Ctrl+F5, Chennai was a vibrant & inspiring start to the Web Design & Development Summit series this year, and we’re glad to keep the momentum going for 2017! Chennai warmly welcomed us with 92 attendees at the venue. Registrations began at around 10 AM and our attendees got a taster to the day’s proceedings over breakfast. Here’s my breakdown of each speaker session to see what went down at our 3rd web professional summit down south.
Shaurya Poddar: Account Strategist, Google
Topic – ‘Winning the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT)
We kicked off our speaker sessions with Shaurya Poddar of Google. Shaurya kicked off with the story behind the term – Procter and Gamble coined “The First Moment of Truth” back in 2005 and the idea had a big influence on Google. This lead to the inception of ZMOT or Zero Moment of Truth by Google in 2012 because they saw the consumer journey changing from classical First Moment of Truth. Let’s talk a little more about what Shaurya had to say about Proctor and Gamble’s assessment.
The First Moment of Truth
It can be broken down into 3 phases; Stimulus, the 1st Moment of Truth, and the 2nd Moment of Truth.
- Stimulus – Creates the need. A consumer is exposed to the first form of advertisement, be it a newspaper ad, television, radio, outdoor advertising etc.
- First Moment of Truth – After the need for a certain product is incepted, the consumer begins his/her research. Another instance is when the consumer sees the product for the first time (say, on the shelf of a supermarket)
- Second Moment of Truth – This refers to the actual experience of utilizing the product. The consumer could either become a preacher for the product, or never use it again depending on the experience
What Shaurya highlighted was that the First Moment of Truth was no longer paramount. With the rapid shift towards technological dependency, it is the ‘stimulus’ or the Zero Moment of Truth that gives you advantage over a consumer’s buying behaviour.
His topic focused more on how mobile has become the most commonly used device for research conducted by end consumers. For example, more than 90% of product searches moved to Google Maps. He also highlighted the fact that majority of SMBs in India may have responsive websites, but their ability to convert visitors plummets owing to slow page load speeds (an average of 10 seconds).
Suveer Bajaj: Co-founder, Foxymoron
Topic – ‘Digital Marketing Trends to look out for in 2017’
Suveer covered various aspects on how you can up your game in the digital world. He stated that, “Content will eventually become a $2bn industry.” He also pinpointed that your product sits at the core of your brand identity. You need to fortify it with digital marketing solutions like:
- Social Media
- Search
- Mobile
- Website, which is the heart of Digital Marketing
- Display or ad banners
- Website, which is the heart of Digital Marketing
- Video
Some of the Digital Marketing trends to be expected in 2017 are
- Empathy Mapping, since a lot of marketing is driven by human empathy
- Virtual reality, which will change the dynamics of the digital world
- Creating thumb-stopping content: It should be the driving force of every industry. How can this be achieved? By focusing on video content for your brand. Suveer stated that video content is consumed the most by users and it is surely the future
Our second session ended at around 1 PM after which our attendees and speakers had more time to interact with each other on a more personal level. After a satiating meal, Simran took over focusing on a more design-oriented, ideating approach for web professionals. Let’s take a look.
Simran Talreja (Product Manager, Endurance International Group):
Topic: ‘A Practical Approach to Design Thinking’
While design thinking has been abuzz for some time – in this session Simran went beyond concepts and helped our attendees to learn newer, more practical ways to apply Design thinking to our everyday work. It was more of a group discussion and ideating method than a speaker session. Through this, Simran helped the attendees in learning how to equip themselves with the right set of tools and approaches of how to build great products for their clients.
Here are some highlights:
- Design Thinking is a human-centric, it’s approach is lateral such that it helps in solving problems and often helps to innovate
- Designers and developers are not just building technology but building solutions for human beings
- The process: Empathize > Define > Ideate > Prototype > Test
- Empathizing through observation, interviewing & experiencing
- Idealization involves coming up with a variety of solutions
- Prototyping means that you have to visualize your ideas
- Testing involves trying out high-resolution versions of your prototypes
Pratik Jagdishwala: Senior Product Manager, Endurance International Group
Topic: ‘How to Boost the Performance of your WordPress powered websites’
Pratik spoke of various issues regarding WordPress powered sites because ultimately, around 80% of Content Management Systems on servers are WordPress. It is the de-facto choice for web professionals. Since WordPress is so commonly used, he stated that problems such as malware, vulnerabilities, bad practices and unsecured plugins could pst to be a threat.
So what are the solutions to make your website safer & faster?
- Analyse your website – Use Firebug (Mozilla), Yslow, pagespeed etc. to test your speed
- Update your WordPress plugins to their latest versions
- Disable unnecessary plugins
- Limit web crawlers and bots
- Use JPG instead of PNG, especially image compressors
- Keep the number of elements on your website not more than 30 to 50
- Keep your page size less than 500KB for an excellent load speed, 1MB for a medium load speed
- CDNs can help you websites load faster, but then again they can slow your websites depending on how you use it.
We got fantastic feedback from the attendees and we thank each one of you who helped us make this a grand success. You can have a look at the pictures below.
Ctrl+F5 Jaipur is just a week away! As we had mentioned earlier, we’re not only looking to focus on issues that delve into design and development, but digital marketing as well. We’re coming to your city with a fresh lineup of industry stalwarts. Have you registered yet?
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