Are you a US veteran, network administrator or a person who allowed their certifications to laps? Would you like to gain a big advantage over your IT competition?
If you answered yes to these important questions, The CompTIA Security + certification is for you.
The CompTIA Security + is gaining in popularity across the United States. Over two million companies are requiring the CompTIA Security + as a major requirement for network administrators.
The reason for this surge in demand for this certification is because of the massive increase in cybercrime. Cyber-attacks are a normal part of a network administrator’s business day. These attacks usually are made upon the corporate server, routers, attacks on individual work stations and in some cases hackers have been known to gain access through a device like a simple printer or fax.
On May 15, 2018 Banks in Mexico had to admit that cyber-criminals stole twenty million dollars due to hacking. In fact Money transfers had to be suspended for 24 hours so the crimes could be sorted out. Only one result came from this attack, more cyber security professionals were hired.
The US government is requiring all companies who contract with them, have a person on staff who is certified in cyber security. The last thing our government wants is to have important information fall into the wrong hands. News leaks dominate the news today. Cyber security is one solution to stop vital information from falling into the hands of the media. The CompTIA Security + is the certification most recognized by the US government.
What is needed to fight these attacks, is a qualified person who has certified cyber security skills. The CompTIA Security + is your credential, which will prove to employers that you can defend their network against a cyber-attack.
The CompTIA Security + is not a standalone certification. In order to receive maximum benefit from this certification, network administrators should have the CompTIA A+, Microsoft’s MCSE, Cisco CCNA and if the MCSE isn’t possible the CompTIA Network + will be sufficient to advance to the CompTIA Security + certification.
The CompTIA Security + is completed in 78 hours. While in class, you will learn the critical strategies you can employ to harden your network against all kinds of cyber-attacks.
In addition, the US Department of Defense recognizes the CompTIA Security + as a major proof of cyber security competence. In fact, the CompTIA Security + is a key part of a Department of Defense security clearance known as DOD 8140.
Veterans, persons working in network administration and candidates who have various degrees in the field of information technology will benefit from this information packed certification.
After completing the CompTIA Security +, many of our students move onto the Certified Ethical hacker, which provides all of the tools you will need for network penetration testing and defense.
You will receive access to over 600 tools, which will enable you to defend your organization against a cyber-attack. Cyber-security is big business in 2018. Students who train and become certified will be in demand. Jobs for cyber security professionals are listed in all 50 states. If you obtain this certificate, you can choose where you want to live. Most important, you will know that you have the earning power to receive a solid income so you can buy that house or car you’ve always wanted.
If you are interested in learning about cyber security, contact ABCO Technology.
Reaching our campus by telephone is easy. Call Monday through Friday between 9 AM and 6 PM. Our phone number is (310) 216-3067.
Email your questions to info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for education funding.
ABCO Technology is located at:
11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588
Los Angeles, Ca. 90304
Become a cyber-security certified professional today!
major restaurant chain hacked again, more cyber security needed
Chillis, a large chain of restaurants was hit with a major cyber-attack in 2018.
The chain restaurant reports the attack occurred between March and April 2018
Do you believe your credit information is safe when you eat out? If you believe so, think again! Chillis stock symbol is found by typing eat. Well, the restaurant chain sure ate it on this one.
Between March and April of 2018, Chili’s restaurants were hit by a data breach that may have compromised some guests’ payment card information. The breach was discovered last Friday, according to a press release by Brinker International, which owns the 1,600+ location chain.
Per Chili’s press release:
♬ Hey you got maybe hacked, maybe-hacked, maybe-hacked ♬
♬ Hey you got maybe hacked, maybe-hacked, maybe-hacked ♬
♬ Chili’s got hacked, baby, hacked ♬
Ok, I’m going to level with you. That wasn’t the press release. And I will probably never get a PR job with Chillis. But seriously, how could you even be mad at that?
Back to the real press release, though. Here is what happened:
On May 11, 2018, we learned that some of our Guests’ payment card information was compromised at certain Chili’s restaurants as the result of a data incident. Currently, we believe the data incident was limited to between March – April 2018; however, we continue to assess the scope of the incident. We deeply value our relationships with our Guests and sincerely apologize to those who may have been affected.
Chili’s immediately launched into its response plan and is currently working with third-party forensic experts to investigate exactly what happened.
Based on the information currently available, it appears as though malware was used to collect payment card information, specifically credit and debit card numbers and cardholder names, used during in-restaurant purchases at affected restaurants.
Chili’s does not collect certain personal information (such as your social security number, your full date of birth, or federal or state identification number). Therefore, this personal information was not compromised.
Chili’s suggests that all customers monitor their bank accounts for any unauthorized transactions. So far the complete scope of the breach is not known, including how many restaurants were affected and how many customers had their data compromised. The restaurant will continue to issue updates as they become available.
Overall, Chili’s handled this situation with aplomb. We’ve reached a point where, for big companies, data breaches aren’t a matter of if, they’re a matter of when. Chili’s had a contingency plan in place, it disclosed the breach within 72 hours of its discovery (something that would make GDPR compliance specialists proud) and the company is communicating clearly and giving customers actionable advice to help ensure that they aren’t negatively impacted.
All in all, at least externally, Chili’s has handled itself fine here. Besides, a data breach is not what keeps successful chain restaurants up awake at night. Millennials are the prime source of stress.
It is important for Chillis ensure that their customers continue dining at their restaurants. In order to create trust, the chain will be forced to spend more money for cyber security. That’s where readers of our ABCO Technology articles will benefit. If you want a promising career in cyber security, contact ABCO Technology. You can reach our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday at: (310) 216-3067.
Email all questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.
ABCO Technology is located at:
11222 South La Cienega Blvd. in STE #588
Los Angeles, Ca. 90304
Cyber-crime is growing faster than professionals can be hired. Train and certify for a cyber security career today!
Are you a network administrator who wants to gain a big advantage over your competition when applying for that dream information technology job you’ve always wanted?
If you answered yes to this important question, The #CompTIA Security + certification is the solution for you.
The CompTIA Security + is gaining in popularity across the United States. Over one million companies are requiring the CompTIA #Security + as a major requirement for network administrators.
The reason for this surge in demand for this certification is because of the massive increase in #cybercrime. Cyber-attacks are a part of a network administrator’s business day. These attacks usually are made upon the corporate server, routers, attacks on individual work stations and in some cases hackers have been known to gain access through a device like a printer or fax.
The US government is now requiring all companies who contract with the government to have a person on staff who is certified in cyber security. The CompTIA Security + is the certification most recognized by the US government.
What is needed to fight these costly cyber-attacks, is a qualified person who has certified cyber security skills. The CompTIA Security + is your credential, which will prove to employers that you can defend their network against a cyber-attack.
The CompTIA Security + is not a standalone certification. In order to receive maximum benefit from this certification, network administrators should have the CompTIA A+, Microsoft’s MCSE, Cisco CCNA and if the MCSE isn’t possible the CompTIA Network + will be sufficient to advance to the CompTIA Security + certification.
The CompTIA Security + is completed in 78 hours. While in class, you will learn the critical strategies you can employ to harden your network against all kinds of cyber-attacks.
In addition, the US Department of Defense recognizes the CompTIA Security + as a major proof of cyber security competence. In fact, the CompTIA Security + is a key part of a Department of Defense security clearance known as DOD 8140.
Veterans, persons working in network administration and candidates who have various degrees in the field of information technology will benefit from this high demand certification.
If you are interested in learning about cyber security, contact ABCO Technology.
Reaching our campus by telephone is easy. Call Monday through Friday between 9 AM and 6 PM. Our phone number is (310) 216-3067.
Email all questions to info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.
ABCO Technology is located at:
11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588
Los Angeles, Ca. 90304
Learn about an exciting career in cyber security today!
Do you know about the phrase “a perfect storm?” It’s that situation where unrelated factors combine and amplify together, all to create something horrible? That’s what is taking place with companies scrambling to hire CompTIA Security+ certified professionals. Factors about this certification include: a long legacy, a strong reliance across the industry, and changes in the current exam version in 2017 all form the perfect climate for anyone who doesn’t yet have this powerful certification. And one more factor remains, an upcoming surge in credibility, but more on that later. The bottom line is, if you don’t have the Security+ certification in 2018, you should get it now. But before you do, read about each factor in this article.
Long Legacy
The CompTIA Security+ certification is nearing its sixteenth year. For some people, 16 years is not a long time, but it means Security+ came before YouTube and Facebook. The very first iPod was released 11 years ago, as was the first USB flash drive. In terms of security certifications, Security+ predates ISACA’s CISM and Red Hat’s Certified Security Specialist.
In the information security field, 16 years seems a much longer time. Information security has matured a great deal in less than 20 years, seeing new focus on areas like identity management, risk management and governance. IT professionals familiar with keeping financial information secure will remember the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted in July 2002 (hey—also less than 20 years old!). Indeed, a lot of ground was covered in the past 16 years. And the Security+ certification has lived through it all.
Industry Respect for Security+
Just because something is older doesn’t make it better. But in this case, maybe it does. I find the Security+ increasingly becoming a baseline. Take, for example, how the Security+ certification gets used as a prerequisite toward a higher level certification. The most well-used case is in Microsoft’s Certified Solutions Expert, where a person seeking their MCSE can use CompTIA’s Security+ as an elective. In fact, CompTIA is the only third-party option available to Microsoft MCSE certification seekers. For Microsoft’s security specialization, again, the CompTIA Security+ is an alternative to Microsoft’s own security courses. This kind of endorsement creates a considerable level of credibility for the Security+. This credibility comes unbiased, from both the private and public sectors.
The CompTIA Security+ certification is vendor-neutral. This means the certification is not biased, does not promote, nor heavily dependent on a strong familiarity of one vendor. This means when talking about identify management, for example, you are not going to miss a question because you aren’t overly familiar with implementing Cisco products. Nor are you bound to focus on one solution provider such as Microsoft.
Endorsement in the Public Sector
It’s not just private companies that leverage how popular the Security+ certification is. The public sector refers to it as well in defining job requirements and training. For example, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) has manual 8140.01M (last updated April 2015), which describes the training and certification requirements for all Information Assurance professionals within the DoD. That includes all the US military, the Pentagon, the NSA and the rest of the 3 million employees and service members.
The DoD manual describes the requirements of “IAT” or Information Assurance Technical personnel at particular levels within the DoD. In the manual’s words: “The IA workforce focuses on the operation and management of IA capabilities for DoD systems and networks.” Regarding Department of Defense information assurance technical and managerial personnel, there are three possible levels. The manual details experience and training requirements for all three levels. For example, an IAT Level 3 person is more qualified than an IAT Level 1 person.
But how does this manual (and DoD) regard the Security+ certification? According to the manual, an IAT Level 2 person “normally has at least 3 years in IA technology or a related area” to be considered qualified. However, if a person holds the Security+ certification, that person now meets the minimum requirements for IAT level 2 work.
Yes, the Security+ certification qualifies a person for IAT Level 2 work, a position for someone assumedly having “at least 3 years” experience. Bear in mind that even CompTIA does not require but only recommends 2 years’ experience before taking the Security+ exam. This is because the Security+ is designated as a “DoD approved certification” for IAT Levels 1 and 2, and IAM (management) Level 1 positions.
All told, there are noticeable shifts in how the industry—both private and public—valuate the Security+ certification. In every case, it seems to reflect a growing respect for the Security+, so I feel the investment spent in gaining the certification is bound to pay off.
Changeover in exam version
CompTIA is noticing that growing respect, too. Perhaps one response is their recent, complete makeover of the exam. Earlier in 2017, CompTIA released a new revision of the popular exam, the exam’s fourth version since its start in 2002. And the revision is timed with yet another “perfect storm” factor, to be explained later. It’s enough to say their timing was well-thought out. This can be good and bad news.
The good news, as we discussed above, is that CompTIA is continuing to improve upon the certification. The bad news, if you’re the kind of certification student that relies on notes and experience from past students, is that a new revision means new areas of study with completely new questions. Depending on the source, study guides could be edited and honed multiple times during one exam revision. In contract, a new exam revision means untested territory for study guide providers. In short, study guides of “today” are of little help for the exam of “tomorrow.”
To be certain, we’re talking about the same exam revisions. The new revision is SY0-401 and has been available to exam takers since July 2017. However, the expiring exam revision is called SY0-201 and is available to you until the end of the year, as noted per the CompTIA website.
Credibility Surge
Remember in the introduction I added another important factor, an upcoming surge in credibility? Let me explain.
In 2011, CompTIA announced they removed the “open-ended” trait from their three foundation certifications, of which Security+ is the most senior. What does that mean? In the past, if you got a Security+ certification, you keep it for life, regardless of any effort to upkeep or exercise it. No more “free ride” now.
This means holders will need to demonstrate their ongoing practice by recording a number of activities such as teaching, publishing, or attending conferences. This should sound familiar to many certification holders who already have to record their Continuing Education Units or CEUs. Now, Security+ becomes one more certification where you can apply the same conference.
Why do I consider this a smart move? Simply put, much more credibility is given to certifications kept up-to-date compared to ones given “for life.” Five years from now, you can be sure those certified as Security+ are dedicated to their trade. And so will employers.
In Summary—A Perfect Storm
Remember I called this the “perfect storm”? A perfect storm is what this is because of the timing of multiple factors. The factors include its legacy and the certification’s growing respect, the waning availability of the older exam revision, and the removal of the certification’s “open-ended” quality. All told, the timing for getting this certification couldn’t be better. Waste no more time and secure a good class to take this in demand job certification.
ABCO Technology offers courses in a program known as the cyber security engineer, which includes this certification plus five others.
If you are interested in a cyber security career, contact our campus by telephone between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday at: (310) 216-3067.
Email your questions to info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.
On March 1, 2018, New York state has moved forward with the strongest cybersecurity regulations in the United States. All banks, financial institutions and other investment organizations who transact business with the public must have a cybersecurity officer as part of their information technology staff.
The New York regulations are nationwide because all national banks and investment offices have major branches in New York. Companies who fail to comply with this regulation will be subject to fines, which range up to 1% of assets. The 1% of assets is a large number. For example banks licensed in New York managing one trillion dollars of assets could be fined up to ten billion dollars for simply not having a cybersecurity officer as part of their staff.
Becoming a cybersecurity officer can be accomplished with proper certification and training. The best path for a financial industry cybersecurity career in this field is to first become a network administrator and then add the cybersecurity certifications to your existing credentials.
Let’s breakdown each certification down one by one.
1. Begin with the CompTIA A+ certification, which qualifies the holder to repair, maintain, install and configure computers plus devices on a network. This certification is completed in less than two months.
2. Microsoft’s MCSE or Microsoft certified Solutions Expert. This certification, which is completed in six months entitles the holder to install, maintain, configure and secure a corporate server, which is the large computer on a network distributing programs to all workstations.
3. Your next certification is the Cisco Certified Network Associate or CCNA, which qualifies the holder to install, configure and secure a corporate router. This certification is usually finished in six weeks.
4. You are now a junior level network administrator. Your first cyber security certification is the CompTIA Security +, which entitles the holder to secure a network against cyberattacks and teach other employees about cyber security. This certification is completed in six weeks.
5. The next certification is the Certified Ethical Hacker, which is completed in six weeks. This course teaches you to think like a hacker so you can defend your organization against cyberattacks. The certification allows you to have access to the latest attacks committed by hackers and how you can defend against them.
6 Your final certification is your CompTIA Linux +, which teaches you how to use the Linux operating system. Organizations large and small use Linux in the background because the operating system is difficult for hackers to penetrate and attack.
After completing these certifications, which will take you about one year, you can apply for a position in cybersecurity. The US labor department has stated that jobs will grow at an average rate of 15% a year up through 2030. This career offers strong job security, good benefits and a chance to earn an excellent living doing what you love.
If you are interested in obtaining a promising career in the fast growing field of cybersecurity, contact ABCO Technology. You can reach our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday. Call our campus today at: (310) 216-3067.
Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.
ABCO Technology is located at: 11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588 Los Angeles, Ca. 90304
Cybersecurity is an exploding jobs field. Train and certify for a position today!
One of the biggest challenges parents face in 2018 is the fact that jobs for millennials or teenagers are very hard to find.
The reasons are simple.
First of all the #US is moving toward a #skills oriented economy and teenagers or millennials haven’t had the opportunity to train for a skilled job.
Second the skills based economy with political pressure is artificially forcing wages higher than the market will bear. The higher wages forces teenagers out of the conventional restaurant jobs, which they have held for the past 100 years.
The solution to this challenge is to train your son or daughter to ensure they have an employable skill early in life.
One skill, which has high demand and job growth is computer repair. When we talk about computers, we are talking about laptops, iPhones and iPads. All of the mentioned devices will breakdown. The device itself could malfunction or simply be dropped.
A training course and certification, which trains millennials to compete in the computer repair field is the #CompTia A+. Training for the CompTia A+ or a course in computer repair can be accomplished in approximately 78 hours.
After the training is completed, the candidate passes two exams to obtain the CompTia A+ certification. These exams are: 901 for hardware, which covers the building of a computer and 902, which covers all of the operating systems, which can be installed on that computer. The CompTia A+ also covers setting up a small network, installation of printers and installation of online faxes.
Employers are looking for young people who can fix computers. Jobs come in many forms. Websites including Indeed and Glass door have many listings for young candidates with the A+ computer repair certification.
#ABCO #Technology teaches courses in networking and cyber security. Our school is ideal for the teenager who wants an employable skill. The CompTia A+ is a major part of this training. Call our campus between 9 Am and 6 PM Monday through Friday at: (310) 216-3067.
Email all questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.
ABCO Technology is located at: 11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE # 588 Los Angeles, Ca. 90304
Shares of Eastman Kodak stock were soaring Tuesday after the company announced a new #cryptocurrency initiative.
The company unveiled a licensing partnership with Wenn Digital to launch an image rights management platform called KODAKOne and a photo-centric crypto currency called #KODAK Coin.
The stock price opened at $3.10 a share Tuesday and rose as high as $7.65 after the announcement was made at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. When the stock market closed at 4 p.m., shares were trading at $6.80.
In a release, the company said the KODAKOne platform will be an encrypted, digital ledger of rights ownership for photographers to register both new and archival work that they can then license for use.
The company describes KODAK Coin as “a new economy for photography,” which will allow photographers to receive payment for licensing their work immediately upon sale, sell their work confidently on a secure block chain platform.
The system will be open to both professional and amateur photographers.
Initial reactions from financial analysts were mixed.
CBS Marketwatch said Kodak was “boarding the block chain bandwagon,” hoping to capitalize on the crypto currency trend to boost its stock price.
Bloomberg said, “The move comes as investors snap up virtually any asset related to digital coins or the block chain technology that underpins them — no matter how tenuous the tie.”
The Financial Times was more blunt in its criticism, calling it “Kodak’s last desperate bid for relevance
Encryption, which has been a part of information technology for 25 years is now experiencing an expansion of its use. Bitcoin has been the number one crypto currency out of 1375 different encrypted currency chains. Now that Kodak has entered this market we have 1376. This writer believes Kodak’s entry will gain in popularity because it is focused upon a specific industry, which is photography. Could Kodak’s new currency be the beginning of a new trend, where different services have their own currency? This appears to be the new reality.
#ABCO #Technology teaches classes in encryption in our cyber security program. Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday. Call today at: (310) 216-3067.
Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.
ABCO Technology is located at: 11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588 Los Angeles, Ca. 90304
Encryption is opening up numerous opportunity. Join #CyberSecurity today to learn more.
The State of Mobile User Experience By Charles Pascal
Summary: Ten years from the original iPhone, the field of mobile UX has finally reached maturity.
The original iPhone was released in June 2007. In late 2009, when ABCO Technology wrote the research for the first article of our mobile report, most people still had primitive mobile devices with horrible user experience. At the time, anything that was half-way decent was a pleasant experience compared with the misery caused by most mobile devices and most mobile sites.
Three years ago, when the second article of the mobile report came out, we did a thorough evaluation of the state of mobile usability. At the time, we were happy to report that mobile usability was no longer an oxymoron— and we finally saw many sites and apps with decent usability. With the new third 2018 article of our mobile-UX research report, we continue to see progress.
Today, most mobile sites and applications offer a good user experience. There are still the occasional glitches and sacrifices of usability in favor of aesthetics, but we can confidently say that the field has progressed in the past two years since the last article. Most of the egregious errors are not there anymore. When we tried to update the examples for many of our mobile guidelines, we discovered that the companies had fixed their problems and some of the issues that we discussed were no longer common. Yet we also encountered revivals of problems we thought almost extinct two years ago. In the business of usability, mistakes (like trends) tend to be cyclic: one generation identifies them and creates design patterns that avoid them, but later generations, no longer having witnessed the UX problem, make the same error again in their quest for refreshed designs. It’s always two steps forward and one step backward.
Content vs. Chrome
The importance of prioritizing content over UI elements (that is, chrome) was one of the lessons learned from responsive design. The hamburger-menutrend was a consequence of that lesson: designers were trying to minimize the number of UI elements visible on the screen because these took away precious content space. Two years later, designers continue to value the screen real estate on mobile devices — but they’ve reached measure in hiding the chrome. A break has been put on the hamburger trend. It’s still very widespread (as we argue elsewhere, hidden navigation is the only option for some sites), but many have understood that it should not be used if a better pattern (such as a visible navigation bar) is available.
Prioritizing content over chrome has trickled in other design areas: for instance, we no longer see results pages headed by fat filters that occupy half the page. Or, the nested-doll pattern, which involved having users make a sequence of selections through multiple pages before encountering content, is no longer as popular as it used to be. At least some companies have started to understand that it’s better to flatten the navigation structure on mobile: show people a variety of content right away and allow them to later narrow it down to a specific category of interest.
Walgreens.com used the nested-doll navigation pattern, which used to be popular in the past but is becoming less widespread. It required users to make 4 category selections before they could see any products. However, Walgreens tried to create the illusion of content by adding product images to the some of the category-selection pages, which suggests that designers were likely aware of the tedium of this category-based design.
#Google Express for iPhone: Instead of listing all the subcategories under Grocery, a few items were displayed under each. Instead of using a category-based design where users had to decide among different categories, the app rightly used a content-based design.
Use of Gestures
Gestures solve the problem of too much chrome on a too small screen, but they are notoriously hard to discover and learn. Some of the original gesture enthusiasm (embodied by gesture-only apps such as Clear Todos) has dampened down, but gesture use is still one of the more promising directions in mobile design.
Clear Todos for iPhone, whose first version appeared around 2012, used a variety of gestures to compensate for the lack of visual interface elements. These gestures were hard to remember.
Unfortunately, gestures are a chicken-and-egg problem: they won’t become easy to learn and use until a standard vocabulary of gestures used across apps and websites is built, and all applications and websites use these gestures consistently. But, on the other hand, designers are forced to stay away from gestures because they have so little familiarity among their user base.
Apple has had multiple attempts to expand the standard vocabulary of gestures (with the introduction of 3D Touch for iPhone 6S) and to delegate some of the visible chrome to gestures. Their attempts have culminated with the iPhone X — which got rid of the iPhone’s only physical button to replace it with a series of swipe gestures. The result has been a more effective use of the screen at the expense of some initial learning hurdles for people used with the old Home button.
#3D Touch was a promising direction, but it is still relatively rarely used by applications. However, two other (old) gestures are increasing in popularity to the point of being added to that basic gesture vocabulary: the swipe-to-delete for exposing some contextual actions including delete, and the two-finger scroll for moving around a map embedded on a webpage. While the swipe-to-delete simply adds a convenient way to perform contextual actions on a list element, the two-finger scroll solves the problem of swipe ambiguity, often encountered when maps are embedded in web pages. These gestures are becoming more and more familiar to users, although we still recommend that designs which use them add other redundant ways to perform the same actions or at least have good contextual tips to guide users.
The two-finger scroll gesture is becoming a standard for map scrolling and solves the problem of swipe ambiguity (where users attempt to scroll the page and accidentally scroll the map or viceversa).
Better Integration Between the Mobile Web and the App Web
Transitioning from the web to an app used to require a specific user action: on iOS, people had to explicitly choose to open an app and then perform a search inside it. From iOS 9 on, it’s become possible to easily transition between the mobile web and the app web— if I search for a movie in a search engine, some of the search results will seamlessly open corresponding application pages (when users have these applications installed).
When a link to a movie on the search-results page was selected, the control moved from Safari to the iMDb app. The Back-to-appbutton was displayed in the top left corner of the status bar and was labeled with the name of the previously used app (Safari).
This seamless transition from browser to app, or, more generally, from one app to the next ensures that the experience of consuming content is optimal — because, most often, applications will have a better user experience than sites(simply because they are closer to the mobile platform for which they were designed).
Unfortunately, with this design we also see a new burden placed on users: that of keeping track of where they are and knowing how to navigate back. Applications still have to accommodate that need — for example, we still notice that many apps (like iMDb above) do not include logos on their deep pages, which makes it more difficult for users to orient themselves in this new expanded app-plus-web universe.
A notable improvement, possibly related to the increased ease of switching from browser to app, has been a lower number of interstitial app ads. (Almost) gone are the days when navigating to a new site was preceded by an interstitial inviting the user to download the app. Most of the time, the app is simply advertised in a banner at the top of a web page.
Better Use of Phone Features
Although not perfect, more and more sites and apps take advantage of basic phone functionality. Checking out on many ecommerce sites has become a breeze due to integrated systems like Apple Pay and Android Pay. And most sites and apps take into account the user’s current location. Biometric authentication promises to get us closer from the problem of remembering passwords, and can even make desktop login easier by allowing users to easily transfer information (and thus automatically log in) across devices.
When setting up a new iPhone, there was no need to type in credentials to authenticate: they were automatically transferred from a nearby device.
Fewer Tutorials: Stagnation
A few years ago, any respectable app started with a lengthy tutorial that catalogued all the different features available in the app. These tutorials were at worst annoying and at best ineffective — no user could remember the plethora of commands listed in a lengthy tutorial. Nor were they motivated to remember any of them — after all, who could say in advance what features would be actually useful?
Today, those tutorials have been largely replaced with general overviews of the apps, meant to convince the user to go beyond the login walland create an account. Ideally, these login walls should disappear completely and users should be able to experience the app without having to register at all. The initial app overviews play the function of an ad — and most people hate to have to sit through an ad, especially if they’ve already spent the effort to download the app.
Steps Backward
Although overall the responsive-design trend has been a positive influence, the quest for building across multiple interaction modalities has pushed some towards strange solutions like using a split-button for menus or accordions. The intent behind the split-buttonmenu is to replicate desktop’s hover-plus-click interaction for categories in the main navigation — that is, to allow access both to a category landing page and to a submenu. Yet it is a highly unusable solution — not only because it crams two targets in a small space and makes the job of acquiring each of them more difficult for human fingers, but also because it violates users’ expectations and the mobile patterns that they have learned so far.
Another somewhat surprising development has been the disappearance of guest checkout. Sites and apps that used to offer this functionality in the past have eliminated it — some rely on Check out with Apple Payor Check out with PayPalto compensate for the lack of guest checkout. But many still force users to create an account although they may be one-time purchasers. On the plus side, registration has been simplified in many designs — it is fairly common nowadays to be asked only for an email and a password in order to create an account.
The popularity of the overlay has increased, with many sites implementing menus as overlays. Two years ago, many mobile overlays were buggy and created funny effects (such as content behind the overlay suddenly appearing on top of it). Today’s overlays are much better. But they often look like full pages, and people treat them as such — expecting to be able to use the Backbutton to close them and navigate back to the previous view. Often, they get disoriented when that does not happen and instead they are spit out of the site. When an entire flow is moved in overlays (as it is the case with the increasingly popular sequential menus), the opportunity for errors increases even more, with people forgetting to use the menu’s Back button to ensure correct navigation in the overlay and instead using the browser or the phone’s Backbutton.
LATimes.com: The menu was displayed in an overlay that looked like a new page (left). In spite of the Closebutton in the top left corner, people will still be tempted to tap the browser’s Backbutton to close the overlay. If they did so, they would be taken to the previously visited page (the search-engine page — right) instead of to the LA Times homepage.
Conclusion
Ten years from the first iPhone, the field of mobile user experience has finally reached a reasonable level of maturity. It was about time — according to a recent report by comScore, in many parts of the world, more than half of the online time is spent on mobile. So it’s only right that mobile usability catches up with desktop usability. It doesn’t mean that mobile sites and apps have reached a state of usability perfection: there’s no such thing as a perfect design. It simply means that a lot of them offer a decent user experience, and that many flagrant errors of the past have been fixed.
ABCO Technology teaches a comprehensive course for E-commerce. Call our technical college campus today. You can reach us between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday at: (310) 216-3067.
Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.
ABCO Technology is located at: 11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE # 588 Los Angeles, Ca. 90304
Amazon Echo and its voice assistant, Alexa, might be the current market leaders in voice-activated smart technology, but recent announcements from the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show have shown that Google fully intends to challenge Amazon for that crown.
The past few days have seen some big developments – and a couple of even bigger teasers – for the future of Google’s smart assistant, the imaginatively-named Assistant.
On Tuesday, the first day of CES 2018, Google published a post to its official blog announcing partnerships with more than a dozen electronics companies to produce Google Assistant smart speakers – some with a very significant upgrade.
The blog post also highlighted the breadth and depth of “Actions”, the name given to built-in apps and integrations for the Google Assistant. At the same time, Search Console users began receiving notifications that their podcast, recipe and news content was eligible to be included in a new “Actions directory”, which is being rolled out over the next few days.
This appears to be part of an increased focus on what can be accomplished with Assistant, shifting its emphasis from finding information (Google’s long-time speciality) to carrying out tasks.
There’s a lot of news to unpack, so let’s look at what exactly these developments involve, and what they mean for SEOs and the wider industry.
SEOs using structured data are first to the Google Assistant party
While a comparatively smaller development than the flashy revelations of major electronics partnerships and smart displays, Google’s introduction of native support for podcasts, recipes and news to the Assistant is nevertheless big news for SEOs.
I owe a hat tip to Aaron Bradley of SEO Skeptic, whose post to the Semantic Search Marketing Google+ group first tipped me off to this development. In turn, he was tipped off by SEO consultant Dan Shure, who tweeted about a Google Search Console alert he’d received inviting him to “improve discovery” of his podcast in the Google Assistant
Google is gradually rolling out a browsable directory of Actions for the Google Assistant, allowing users to more easily discover what the Assistant is capable of.
Podcasts, recipes and news will be the first wave of content added to this directory – though only content published with AMP, or marked up with structured data such as Schema.org, will be getting the nod.
This means that webmasters and SEOs who have been marking up their content with structured data are already ahead of the curve in making that content available via voice – while those who haven’t must hop on the structured data (or AMP) bandwagon if they want to be eligible.
Structured data has long been touted by its fans as a great way to get search engines to better surface content from your site, particularly in the form of things like rich snippets or Quick Answers. But it can be time-consuming to add and maintain, and the immediate benefit isn’t always so obvious.
This new use case, however, shows that there is a huge potential advantage to “future-proofing” your website by adding structured data markup. If Google continues to make Assistant a primary focus going forward, then this could be the key to content optimization and discovery in a voice-driven world.
Hey, Google – look what I can do!
As discussed, Google is clearly keen to shift the focus of its voice capabilities away from information discovery towards actions.
To this end, it’s heavily promoting “Hey, Google” as the slogan for the Google Assistant, placing it in huge letters on top of its CES installation, and creating a #HeyGoogle Twitter hashtag (complete with a unique Assistant emoji) to accompany their Assistant-related updates.
But wait, you might be thinking – isn’t “OK Google” the wake phrase for the Assistant?
Yes, Google has been a bit unclear on this point, but it seems that “Hey, Google” has been an alternative wake phrase for the Assistant for a while now. In late 2016, the website Android Police reported that the Google Home responds to both “OK Google” and “Hey, Google”, but Google voice search (e.g. on mobile) responds only to “OK Google” – making it possible to differentiate if you have multiple devices within earshot.
Now, as Google moves its focus away from search and towards actions, “OK Google” is out and “Hey, Google” is in.
#ABCO #Technology teaches E-commerce courses in its web design program. Voice search is powerful and you need to get onboard with it now! Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday. You can reach us at: (310) 216-3067.
Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.
ABCO Technology is located at: 11222 South La Cienega Blvd STE #588 Los Angeles, Ca. 90304
Get started marking your pages for voice search today!
#Amazon Echo and its voice assistant, Alexa, might be the current market leaders in voice-activated smart technology, but recent announcements from the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show have shown that Google fully intends to challenge Amazon for that crown.
The past few days have seen some big developments – and a couple of even bigger teasers – for the future of Google’s smart assistant, the imaginatively-named Assistant.
On Tuesday, the first day of #CES 2018, Google published a post to its official blog announcing partnerships with more than a dozen electronics companies to produce Google Assistant smart speakers – some with a very significant upgrade.
The blog post also highlighted the breadth and depth of “Actions”, the name given to built-in apps and integrations for the Google Assistant. At the same time, Search Console users began receiving notifications that their podcast, recipe and news content was eligible to be included in a new “Actions directory”, which is being rolled out over the next few days.
This appears to be part of an increased focus on what can be accomplished with Assistant, shifting its emphasis from finding information (Google’s long-time speciality) to carrying out tasks.
There’s a lot of news to unpack, so let’s look at what exactly these developments involve, and what they mean for SEOs and the wider industry.
#SEOs using structured data are first to the Google Assistant party
While a comparatively smaller development than the flashy revelations of major electronics partnerships and smart displays, Google’s introduction of native support for podcasts, recipes and news to the Assistant is nevertheless big news for SEOs.
I owe a hat tip to Aaron Bradley of SEO Skeptic, whose post to the Semantic Search Marketing Google+ group first tipped me off to this development. In turn, he was tipped off by SEO consultant Dan Shure, who tweeted about a Google Search Console alert he’d received inviting him to “improve discovery” of his podcast in the Google Assistant
Google is gradually rolling out a browsable directory of Actions for the Google Assistant, allowing users to more easily discover what the Assistant is capable of.
Podcasts, recipes and news will be the first wave of content added to this directory – though only content published with AMP, or marked up with structured data such as Schema.org, will be getting the nod.
This means that webmasters and SEOs who have been marking up their content with structured data are already ahead of the curve in making that content available via voice – while those who haven’t must hop on the structured data (or AMP) bandwagon if they want to be eligible.
Structured data has long been touted by its fans as a great way to get search engines to better surface content from your site, particularly in the form of things like rich snippets or Quick Answers. But it can be time-consuming to add and maintain, and the immediate benefit isn’t always so obvious.
This new use case, however, shows that there is a huge potential advantage to “future-proofing” your website by adding structured data markup. If Google continues to make Assistant a primary focus going forward, then this could be the key to content optimization and discovery in a voice-driven world.
Hey, Google – look what I can do!
As discussed, Google is clearly keen to shift the focus of its voice capabilities away from information discovery towards actions.
To this end, it’s heavily promoting “Hey, Google” as the slogan for the Google Assistant, placing it in huge letters on top of its CES installation, and creating a #HeyGoogle Twitter hashtag (complete with a unique Assistant emoji) to accompany their Assistant-related updates.
But wait, you might be thinking – isn’t “OK Google” the wake phrase for the Assistant?
Yes, Google has been a bit unclear on this point, but it seems that “Hey, Google” has been an alternative wake phrase for the Assistant for a while now. In late 2016, the website Android Police reported that the Google Home responds to both “OK Google” and “Hey, Google”, but Google voice search (e.g. on mobile) responds only to “OK Google” – making it possible to differentiate if you have multiple devices within earshot.
Now, as Google moves its focus away from search and towards actions, “OK Google” is out and “Hey, Google” is in.
ABCO Technology teaches E-commerce courses in its web design program. Voice search is powerful and you need to get onboard with it now! Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday. You can reach us at: (310) 216-3067.
Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.
ABCO Technology is located at: 11222 South La Cienega Blvd STE #588 Los Angeles, Ca. 90304
Get started marking your pages for voice search today!
Voice search and mobile usage are both on the rise and look set to shape the SEO industry for some time to come. Nonetheless, 62% of marketers have no specific plans for voice search in 2018.
How can marketers take action today to tap into two of the most important trends in the industry?
As mobile usage continues to grow, more and more users are comfortable with speaking to their devices rather than typing their queries.
Of equal importance are the advances in speech recognition technology that have allowed the likes of Google, Amazon, and Apple to offer a satisfying voice search experience.
There is plentiful context to make marketers aware of these emerging trends, with both mobile and voice search set to shape the future of the industry:
◾Voice-enabled personal assistants are installed by default on all smartphones
◾Google has revealed that more than 20% of searches on an Android device are voice searches
◾The Amazon Alexa app recently topped the app store charts. The Google Home app occupied second position
◾The Amazon Echo was once again the best-selling item on Amazon this holiday season
◾Speech recognition accuracy is now north of 95% for all of the major technology providers
◾Google’s mobile-first indexis rolling out and will soon be applied to all sites
◾comScore predicts that 50% of all searches will be by voice in 2020.
Though the two are not perfectly aligned, there is a clear correlation between the growth of voice search and the ongoing rise of mobile.
As the Internet of Things takes off, voice will be one of the most important unifying factors across all hardware. Whether at home, in the car, or at work, there will always be a voice-enabled device close to hand.
And yet, a recent study by BrightEdgereported that 62% of marketers are unlikely to implement a specific strategy for voice search over the next 12 months.
This is not due to a lack of awareness of the trend, but rather a lack of direction when it comes to preparing for its implications.
In a clear indication of how significant the shift to voice-based searches will be, Google recently released a new set of Search Quality Rating Guidelines for the Google Assistant.
Though specific to the Google Assistant, we can safely assume that the same rules and objectives underpin the functioning of other digital assistants too.
As such, this document can prove both illuminating and instructive as we look to move beyond the hype that voice search brings and arrive at some tips to direct our mobile SEOefforts.
The findings in Google’s official guidelines for voice search evaluation, along with the best practices we already have for mobile SEO, can help us create a hybrid set of tips to improve any site’s chances of ranking in this new landscape.
This begins with some technical considerations, then moves on to a more nuanced understanding of how consumers are using voice to interact with their devices. Finally, we must create the right content to fit our target contexts, and find a way to measure our progress.
Technical SEO for mobile devices
As with so many aspects of SEO, crawlability is the foundation upon which a mobile SEO strategy for voice search must be built.
Put simply, if a search engine cannot access and understand your content, your chances of appearing in search results are slim. This as always been important, but it takes on a new level of significance when viewed through the lens of voice search.
Often, voice search removes the traditional search engine results page (SERP) and instead aims to provide one answer in response to a query. This is a search engine’s first port of call; it is only when one answer cannot conclusively answer the query that a more traditional list of results will be displayed.
Fortunately, there are some guidelines we can follow to increase the likelihood of our content ranking via voice search:
◾Schema markup: By adding schema markup, we can help to add structure to our website’s data. For example, we can alert search engines to elements that relate to events, prices, and people – among many others. When a search engine is trying to locate a response to a voice search, this extra information can prove invaluable.
◾XML sitemaps: Having a clearly structure sitemap that can be navigated easily both by people and by search engines will increase the likelihood that your information can be sourced quickly in response to a query.
◾Site structure: The structure of a website should mirror the journeys that users typically take when considering and making a purchase. For example, faceted navigation on an ecommerce site should aim to match common query strings.
◾Carry out a mobile SEO audit: Before embarking on any of the more innovative aspects of voice search, conduct a full mobile SEO site audit to ensure that you are in a solid position.
◾It is also worth reviewing the basics of mobile SEO to keep in mind the distinctions that set it apart from traditional SEO.
Understanding context
All language is contextual. The exact same query, at surface level, can in fact mean many different things based on how, when, where, and by whom it is said.
This is not a new discovery, but it is only recently that search engines have been able to understand the context of a query.
In part, this has been due to more sophisticated algorithms like Google’s Hummingbird update, which brought the concept of semantic searchto life.
However, the biggest source of contextual information is the smartphone. Our phones are constantly sending and receiving data, all of which can be processed to comprehend our past, present, and even our future behaviors.
Now, when a user searches for a term like [canon cameras], a search engine can use smartphone data to understand the implied intent of the query:
cameras
This implicit intent, now known to a search engine, can help to shape and personalize the results that the user sees.
There are other effects of this deeper understanding.
Varied queries can ultimately express the same underlying intent. For example:
sunny
The expression of the response may differ, but all variations are ultimately answering the same question. The user wants to know what the weather will be like tomorrow.
This is helpful, as it allows us to see that we don’t need to answer every single possible query that is out there. Many guides on voice SEO suggest creating FAQ pages as a way to grow traffic, but this seems a stop-gap solution when we can do better. SEO needs to move away from creating “SEO pages” on websites that serve no real purpose other than to attract organic search clicks.
Thus far, our industry has focused mainly on what has been said by searchers. We pull a list of keywords with search volumes, difficulty scores and so on, and we map those to our pages. Where a page does not exist for a group of keywords, we create one.
A further level of nuance can be added by segmenting the keywords by purchase stage: informational, navigational or transactional, for example. These can also be categorized as ‘Know’, ‘Go’, and ‘Do’ moments.
That is useful, but it is overly simplistic. What we often end up with is a comforting illusion; a spreadsheet that smooths over the rough edges to provide a digestible view of what people search for, cell by cell.
Reality does not fit so readily into neat compartments.
In a presentationgiven last year, Tom Anthony of Distilled mapped out what the new ecosystem looks like, based on the huge amount of data a smartphone both sends and receives:
tom_anthony
Even this is a reduction, but it does at least provide insight into the broader picture.
What this means is that when working on a mobile SEO strategy, we should identify the contexts in which our content could rank.
These contexts can be strung together to create a map of the typical user journey.
This can be informed by demographic data, as there are telling differences between the generations. In particular, we should note that younger generations are more comfortable with voice search and use it in very different situations to their older counterparts.
voice_search_today
Stone Temple Consulting produced an excellent, in-depth study that goes further still to segment this data by income. voice search seo incomeSource: Stone Temple Consulting
What we find through this report is that there are notable variations at every level of analysis. By location, gender, device, income level, and age, we find that people use voice search differently.
Marketers would do well to perform research of their own to pinpoint the right contexts for their business to target, through qualitative research and quantitative analysis.
Creating the right content at the right time
Once we have plotted out the potential contexts in which we could communicate with our audience, we need to create the content that will hopefully help us rank via voice search.
Though this is a nascent field, there are already some useful studies that can guide us in this process.
Voice queries tend to be longer, due to their closer relationship to natural speech patterns. This provides a significant amount of data for us to analyze, compared with the shorter queries we have grown accustomed to.
Where once we had to infer a consumer’s intent based on feedback signals (click-through rate, bounce rate, conversion rate), we can now start this process much earlier.
We should also bear in mind the anticipated input-output relationship between the consumer and the device. For example, a spoken query that prompts a spoken response will need to be fed by content that is clear, concise, and conclusive.
Google’s Research Blogoffers the following areas for assessment when it comes to this kind of voice search:
◾Information Satisfaction: the content of the answer should meet the information needs of the user.
◾Length: when a displayed answer is too long, users can quickly scan it visually and locate the relevant information. For voice answers, that is not possible. It is much more important to ensure that we provide a helpful amount of information, hopefully not too much or too little. Some of our previous work is currently in use for identifying the most relevant fragments of answers.
◾Formulation: it is much easier to understand a badly formulated written answer than an ungrammatical spoken answer, so more care has to be placed in ensuring grammatical correctness.
◾Elocution: spoken answers must have proper pronunciation and prosody. Improvements in text-to-speech generation, such as WaveNet and Tacotron 2, are quickly reducing the gap with human performance.
This insight should flow directly into the site experience. If we know which task our consumer is trying to complete, we can make this process and seamless and as painless as possible.
There are some points that apply to any site aiming to create content for voice search:
◾Remember that a voice search is only the start of the user journey. If your mobile site experience does not match the user’s intent, they will complete the journey elsewhere. Use a user-agent switcher or a site like http://mobiletest.me/to see how your mobile experience matches up.
◾Create content that responds to the most common conversational queries. Provide clear information that can easily be picked up by a search engine as it tries to provide one, true answer for each voice query. Tools like Answer the Publicare useful for this task, but try to assimilate this information naturally into your content rather than creating a host of FAQ pages.
◾Map this content to a logical site hierarchy that is crawlable for search engines and useful for consumers.
◾Google is preparing to add voice queries to Search Console, so we will soon be able to assess and track our voice search performance.
Given that voice searches on a mobile device are frequently completed on the go, it should not be surprising that users often want help with navigation.
Interestingly, the growth in the number of ‘near me’ searches has slowed as people have come to expect Google to understand this implied intent.
Google uses its own Maps product to respond to these queries, so we can optimize our own Maps listings to help search engines and people to navigate better. There are a few tips to keep in mind when working on a voice search strategy for local SEO:
◾Ensure that names, addresses and phone numbers are accurate across all locations.
◾Consider using a specialist platform to manage your local listings and monitor your local search performance. There is a growing range of mobile SEO tools that can help with these tasks.
◾Make it easy for consumers to act on their intentions. This means adding in clear calls to action and directions to further information.
What’s next for search?
It is important to understand Google’s vision for the future of search.
The technology has improved dramatically, but it is still some distance from fulfilling the ambitions of Google and Amazon. When this technology reaches its potential, there may be no need for a query at all, as the digital assistant will be able to pre-empt our actions.
For now, marketers need to assist the assistants in the manner outlined above.
In essence, technology is enabling behaviors that have their basis in pre-existing states of intent. The industry is growing in complexity, but simultaneously it is developing into a more realistic representation of how people want to search.
Through better understanding of both people and technology, marketers can create a voice search strategy that will stand the test of time.
ABCO Technology teaches an excellent course for the Certified Webmaster, which includes search engine optimization. Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday. You can reach us at: (310) 216-3067.
Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.
ABCO Technology is located at: 11222 South La Cienega Blvd STE #588 Los Angeles, Ca. 90304
