1 billion mobile subscribers,with 10 times mobile traffic being added every 6 month

By the end of 2015 half of the world’s population had at least one mobile subscription, totaling over 3.6 billion unique mobile subscribers. By 2020, around three-fifths of the global population will have a mobile subscription with 4.6 billion users with a growth of 4% CAGR with close to one billion new subscribers being added in 6 months

 At the end of 2015 half of the world’s population had at least one mobile subscription, totaling over 3.6 billion unique mobile subscribers. By 2020, around three-fifths of the global population will have a mobile subscription with 4.6 billion users with a growth of 4% CAGR  with close to one billion new subscribers being added in 6 months  

Developed markets are growing more slowly as penetration rates approach levels close to saturation. For example, in Europe and North America, unique subscriber growth was below 1% in 2015. At the other end of the spectrum, Sub-Saharan Africa was still the world’s most under-penetrated region with subscriber growth at nearly 12%. 

GLOBAL MOBILE  PENETRATION:: From 50% in 2015 ,,penetration will  exceed 59% by 2020
3G/4G MOBILE CONNECTIONS : 3G and 4g connections across the world  will exceed 69% in 2020  from 39% in 2015
NUMBER OF SMARTPHONES: Number from Smartphones across the world will reach 5.9billion by 2020 compared to 2.6 billion as of 2015
MOBILE TRAFFIC" set to grow 10 fold by 2019   

GLOBAL SIM CONNECTIONS :.Global SIM Connections  is set to reach 10 billion from 7.3 billion by 2020 Mobile operator revenues will growth from $1.15 trillion to $1.40 trillion, which is a growth of 3.1% CAGR 

Shock your brain into learning faster

 By Sarah Morgan

Now you can learn Microsoft in minutes and Cisco in seconds, thanks to neurostimulation. Firebrand Training is firing electric energy at students’ brains in the classroom, with astounding results. They call this ‘electric-learning’, or e-learning for short.

As the providers of Accelerated Learning, Firebrand Training is constantly looking for new ways to help its students learn faster. They’ve now taken this to controversial new levels, by sending electric signals to students’ brains through a futuristic headset. All with very few side effects…

It sounds like something from the Matrix; though increased brain functionality is possible using neurostimulation. Through transcranial direct current stimulation(tDCS) a constant current is applied to the surface of the scalp, which increases cognitive performance.

Introducing the Firebrand FastLearn Headset

Firebrand’s Learning Labs have worked with the country’s leading scientists to develop the FastLearn Headset. The student puts the headset on for 10 minutes just three times a day, and their learning speed is supercharged to 10 times the speed of traditional training. The headset wraps a magnetic coil over the student’s scalp, inducing an electrical current in the brain.

Scientific studies have proven that tDCS has the ability to enhance attention span, problem solving and memory. This is because synapses are jolted to conduct nerve impulses 10 times faster, allowing information to pass between neurons more quickly.

How to learn at 10 times the speed of regular training

Studies showed students using tDCS were able to learn technical IT skills 10 times faster than the control group. Weeks later the students still had those new skills, meaning tDCS allowed them to unlock their brains’ true potential.

Firebrand’s Lead Instructor Yardis Alpolfo explains: “Firebrand students learn through 12-hour training days, so every four hours they come to our FastLearn Lounge, to get a quick blast of electricity to the brain. Neurostimulation has been proven to be completely safe, through rigorous FDA clinical trials. We’ve trialled the headset on some of our staff; all are expected to make a full recovery, and only a few have lost their hair.”

“We also offer IT apprenticeships, and the younger generation are mad for the tDCS. They’re gaining a lifetime’s worth of IT knowledge in a week – and taking this back to the office and embarrassing their bosses. Now those bosses are sending more of their staff to Firebrand to learn faster.”

About the Author:        

Sarah writes for Firebrand Training on a number of IT related topics. This includes exams, training, certification trends, project management, certification, careers advice and the industry itself. Sarah has 11 years of experience in the IT industry. 

Discover the latest winner of Free Training for Life

In March, 2015, we relaunched our Free Training for Life competition for the third time. Up for grabs was the life changing prize of unlimited free access to our portfolio of 200+ courses, for life.

After 12 months - and more than 25,000 entries from 30 countries - the wait is finally over. I am excited to announce our winner, who will join Mario and Joseph as a holder of the illustrious prize.

And the winner is…

Congratulations to Darren Edmondson!

Darren has been working in the IT industry since 1998, where his experience has primarily been on the infrastructure management side of IT. No stranger to certification, Darren is the proud holder of MCSE (Server 2003 and NT4), PMP and ITIL certifications.

He is currently Head of IT for Gamma Telecom, where he has worked for the past 8 years. He manages a team of 13 staff, together they design and support the IT services for the company.

Now what...

Upon winning the prize, I spoke with Darren to discuss his initial reactions, he said: 

" SHOCK! I have never won a prize draw before!"

After unveiling aspirations to pursue CISSP, CCSP, CEH and PRINCE2 certification, Darren elaborated on what the prize meant for him:

"Winning the prize will give me the opportunity to get the training I’ve always wanted, but never had the money or backing to do. With the training I will be able to accelerate my IT career in the direction I want it to go. 

Going forward I will always be able to keep my knowledge up to date, and so no longer have the 'out of date' qualifications."

These are exciting times for Darren, with his track record of certifying, we can't wait to see what he does with the prize.  Check our winners page to keep track of his progress.

dynamic serving vs responsive design : customising your design for mobile users

As we explained in the last responsive mobile design post.There are 3 ways to optimize your mobile website.These are 1) Creating a responsive website 3) dynamic serving and 3) Creating a mobile website

CHOOSING THE RIGHT MOBILE DESIGN APPROACH :WHEN TO USE DYNAMIC SERVING FOR YOUR MOBILE USERS 

 

In this post we look at " how to use dynamic serving for mobile users and under what circumstances this design is used 

Dynamic serving is a server side development approach that detects which type of device your visitors are using to view your website delivers .Dynamic serving specifically optimize the website content based on the device your users are using and the server responds accordingly .

Like responsive design, the dynamic serving uses one single set of url's for all content regardless of how the content is seen, irrespective of a desktop, PC, laptop or me. However that's when the similarity ends .In dynamic serving the url too remain the same,but the content delivered to mobile device is not always the same as in desktop

This is because dynamic serving is a server side approach that alters the content code (HTML, CSS and php ) based on the device that is asking for it before the content is delivered to the browser.This code allows the server to alter the content of the page without altering the URL of the page

 CIRCUMSTANCES WHEN YOU SHOULD USE DYNAMIC SERVING

1)When your website needs to include complex mobile friendly functionality such as multi-page form and interactive dashboards.Dynamic serving allows you to serve the best experience based on user circumstances

2)When you see that your website needs to serve 2 different device markets very differently. One example is that iPhone users take a different path to conversion as compared to android users . Dynamic serving is also used when you want your webpages to render differently for your tablet users and smartphone users.

3)When your visitors largely use different keywords to access your website via desktop search and mobile search. Dynamic content allows you to altered the way the " content is rendered on page by page basis

 4)Dynamic serving  is the best solution If you want to optimize specific pages for high volume keywords phrases without changing the desktop language and if you want your desktop visitors and mobile visitors to convert in different ways

mobile first strategy :when to choose responsive web design

MOBILE FIRST STRATEGY :

How do you choose your mobile content delivery platform for your mobile users :Traditionally marketers have 3 ways of doing this 1) Responsive web design, 2) dynamic serving 3)mobile website 

Because a desktop monitor and smartphone are different in size, designing on mobile implies that you have to do either of these 3 things 1) build a responsive design website that dynamically adjusts content from desktop format to mobile format

2) Use dynamic serving to make the mobile experience device specific and control how the mobile content is delivered and viewed page by page  3)Create separate mobile website specifically made for your mobile users

Planning your mobile content delivery platform: when to use responsive design, dynamic serving and mobile site

Option 1 :Responsive design :Responsive design is a web design technology that uses CSS ad series of coded rules to dynamically change and adjust the appearance of your desktop content so that it fits within the screen size parameters of different mobile devices.Currently, responsive design is the mobile-friendly configuration recommended by both Google and Bing. Responsive design uses java script and client side serving to alter the way the pages appears in the mobile or desktop browsers after the server has already loaded the page.The below is the  illustration how this works

 You can use responsive design for your mobile users if it fulfills these  three criteria's listed below 1)When you want a coherent and an integrated desktop and mobile experience.

2)you have developed a strong desktop website that and have managed to built up a reputation in terms of page strength inbound links, unique content ,optimized for search engines and link equity, trust, and industry authority, and You want to pass on these factors to your mobile version of the page . In these cases responsive mobile sites benefit from shared indexing with desktop sites. No 3 (see below)

3) When you want your mobile users to follow a similar " page navigation, data flow and conversion metrics as they do in your desktop version.When you have limited development resources, which can make maintaining a custom mobile experience with custom content seem out of the question.The responsive web concept is also the best option when you want to manage the maintenance and search engine indexing of just one version of  site, and the seo benefit passes on to the mobile version of the site as well.

science of writing meta tag descriptions : 5 best practices for seo

The significance of Meta description  :While the perceived (and real) importance of meta data across search has depreciated , the attribute still plays a significant role in SEO rankings  :Meta Description has 3 primary uses

META DESCRIPTION TAG SEARCH ENGINES: 5 BEST PRACTICES 

Meta Descriptions Role in Search

1)describe the content of the page accurately and succinctly 

2)Serve as a short term advertisement for to click on your pages in the search engine 

3)to display the targeted words not for ranking purposes but to indicate its content to searchers 

5 rules to write the best meta descriptions: 

1)Number of characters :. Descriptions should be succinct and compact

2)Keep the length to 160 characters ( for google) and Bing up to 200 characters :However you are allowed to keep your descriptions to an average of 165, including spaces

3)Test, Refine, Repara and Rephrase : Just like ad ad which undergoes a plethora of tests , ensure that the description actually fits the content or the theme of the page in question. Each web page ideally has to have its own description pages.

3)Include relevant keywords : Its very important to have the right keyword in the meta description tag - the boldface that the search engines apply which can make a huge difference in visibility and the cilck thro rate of the website in question.

4)Ensure tagged facts in the description: You can include other structural tagged facts in the information apart from standard information . While news or blog posts can list the author, date of publication, or byline information. What about a product page? How do you incorporate product information like —price, age, manufacturer, features which lies scattered throughout a page. A good meta description can bring all this data together. For example, the following meta description provides detailed information about a Ian Fleming.

5)Understanding User Psychology of Search Disparity: take into account user differences in terms of search behaviour . For example an organic search user will not see your website the same way as users which comes from" PPC search'.While creating the meta decsription its important to keep in mind this basic fact . Users looking for information and users looking to shop online are clearly two different sets of consumers and you need to create descriptions based on which kind of users are your target segment


6)Employing Universal descriptions: Some search marketers are of the view that " you should not always write a good descriptions".Conventional logic holds that its wiser to write a good meta description to maximise the chances of it being used in the SERPs, rather than letting the engines build one of them. However this isn't always true

If the page in question is targetting one , two or three heavily searched terms or keyword phrases , go with the meta descriptions that targets user performing those searches . However if you are targeting long tail traffic with hundreds of articles or blogs entries, it can sometimes be wiser to let the esarch engine decide and themselves extract the relevant text The reason is simple to understand.When the search engines show a page in the , SERPs they always display the keywords and the surrounding phrases that the user searched for. However If you try to force a meta description, you can end up creating one that is not appropriate for the search phrase your page gets matched too

5 best practices in title tags construction for search engines

For keyword optimization title tags are most critical elements for search engine relevance .The title tag is in the <head> section of the html document and  the only pieces of meta information about a page that  has  influences relevacy and ranking

section of the html document and the only pieces of meta information about a page that has influences relevacy and ranking the following 6 rules represents the best practices for title tag construction. One of the things to keep in mind is to ensure that the title tag of any given page has to corresond to that page content

1)incorporate keyword phrases : an obvious thing to do, is to use title tag wherever your keyword research shows as being the most valuable keywords for capturing searches

2)Place your keywords at the beginning of the title tag.This provides the most search engine benefit. If your doing this and also wish to employ your brand name in the title tag, always place it at the end There is a trade off here between seo benefit and branding benefit that you should think about explicitly before taking the decision .Well established and well known brands might want to have their name at the start of the title tag as it may result to increase click thro rates (CTR)

 3) Limit yout title to 65 characters including spaces Content in the title tag should not be more than 65- 70 characters for allmost all search engines, any content beyond 65 characters gets cut off the SERPS

4)Focus the title on click thro and conversion rate : The title tag is exceptionally similar to title you generally write for paid search ads.However this data specifically is hard to measure and improve as the stats are not found easily and readily. If the  market you serve has  relatively stable search volumes , you can do some testing and see if you can improve your CTR

5)Target the searcher's  intent: while writing titles and descriptions  keep in mind what users are doing to reach your site  either by search engines or referrals.Study the top 10 landing pages and try to find " why users are coming to your site for "

If the searcher's intent is researching.. you need to tweak your title and maybe the structure needs to have more descriptive .However if users are purchasing online and looking at discounts at your site  your title should clearly mention that these functions are available .example " digital cameras now at 40% less: axax( name of website ): the top selling bestdigi cams online