As defined by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amplify is a set of products and tools with which mobile and front-end web developers can build and deploy AWS-powered, secure, and scalable full-stack apps. Also, you can efficiently configure their back ends, connect them to your app with just a few lines of code, and deploy static web apps in only three steps. Historically, because of their performance issues, managing images and videos is a daunting challenge for developers. Even though you can easily load media to an S3 bucket with AWS Amplify, transforming, compressing, and responsively delivering them is labor intensive and time consuming.
While COVID has affected most businesses, it has been particularly hard on those that sell products for the physical ‘brick and mortar’ world. One company that literally fits that bill is our Australian customer James Hardie, the largest global manufacturer of fibre cement products used in both domestic and commercial construction. These are materials that its buyers ideally want to see up close, in detail. When customers have questions, they expect personal service.
Part 1 of this post defines the capabilities of an enhanced Gravatar service, which I named Clavatar, and describes the following initial steps for building it:
This post, part 2 of the series, explains how to make Clavatar work like Gravatar and to develop Clavatar’s capabilities of enabling requests for various versions of the images related to user accounts.
The advent of web development since 25 years ago has given birth to an abundance of online services that help developers build apps efficiently and smoothly. Gravatar is a shining example of such a service. Built by WordPress, Gravatar generates globally recognized avatars. Fun fact: 80 percent of Gravatar users first came across that service when reading a WordPress blog.
Fidelity in images is about visually preserving the original; appeal is about hiding the compression artifacts. Depending on your priority, you would compress images with either of these approaches to reduce the file size while still maintaining a reasonable level of visual “quality”:
GUESS? Inc. designs, markets, distributes, and licenses a lifestyle collection of contemporary apparel, denim, handbags, watches, eyewear, footwear, and other related consumer products. These products are distributed through branded GUESS Stores, as well as department and specialty stores around the world, and via e-commerce sites available to 55 countries. GUESS websites act as virtual storefronts that both sell their products and promote their brands, showcasing products in an easy-to-navigate experience that allows customers to see and purchase from its collections.
Did you know that five billion users of the top five social apps post 41.6 million messages a minute? Or that three billion JPEG images are created every day?
Not only does this tremendous volume of peer-to-peer activity profoundly affect our social lives, it has also revolutionized the way shoppers navigate the purchase journey. How? By reading unbranded feedback and the like from other users, shoppers can avoid marketing hype and make purchase decisions based on what they often consider to be objective, honest opinions on the merchandise.
With the holiday season upon us, it’s time to take stock of what brings us joy and for many of us giving gifts to loved ones is at the top of the list. We’re lucky that so many of our customers are also our favorite brands -- which makes gift giving pretty easy.
Part 1 of this series highlights the basics of user-generated content (UGC) and its benefits for e-commerce. Part 2 describes how to leverage UGC images in e-commerce and efficiently upload, transform, and deliver them with Cloudinary. Part 3 focuses on videos in UGC and the many related management capabilities offered by Cloudinary.
How many vendor solutions do you rely on for a superior user experience for your e-commerce site? How many tools do you use to manage the site? What services are used to manage media files, email marketing, digital ads, customer service, text messages, and the search feature?