of that evolution and the community behind it.

While the mission of our WordPress agency is the success of our clients, WDS team members appreciate being able to take a day to step away from projects and do something to help improve and strengthen the power of WordPress, which, in turn, also benefits our clients and all who own and use WordPress websites. The whole point behind Five for the Future is to donate 5% of company time to WordPress. Our team does this in a myriad of ways, including:

• Contributing to the WordPress core
• Developing a free plugin
• Creating a WordPress Meetup or WordCamp talk
• Organizing a WordPress Meetup or WordCamp
• Captioning a WordCamp talk

Take a look at how our team contributed last month. Follow WDS on Twitter and the hashtag #5ftf to see how we contribute tomorrow. Cheers to another Five for the Future!

#5FTF @webdevstudios again?! 🥰 Will be adding new enhancements to the https://t.co/wF5Ls3hfwv site and creating the theme for #WordCampIloilo2020 all day today. pic.twitter.com/iISXT2HxBQ

— JC Palmes (@jpalmes) June 26, 2020

Today for #5FTF at @webdevstudios, I'll be working on my WP -> Twitter plugin. With a major assist from @_micmico's work in the block starter. https://t.co/jLlf10BwxB

— Evan Hildreth (@oddevan) June 26, 2020

Special thanks to @webdevstudios for sponsoring this days #5ftf ! Today I’ll be using the time to help a non-profit replatform from angular to WordPress.

— Scott Anderson (@thriftydev) June 26, 2020

Today for #5ftf I'm going to try to contribute to WordPress Core for the first time. Thanks @webdevstudios for the opportunity!

— Amor Kumar (@itsAmorEh) June 26, 2020

It's my favorite day of the month! Five For The Future's when @webdevstudios dedicates a full work day to giving back to the open-source community. I'm going to help by implementing a user-requested feature via Gutenberg in the WP-Strava plugin #5ftf 🚴👟🛶

— Justin Fœll (@justinfoell) June 26, 2020

Aw yeah, it's #5ftf Friday!! Thanks to @webdevstudios, I'm continuing my work on getting https://t.co/8jEhwT4Hfa off the ground! Nearly ready to start showcasing some inspirations built by WordPress! 💥🚀

— Oliver Harrison (@positivebias) June 26, 2020

Cant believe it's already half my #5ftf day here at @webdevstudios . But I already submitted a PR that hopefully solves a @WordPress Trac ticket.#OpenSource #WordPress pic.twitter.com/gITswmAtop

— Michael Joseph Panaga (@_micmico) June 26, 2020

So for @webdevstudios #5ftf today, I'm giving back to a new community: the forgetful one! Have you ever enabled DND (for screen sharing perhaps), forgot about it, and miss that meeting? Checkout https://t.co/4oUOIJ3spB which help remind you DND is still active!

— Aubrey Portwood (@aubreypwd) June 26, 2020

Today is #5ftf @webdevstudios , how awesome is that I can dedicate the day to meet our engineering goal and have time to work on my Gutenberg block. 🤘 #GetMetalLyrics

— I’m Alfredo. (@3LPU4S) June 26, 2020

It's another awesome #5ftf for everyone @WebDevStudios. I'll be continuing work on a Gutenberg block while learning a few things along the way! 😻

— Marty O’Connor (@martinjdolan) June 26, 2020

Having a blast working on https://t.co/ObzqPSXE7B for #5ftf. As always, thanks for @webdevstudios & @maintainn for allowing us this time to explore and create!

— Chrispian H. Burks (@chrispian) June 26, 2020

Today for #5ftf @webdevstudios, I did some client work but then I snuck in work on the Exif Data plugin to format the raw data into clean readable content for humans. I'm super close to a v1 release.

— Mike England (@mikelikethebike) June 26, 2020

It's #5ftf @webdevstudios / @maintainn today! I got to talk about all kinds of Contributor Day planning with @NonStopNewsUK and I will also be working on a presentation for my local meetup about contributing.

— Christina Workman – WP Contributor (@AmethystAnswers) June 26, 2020

👨‍💻 It's #5ftf day at @webdevstudios!

🖥️ I will be replacing the gulp/grunt workflows with wp-scripts to make them compatible with the LTS version of Node.js https://t.co/rAJpy2b3ll

— Ashar.dev (@MrAsharIrfan) June 26, 2020

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Amazon, with Demand Surging, Transitions FBA

Amazon is experiencing a dilemma that other ecommerce companies wish they had: a demand that exceeds supply chain infrastructure. In a note in mid-July, Amazon told sellers using Fulfillment by ...

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Making the web better: an interview with Joost & Omar

August 1 is World Wide Web Day. On this date, back in 1989, the world wide web was born at the CERN lab in Switzerland. Something that started as a way to share knowledge between scientists, has grown out to something none of us can imagine life without. And because the web is such an important part of our daily life, we at Yoast are always working on ways to help make it better. In this interview, our founder and CPO Joost de Valk and CTO Omar Reiss talk about how we can make the web a better place for everyone.

Why we talk about making the web better

At Yoast, we have a few core values to achieve our mission of making SEO possible for everyone. And the first one on our list of core values is Making the web better. Which sounds good, but can also have different meanings to different people. So, let’s start with the obvious question:

What do we mean when we say ‘Making the web better’?

“To answer that question, we’ll first have to give a clear definition of the web,” Omar explains. “The web started out as an enormous collection of documents linking to each other. And to a certain degree, this is still a simple definition of the web as we know it today. But the web has gone through some evolutionary stages since it first saw the light of day. A guiding principle in its development has always been an increase in interactivity. Interactivity between users and the site they’re visiting, but also interactivity between different platforms on the web. Making the web better means helping the web become more interactive, in a way that reinforces its open, connected, and accessible nature.”

“Exactly”, Joost adds to this. “Speaking from a personal point of view, my background in open source has always helped me understand the importance of an open web. And the importance of leveling the playing field for everyone. When you think about it, it’s quite amazing that anyone can create a site that someone at the other end of the world can visit with the click of a button. But what I also love about the open web, is that it makes it possible for every site, from well-known names to a small bakery around the corner, to be found through online searches.”

“It’s important to maintain and improve on that possibility to be found online. Even if your background is not in coding or site design, or even marketing. Although the options are definitely there and we (together with others) are continuously working on improving these options, there are still many steps we can take in making the web, and software, open and accessible for everyone.”

Can you tell us more about these steps we can still take?

Joost: “Take Google for example. The only reason that Google is able to give us search results we’re looking for, is because it’s able to crawl so many sites. By indexing everything it finds on sites worldwide, it can show you the results that will most probably give you what you’re looking for. But, as you can imagine, this is quite difficult and there are also many platforms Google can’t index because it doesn’t have access to the content on them.”

“Right”, Omar adds. “You’re probably familiar with different social platforms that allow you to post Stories. Which is pretty cool, but why can’t you host these Stories to any platform you want, including your site? They seem to work in a similar manner, so why not make it possible to use them in different places? The same goes for videos, which right now you embed on your site, and that essentially means that a user is viewing this video ‘through a window’ on your site instead of on the page itself. Ideally, you’d want these platforms to communicate with each other in a way that makes all of this possible. And also requires just one user profile across social media, different sites, and other platforms.”

“There are already a few who’ve taken the first steps towards these connections between platforms. But we have to think bigger and work towards an all-encompassing way to connect everything online. We believe that structured data can be the answer to this. Because to make something interact, it needs structure. And although a simple HTML document has enough structure to show a certain page layout, it lacks the structure to tell us exactly what information is on this page and how users are able to interact with it. Structured data, and the use of Schema.org, is the way to make these pages interactive. And this makes it possible for other platforms and search engines to understand what they can do with these pages.”

What does Yoast do to contribute to this?

Joost: “We want to contribute to connecting everything on the web. And we want to make this connectivity, and with it visibility, to be possible for everyone. One of the ways in which we’re doing this right now is with our structured data blocks. These blocks do not only communicate what information can be found on a page, they also explain what actions a user can perform with this content (such as viewing a video or subscribing to a newsletter). This helps search engines better understand your pages, and with it, helps your pages rank for the right interactions.”

“To be honest, structured data has a bit of a usability issue”, Omar adds. “It needs metadata to organize the information it’s been given. However, most of us don’t know how to input the information in the right way in this organizing system. Let me explain this by comparing it to a library. Although a visitor of the library might be able to easily browse through its inventory, the role of the librarian is more complicated. This librarian has to organize all the books in a structured way that makes it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for. And to do so, they need information about every book, such as its genre, title, writer, year of publication etcetera. To make everyone’s life easier, the library could implement a system to make sure every new book automatically comes with this information. But how will people who submit a new book know what information the librarian wants? And how they want to receive this information? This asks for a standardized way of sharing this information.”

“This is where we come in, by helping you fill in this information in an intuitive way. For example, with our Google snippet preview. This preview allows you to edit what your page will look like in the Google search results. By editing this preview, you’re filling in information that Google needs to understand your page: your title tag and meta description. We do this with our snippet previews, social previews, and structured data blocks. This way, we’re helping our users add metadata in an accessible and understandable way. “

“But that’s not everything we do”, Joost continues. “Making the web better and making SEO accessible for everyone, always plays a role in product decisions we make at Yoast. When we built our readability analysis, the choice to make this a premium feature or not in our plugin was easy. We wanted everyone to have access to this feature to be able to optimize their content and increase their visibility online. That way we contribute to opening up the web for everyone and creating equal opportunities.”

“That’s one of the reasons why I love working at Yoast”, Omar adds. “Moments like the one when Joost and Marieke so easily decided to make the readability analysis part of our free plugin, give me so much energy. It’s amazing that we’re able to help so many people improve the quality of their content. Which helps them with their rankings. And eventually, also contributes to a better web.”

In your opinion, what would the ideal web look like?

Omar: “A lot of important challenges of the web today have to do with different elements of trust. We’ve got quite good open solutions for things like online identity and authorization. But we still lack public and impartial institutions online, who could take care of our online identities with a special concern for privacy and data integrity.”

“Yes, and to take this even one step further” Joost adds, “it would be great to see reliable information about the author of something you’re reading online. Not their name necessarily, because that’s information you don’t always need. But say you’re reading a medical text online, wouldn’t it be cool to know that the author actually has a medical background? Which doesn’t mean that others shouldn’t be allowed to write about these subjects by the way. It just gives readers an idea of the background that a writer brings to the table.”

“A great example of a step in this direction, and something I really believe in, is WordProof. WordProof allows you to prove that you published certain content at a specific moment. It allows you to claim your content. The only thing that’s still missing is proving that you are who you say you are. And that’s something they’re working on. But as Omar said, I think this is something that should be done by one (or multiple) impartial parties. I don’t think that’s something we at Yoast should play a part in. Where I do see us making an essential contribution is with everything after that. In helping people output the right metadata and tying everything on the web together. Something we’re already doing, for example, is giving people the possibility to link their profiles on Github, Facebook, and Twitter on their author profile.”

Omar: “To conclude, I think everything we discussed here can be brought back to accessibility. For search engines and other online platforms, this is the accessibility to content that makes it possible to connect everything on the web. For people, this is the accessibility to software and tools to make your site rank and compete with others.”

Joost: “Right, a better web is a web that levels the playing field and that’s usable for everyone.”

Read more: Structured data with Schema.org: the ultimate guide »

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