Marcel van Marrewijk's Blog, page 46
May 24, 2019
Summer Deals at Social Impact Factory Utrecht – Meeting Rooms

Your inbox is as good as empty, a lot of your colleagues are on holiday and you finally have time to work on the projects you and your team didn’t get time for the last few months. In the months July till August you can get a 25% discount on (cooled) meeting rooms in Social Impact Factory Utrecht!
Valid in July & August 2019
Air-condition & quick wifi
Directly next to Utrecht Central Station.
*The 25% discount only counts with our meeting rooms (new bookings). They are valid from Monday till Friday 08:30 till 18:00. For reservations larger than 25 people send an email to reservering@sifutrecht.nl. Check out the meeting rooms here.
To make a reservation, scroll down!
Enrich your meeting!
Lunch to-go from the Utrechter
Have a break and go outside with your lunch to go. We have made a walking route for you, so that you can discover the wonders of Utrecht during your lunch. It is a refreshing walk so that afterwards you can enter your meeting all fresh and ready to go again. Whats in your packed lunch for 10,00 p.p. (excl. BTW) ‘A sandwich, a piece of fruit, muesli bar and a fresh juice.’
The lunch to go is only available in the months July till August via the below mentioned reservations module. Choose the option ‘Lunch to go’. Or would you rather take part with our lunchbuffet or have lunch with your group in the meeting room? Even that is possible. Underneath the title ‘lunchbuffet’ (between 12:00 and 13:00) or ‘lunch @ your meetingspace’ (buffetselectie op zaal).
A TASTING after your meeting at the Utrechter
After a productive meeting, want to talk to your colleagues in a relaxed atmosphere whilst enjoying a drink? Reserve your beer/wine or whiskey tasting and let yourself get surprised by the sommelier from the Utrechter. This is bookable from 8 people. Want a bite to eat with it? This is possible as well, just ask us about the possibilities and we will arrange it for you. A tip from us: we can recommend the ‘Utrechter Kost’. See here for the menu of the Utrechter
The tasting can be ordered underneath the reservation module by the option: ‘proeverij: bier, wijn, of whiskey’.
Want to begin your meeting relaxed?
After a relaxed calm class of pilates which will take 60 minutes, you and your colleagues can begin the meetings completely focused. This class can take part in your meeting room. The price? €125. We recommend you to get a breakfast at the Utrechter, because a nutritious kickstart benefits both the pilates class and the meeting. Want to reserve a pilates class (possibly with a breakfast) This can be done via the reservation module underneath!
Boat trip through Utrecht
Want to add a nice sightseeing tour after your meeting with your colleagues so you can catch up and enjoy the city center of Utrecht? Every day and every hour between 11:00 and 17:00 you can enjoy a boat trip from Schuttevaer. This will cost €12,95 per person and is located at Oudegracht 85. Are you with a group bigger then 25 people? Let us know, then we can organise a private boat for you! For more information please see: http://www.schuttevaer.com/.
Book now with the code: ZOMERDEAL2019 on the SIF website
The post Summer Deals at Social Impact Factory Utrecht – Meeting Rooms appeared first on Seats2meet.
May 23, 2019
Hotels: Boxes Filled with People or a Perfect Ground for New Opportunities?

It’s the year 2019. Globalization and affordable travelling options mean that more people than ever can now be tourists. What used to be considered a “normality” in the travelling industry no longer is adjusted to the needs of modern society and, especially the millennial generation. If before travelling was strongly associated with luxury and abstentions wealth, nowadays over 65% of millennials (18-34-year-olds) would consider luxurious hotels and casinos “depressing”. And in order to keep up with the needs of the current generation, hotels need to change their visual codes.
Not only the millennial generation does not find the luxury aspect of travelling appealing, but also they tend to experience the feeling of guilt when travelling to less developed countries and being served by locals. That means that hotels need to reassess their current offerings in order to make travelling a more sustainable experience.
Let’s take an issue that is most on the surface – billions of half-used hotel shampoo bottles are thrown away each year. As an example, Ritz-Carlton and Marriott are adding bulk dispensers to hotel rooms offering premium soaps and lotions yet avoiding the issue of throwing away the packages. That is a great example of a step towards more sustainability in the Hotel Industry.
Looking at the social aspects and the shift in modern society, we also see that more and more people choose to either stay single or marry at a later age. One in four young adults in the US now chooses to travel solo. In order for the hospitality industry to stay up-to-date these trends need to be reflected in the offerings of the resort hotels, many of which used to target families coming for vacation and seeking for a more passive and comfortable way of relaxation. Since more and more singles are staying in hotels alone the need for connecting people on the location becomes more and more evident.
Automatization and progression of the technology make human contact at the hotel reception not mandatory, and room service obsolete, yet the very basic human need of socializing becomes even more clear. Technologies need to be outbalanced by human connections, and hotels could be a perfect ground for such connection-making. While a new-style hotel can have a robot concierge, at the same time it can offer a solution for single travellers, people on work trips, as well as locals, cowering in a hotel lobby or having a drink in a hotel bar to connect with each other.
As Rami Zeidan, the CEO of Life House said: “If you think about hotels, they’re just big boxes filled with people that do not know each other”. It takes just one step to get to know someone staying in the same hotel, and this step can lead to many culturally engaging moments as well as productive networking. However, this step is also incredibly hard. In the times where human contact gets substituted by social media interactions, making the first step to introduce yourself to a stranger can be a frightful experience to many of the millennials. However, if you use technology as a tool to connect people, this step could be easily eliminated.
Such a trend in the hotel industry is known as “Serendipitous Hotels” – hotels where by means of technology and organized events making unexpected connections becomes the new norm. As an example, The Park MGM Hotel unveiled a series of vignettes inspired by travellers’ real-life experiences, each telling a story about a fleeting romantic encounter. Other hotels are creating virtual lobbies to help fellow guests make unexpected connections.
Life House enables guests to explore who else is staying and interact with them in advance of checking in.
The Lobby app by The Standard encourages solo travellers to create a digital alliance, revealing as much – or as little – about their identity as they wish.
Radisson Blue and Ibis Styles hotels in the Netherlands are already using Seats2meet software to provide spaces for coworkers in the hotels’ lobby and let travellers match and connect with coworkers based on their tags, and interests.
The technology was always the one to blame for the alienation and decreasing the amount of human contact, but at the end of the day, technology is just an enabler. And by using it hotels can enable people to meet, network, get more insights on local culture by matching with the locals, organize events and announce it to the hotel visitors through online platforms, and many other opportunities that would make travelling a more fulfilling experience.
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Hacken voor meer inzicht in Meetingspaces

Wat als we een digitale vorm van het welkomstbord kunnen maken waar inzichtelijk op komt te staan welke partijen, kennis, event tags en overvloed aan ruimtes aanwezig is?! Dit was het vraagstuk in de hackathon die tijdens de Tech Tuesday centraal stond. Samen met de crowd uit de Seats2meet, Permanent Beta en Permanent Future Lab bewegingen zijn we ideeën inzichtelijk gaan maken en eerste stapjes in elkaar gaan hacken. Ook op afstand werd er via een Facebook videoverbinding meegedaan. Hoe gaaf is het om via deze verschillende kanalen kennis te delen en elkaar te versterken?! Er waren designers, ontwikkelaars, innovators en Seats2meet servicemedewerkers aanwezig.
Met Design Thinking heeft Samir de groep op weg geholpen om breder te kijken om welke uitdagingen het precies gaat. Verschillende ideeën hebben we geclusterd in een Now-How-Wow matrix. Wat is er op dit moment te realiseren (Now)? Wat is een gaaf idee om verder over na te kunnen denken hoe dit te realiseren is (How)? Wat is een grandioos goed idee voor later (Wow)?
Wat is nu precies de uitdaging waar we mee aan de slag willen? Dit zijn er meerdere:
Het zichtbaarder maken van de overvloed aan ruimte op locatie. Serendipity mogelijkheden faciliteren in het Society 3.0 gedachtegoed;
verduurzaming in het minder gebruik van papier;
efficiënter kunnen werken door het S2M Serviceteam.
Zogenaamde API’s in het Seats2meet platform zorgen ervoor dat er met verschillende programmeer programma’s gemakkelijk kan worden gekoppeld aan de data die reeds in het Seats2meet systeem staan. Nadat vele ideeën verzameld waren heeft Peter Willemsen al een bestaand voorbeeld laten zien van hoe hij de API’s bij Social Impact Factory ingezet heeft om een eerste variant van een dashboard te tonen. De avond is afgesloten met enkele beginnende geprogrammeerde varianten op de ideeën uit de ‘Now’ cluster van de matrix.
De kracht van connect, collaborate, grow…
Martijn Groeneveldt, één van de hackathon deelnemers, was aanwezig doordat hij de vraag via The Serendipity Machine had gezien. Hij werkt voornamelijk bij Seats2meet Den Bosch, en vindt het als ontwikkelaar mooi om op deze manier ‘iets’ terug te kunnen doen. Hij ging direct enthousiast aan de slag met één van de ideeën en heeft een eerste ruwe opzet van design en HTML code gemaakt. Voor Nynke als locatiemanager van Seats2meet.com Utrecht CS een mooi voorbeeld van serendipiteit. De vervolgstappen zijn dat groepjes die enthousiast zijn door hun uitgekozen idee dit verder met elkaar oppakken in zowel offline als online ontmoetingen. Om te beginnen is daar een Discord chat voor opgezet. Vanuit daar zullen naar verwachting diverse decentrale tools zoals Github/Gitlab, Part-up, S2M Passport events, e.a. ingezet gaan worden om tot concrete uitwerkingen te komen.
Met een verbindende groet,
Jurjen en Nynke
Fotoalbum: https://photos.app.goo.gl/eLvn5oGv2k98ZNE49
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May 20, 2019
7 Key Takeaways from The Next Web Conference by Seats2meet

Last week, the whole Seats2meet team had a very eventful weekend. While some of us were exploring the new and upcoming trends in the hotel industry, others travelled to London to keynote at the Future of Work conference, and the rest attended the Next Web in Amsterdam.
The Next Web is one of Europe’s largest technology conferences, with more than 17 500 participants from around the world. There were present the hottest startups on the continent, corporates eager to innovate and governmental officials supporting the latest technological developments, all connected by their passion for innovation and technology. Of course, Seats2meet team couldn’t miss out on such occasion either!
Spending 2 full days with brightest tech minded people on the continent, we were fortunate to attend many inspiring talks, workshops and networking rounds. Thus, summing up our experience in the conference, we’re happy to share 7 most curious insights, advice or observations in the world of technology for the year to come.
Amsterdam is at the forefront of the world startup ecosystem
During TNW, Startup Genome released its report on the state of startup ecosystems around the world. In the past year, Amsterdam has climbed the most points from all the capital cities in the Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2019. It moved to the 15th place in the overall ranking and 5th in Europe.
This significantly improved ratings are a result of an increased investment in technology and the overall development of the local startup scene – including local incubators, accelerators, corporate initiatives and government sponsored programmes. Moreover, large startup exits, which include multi-billion dollar IPOs of Adyen and Elastic, added to the city’s growth. And Seats2meet, an active participant of the Dutch tech scene, is proud to be a part of this outstanding growth!
The future of work is remote
The future of work was on of the key themes of the whole conference – in fact, this topic is so important for the future of tech, so it took up one of the stages for the whole day. Seats2meet, as one of the pioneers of the remote work, was particularly curious to be attending the talks of the major thought leaders in the field.
The issues discussed on the stage included how changing work environment affects organizations, how to manage remote teams and how to maintain and activate your networks without the bounds of the usual office space. The underlying thought behind: traditional 40 hour work week from the office is a thing of the past. Remote work is no longer a prerogative of only digital knowmads, but also of employees who want to have more control of their time, and tech industry is at the forefront of the future of work transformation.
Marketing is reality
The marketing of the future is not about catchy slogans mind-blogging winner takes all campaigns, it’s more about your personal story and how you came into doing what you’re doing. As Haitian-American entrepreneur Christine Souffrant Ntim put it, it matters no longer what you do, but instead why you do it. Your story becomes the core of all your activities, marketing included.
And modern tech innovations give the companies more tools than ever to convey their story – be that AI or one of more than 5000 phone apps released daily! Together with the power of storytelling, the power of analytics goes hand in hand, helping shaping up the offer and understanding customer needs.
Go high and to the right
The keynote speakers, tech evangelist Guy Kawasaki, shared some of his unconventional pieces of life wisdom during the conference. According to him, to succeed in business, career or even relationship, you have to follow one rule: get high and to the right.
“It’s not about weed or politics, it’s the graph you have to follow to succeed, where you chart uniqueness on one axis, and value on the other.” The idea is to optimize your offer on the top right side of the graph, which means creating offering which is both unique and valuable. As an example, Kawasaki put forth Apple Ipod, unique and valuable in a way that “a user interface anyone could operate, connected to a massive legal music library, and granted access to songs for very little money.”
Creating offerings which are neither unique nor valuable, according to the famous author, is stupid – you’re not just going to an unprofitable area, but it’s also crowded in there!
Change in tech can only be achieved together
As a digital business, it’s becoming easier than ever to go global. However, expanding to the new markets often proves to be a dangerous adventure underestimated by many. A lot of companies fail to optimize their offering according to local conditions when expanding to new markets. This is an issue which can be solved by increased closeness of national ecosystems with each other.
At this moment, the vast resources in the field of technology are no longer limited only to selected few ecosystems. While North America still continues to dominate the tech scene, with 10 out of 20 top startup ecosystems located there, the situation gradually changes. The overall concentration of value created by the top 10 startup ecosystem continues to decline steadily throughout the years – 68% in 2019, verses 87% in 2012.
With that in mind, there is an increased space for development for European companies, and supporting each other, weather with financial resources or networks, is essential for the change and growth to happen.
Important factors of startup success and failure
In his presentation, Olaf Acker, the EMEA digital service leader, described the main aspects of startup failure and success. Number one reason of failure of the new technology to take off now, as always, is the lack of market need. In fact, this issue is so prevalent that 42% of all startups fail because they do not match the market needs. Running out of cash runs a close second, with 29% failure rate attributed to that. Want to create a healthy, financially sustainable business? Then reporting and accounting should be your best friends!
Moreover, the common characteristics of successful startups are prior startup experience within the team, product and industry knowledge. And the most universal piece of advice for everyone eager to become an entrepreneur – stay sane, you’re in for a stressful, demanding, yet fascinating ride!
Leadership and growth must embrace failure
In his talk, Gabe Zickerman states that failure is not just inevitable on the way to success – it’s unavoidable, and there is little point trying to avoid failing all together, but instead it’s important to make a point of learning from your mistakes and understanding what caused them.
How to achieve that? Make a list of all your failures and divide them in the 4 categories, which represent Zickerman’s take on the famous SWOT matrix (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). Gabe’s categories are Screw Ups (minor, ignore), Weaknesses (immutable, accept), Growth Opportunities (understand, change), Terminal Failure (Embrace, Analyze, Share)
With the help of this matrix, you will be able to separate failures which are a part of your personality, and thus inevitable, from failures which can help you improve and teach you useful lessons. The main takeaway – if you’re not failing, you’re probably not realizing your full potential!
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May 18, 2019
Fahad from Bangladesh opens a new S2m location

Fahad Bin Husne Ali has been a Seats2meet ambassador already for a very long time. Recently he decided to open his own Seats2meet location and a Permanent Future Lab in Bangladesh, and now he is going to tell us all about it.
Hi Fahad, could you please introduce yourself?
Hi! My name is Fahad Bin Husne Ali and “SHUVO” is my nickname. Shuvo means happy/good/funny in Bengali, and that’s who I am.
I live in Bangladesh. According to “official” statistics, it is one of the least innovative countries. Unofficially we are very innovative if you define innovation by improving every day. I am a backpacker and I write my budget travel stories on my website.
Why did you decide to become a powered by Seats2meet location?
I am an initiator of an open source technology/knowledge sharing movement called Permanent Future Lab. I have been working with many different people, with kids and students as well. We are working in schools’ and the science clubs’ locations and we have always been feeling the need for our own location. Seats2meet is a platform and ecosystem we needed for a very long time.
I have a love-hate relationship with my country. On the one hand, I don’t want to live here but on the other, I also don’t want to leave my fellow countrymen like this. I want to make a change. That is why I am trying to facilitate social and technological development of my country and I believe Seats2meet can help us with this.
I decided to start small. Currently, I am implementing S2m system here, in my village. For now, I want each of my friends to connect to S2m network, so they can learn from each other and help each other in doing what they love.
I hope, later on, we will be able to scale up and bring connectivity and serendipity to other areas of Bangladesh as well!
Could you tell us a little bit more about the Permanent Future Lab?
Permanent Future Lab is a small physical location in the style of a simplified lab (or geeky garage), where you can meet people passionate about new knowledge and technology. In the PFLab, you can also participate in talks and events about tech or even organize your own. The concept of PFLab is adopted internationally, so we are happy to be a part of the co-creation of the future by having this little tech hub at our location as well.
What is the vision of your location?
This will be the first co-working in a rural area of Bangladesh. All the co-working (still not so many in Bangladesh) focus on an old outdated method of leading business while Seats2meet is focusing on creating entrepreneurs instead of just offering an office environment.
The vision of my location is to create and to find new entrepreneurs and connect them together to create an impact and encourage entrepreneurship in my country.
What kind of atmosphere can visitors expect from your location(s)?
Well, you cannot really expect an atmosphere like every S2m location in the Netherland has. Yet we do provide a nice-looking office environment with basic facilities you may need for presentations and co-working (like projectors, etc).
Taking that this location is in the rural area of Bangladesh, one of the best facilities we provide is a generator to create electricity from an alternative power supply (usually we only get 10 out of 24 hours of electricity and it can go off anytime).
How can people book a spot at your location?
It will be soon possible through Seats2meet website, also we are going to open a location Facebook group and Facebook page, so people will be able to book spots or send requests through Facebook as well.
List a couple of interesting facts about your location(s).
Our location is in one of the least innovative villages in the world. We don’t have electricity in many houses here. We will be working as a rural development movement as well as a first co-working location in the area.
Thank you, Fahad! We wish you best of luck with your location in Bangladesh!
May 17, 2019
Global Goal 9: Veerkrachtige infrastructuur

Doel 9 gaat over het bouwen van veerkrachtige infrastructuur, het bevorderen van inclusieve en duurzame industrialisering en het stimuleren van innovatie.
Infrastructuur gaat over transport, wegen, irrigatie, energie en informatie-, en communicatietechnologie. Om verbeteringen aan te brengen in onderwijs, gezondheidszorg of het drinkwater, is goede infrastructuur noodzakelijk. Kinderen uit afgelegen gebieden kunnen bijvoorbeeld veel moeilijker naar school als ze geen toegang hebben tot wegen of transport, wat in veel ontwikkelingslanden realiteit is.
Behalve toegang tot onderwijs is het zonder infrastructuur ook moeilijker om een baan te krijgen, zaken te doen, informatie te ontvangen en zelfs brood te halen. Met andere woorden: door een betere infrastructuur is het makkelijker om andere doelen te bereiken.
Global Goal 9 stelt dat infrastructuur in 2030 voor iedereen toegankelijk en betaalbaar moet zijn. Duurzame en inclusieve industrialisatie moet voor meer banen zorgen en het moet het BNP verhogen. Ook de minst ontwikkelde landen moeten in 2020 toegang hebben tot internet en er moet meer onderzoek komen naar technologie binnen de industriële sector.
Blockchain030 en SDG9
Blockchain030 is de hub voor blockchaintechnologie voor de regio Utrecht. Deze community ontmoet elkaar iedere maandag bij de Social Impact Factory om samen te werken aan innovatie in de informatietechnologie.
Blockchain technologie maakt het mogelijk om bestaande processen en infrastructuur efficiënter te maken. De transparantie van blockchain draagt bij aan het helder maken van de relatie tussen betaling en werk en dus ook van het kunnen ‘opsporen’ van uitbuiting. Verder stelt blockchain via het peer-to-peer karakter gebruikers in staat om vraag en aanbod van diensten en goederen direct bijeen te brengen zonder dat hier ingewikkelde coördinatie mechanismes die bepaalde partijen ‘voortrekken’ nodig zijn. Dit vermindert de frictie in de economie aanzienlijk en draagt hierdoor bij aan economische groei. Daarnaast draagt blockchain technologie bij aan economische inclusiviteit.
Actuele data en aanmelden voor een Blockchain030 co-working Monday via deze link.
Bron video: 17 doelen die je deelt: Bert | Veilige infrastructuur (SDG9) from Utrecht4GlobalGoals on Vimeo.
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Are you looking for a unique meeting room in Utrecht this summer?

Your inbox is as good as empty, a lot of your colleagues are on holiday and you finally have time to work on the projects you and your team didn’t get time for the last few months. In the months July till August you get a 25% discount on our (cooled) meeting rooms
*The 25% discount only counts with our meeting rooms (new bookings). They are valid from Monday till Friday 08:30 till 18:00. For reservations larger than 25 people send an email to reservering@sifutrecht.nl. Check out our meeting rooms here.
Valid in July & August 2019
Air-condition & quick wifi
Directly next to Utrecht Central Station.
Enrich your meeting!
‘Lunch to go from the Utrechter’
Have a break and go outside with your lunch to go! We have made a walking route for you, so that you can discover the wonders of Utrecht during your lunch. It is a refreshing walk so that afterwards you can enter your meeting all fresh and ready to go again. Whats in your packed lunch for 10,00 p.p. (excl. BTW) ‘A sandwich, a piece of fruit, muesli bar and a fresh juice.’
The lunch to go is only available in the months July till August via the below mentioned reservations module. Choose the option ‘Lunch to go’. Or would you rather take part with our lunchbuffet or have lunch with your group in the meeting room? Even that is possible. Underneath the title ‘lunchbuffet’ (between 12:00 and 13:00) or ‘lunch @ your meetingspace’ (buffetselectie op zaal).
A TASTING after your meeting at the Utrechter
After a productive meeting, want to talk to your colleagues in a relaxed atmosphere whilst enjoying a drink? Reserve your beer/wine or whiskey tasting and let yourself get surprised by the sommelier from the Utrechter. This is bookable from 8 people. Want a bite to eat with it? This is possible as well, just ask us about the possibilities and we will arrange it for you. A tip from us: we can recommend the ‘Utrechter Kost’. See here for the menu of the Utrechter. The tasting can be ordered underneath the reservation module by the option: ‘proeverij: bier, wijn, of whiskey’.
Pilates – Want to begin your meeting relaxed?
After a relaxed calm class of pilates which will take 60 minutes, you and your colleagues can begin the meetings completely focused. This class can take part in your meeting room. The price? €125. We recommend you to get a breakfast at the Utrechter, because a nutritious kickstart benefits both the pilates class and the meeting. Want to reserve a pilates class (possibly with a breakfast) This can be done via the reservation module underneath!
Boat trip through Utrecht
Want to add a nice sightseeing tour after your meeting with your colleagues so you can catch up and enjoy the city center of Utrecht? Every day and every hour between 11:00 and 17:00 you can enjoy a boat trip from Schuttevaer. This will cost €12,95 per person and is located at Oudegracht 85. Are you with a group bigger then 25 people? Let us know, then we can organise a private boat for you! For more information please see: http://www.schuttevaer.com/.
BOOK NOW with the code: ZOMERDEAL2019
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Waarom je aan het begin van je presentatie nooit excuses moet maken

Onlangs attendeerde iemand mij op een mogelijk interessante startup. De initiatiefnemer zou binnenkort een presentatie en live-demonstratie geven van zijn nieuwe product. Ik besloot alvast een kijkje op zijn website te nemen.
In het filmpje dat op de site stond maakte hij direct aan het begin excuses voor zijn Engels. Jammer dacht ik en niet nodig. Er zijn genoeg mensen die bij Tedtalks geen perfect Engels spreken, maar wel een steengoed verhaal hebben. Het publiek luistert daar wel doorheen.
Helaas kon ik bij de presentatie niet aanwezig zijn, maar het was opgenomen en dus keek ik het terug. Aan zijn enthousiasme lag het niet …
ir. Hedwyg van Groenendaal deelt via Sprout als presentatiestrateeg haar expertise over presenteren en presentaties.
www.nooitmeerbullets.nl
www.hedwyg.nl
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Why you want to share your bed!

During the Let’s Cowork Week we are trying something new! We have never done this before and we love your assistance.
The Let’s Cowork Week is a week where we invite international guests to experience the S2m coworking style. This means they will work in the lounge, we offer events and they can organise their own workshops or events. For one week we will be an even more international hub than we already are
10 Ways To Improve E-commerce Website Performance

As more and more businesses turn to online methods of marketing themselves and selling their products, e-commerce has become highly competitive. Customers are always looking for high-performance websites and nothing less. Therefore, for your business to get ahead, appealing offers and discounts are not sufficient. User experience is the most crucial factor to consider. This comprises of website friendliness, speed, and site reliability. The speed of your website is also a critical factor because it directly affects conversions and sales. The amount of time your page takes to load is a factor that determines how highly your website will be ranked by Google.
According to statistics by the New York Times, if your page does not load in three seconds, a customer will disregard it. There is also the fact that some sites have vast amounts of traffic but are still not making sales because the customers are not completing all the steps intended by the website.
It is not as easy as it sounds to optimize and improve the conversion rates of your website. Implementation is more robust than it may seem. Here are a number of practices that when followed have the potential to improve performance and thus increase profits.
1. Reduce the size of your pages
The size of each page is measured in kilobytes. It comprises of all the elements within that page like CSS, images, JavaScript and any videos. The smaller the page, the better. With smaller pages, you are assured of good ranking with such engines because your pages can also be opened by phones. If you embed large objects in the page, the loading time increases. By saving the page on your computer as a web archive folder, you can tell just how big it is.
Also, make sure you try loading the page, if it takes more than 3 seconds to load both on your laptop or phone, then there is a good chance that it may not be ranked highly. Therefore, unless your business needs you to have richer graphics to get customers, reducing the size of images might be a great idea. Make sure that you always have a balance between the richness of your graphics and losing customers because the pages take too long to load.
2. Understand your customers
The best thing about e-commerce is that you do not have to rely on customers who are within your country of origin. You can sell to people all over the globe. However, it is even trickier to navigate conversion rate optimization when your customers are from different cultural backgrounds and different age groups. You must, therefore, take your time to understand the needs of your customers and their behaviors online. Always make sure that your website is tailored to cater for your target market. You can take quantitative data from sources like Google analytics to figure out the sales trends and have qualitative data from your customers. This will give you a better understanding on how to serve your customers and the basis on which to recommend different products.
In addition, consider getting a content delivery network. This is perfect if you plan on expanding your global customer base. Content delivery networks (CDN) work by caching the content on servers located all over the world. As such, they reduce the load time significantly. This will help customers to load in servers near them rather than hitting the central server. It also reduces the website’s downtime as a result of huge traffic running the same servers.
To start using CDN, you need to register with a CDN provider. An excellent way to do this is by:
Selecting a web hosting company that offers CDN services as part of their package
Select a third-party and configure the connections between your CDN and web host manually
Once you have integrated it, check the CDN to see if it is working correctly through a website speed test. Make sure you see that it shows the CDN URL you used in the integration.
3. Caching and in-memory technology
In memory caching is essential because it helps you improve the performance of your website. They allow you to temporarily store memory of the full e-commerce catalog, site-search indexes, customer information, etc. This storage prevents database calls. It is a technology that makes use of the RAM available on servers that store data in it. Because the input-output is typically faster on RAMs than they are on hard disks. Thus improving the performance of your website.
4. Data compression
This is a technique where website owners can use software to reduce the size of data transfers. Gzip is the most commonly used compression method. It is often done as part of the configuration process as the compressed data is transferred. This means you have to change the configuration files and use specific compression techniques to check website compatibility because there are some versions that do not support it. You can also use the HTTP compression otherwise known as Deflate. You, therefore, need to do thorough research on which compression method is best suited for your business.
5. Specify image dimensions
For place holders for images to be created by the browser, you must make sure that you specify their width and height. Most e-commerce businesses create images and pages simultaneously without specifying image dimensions. As a result, the browser is forced to load the picture entirely. This is yet another task that increases load time. With image specification, the browser can automatically resize them to suit the device the customer is using.
6. SEO ranking
The content of your website is king. You, therefore, need to make sure you have found ways to make the content helpful to customers. This content also needs to be accessible to search so you must use the right keywords every time. To do this, make sure your website has accurate titles, appropriate keywords, and great Meta tags. Such will bring potential customers to your site each time they make a search of a product or service you are offering.
7. Product descriptions
Are your product descriptions providing solutions to customers’ pain points? If not, they need to be rewritten. Using the right SEO techniques is not the only way to improve performance. Be it a coconut oil or brand clothes – you need to make sure that your customer understands what you are selling and knows why they need your products. This can only be achieved with a good product description.
8. Reduce the round trips
Combining multiple files in your server is one of the easiest ways to reduce the round trips. For instance, instead of accessing JavaScript files separately, you can combine them into a single file. This allows the server to make one request instead of multiple which in turn reduces load time.
9. Avoid redirecting
If you must use redirects, make sure you minimize them. Each redirect increases load time because it is a separate request to the server. You may have to maintain redirects from old links to newer ones but remove as many as you can once shoppers have accessed the new links directly.
10. Organize categories
The more organized the store is, the lesser the bounce back from customers. When you organize the online stores, an easy search is all the customer has to do. It helps keep them in flow.
Conclusion
These are some of the best ways to improve E-commerce website performances. With better performance, you are guaranteed more sales and thus more profits. You can also use social media because it has special SEO features that each business could use.
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