How To Make Your Travels Far More Enjoyable

Traveling is supposed to be enjoyable, right? Aside from the occasional grumpy passenger on the plane and that occasional moment when we miss our home comforts, many of us have a lot of fun while away.

But if you get the feeling that your travels aren’t as enjoyable as they should be, there could be some reasons why. With this in mind, we have some ideas on ways in which things can be improved for you. Have a read and see how much of a difference they make to your next travel adventure.

#1: Pack light

If you overload your bags with everything but your kitchen sink, you are going to feel weighed down before you actually start on your travels. You will incur airport fees too, and that won’t improve your mood when you’re standing in line for your flight. If you overpack, you might also spend more time thinking about your belongings than the actual destination you are jetting off to, perhaps with fears that your valuable items might get stolen at any moment.

So, here’s the thing. Don’t cram everything you own into your bag. Follow our packing tips and focus on the essentials you need for your trip. Your mood will be as light as your bags if you do.

#2: Don’t be put off by the rain

There are some places where it’s sunshine all year round, so rain might not always be an issue. But if you choose a location that has variable weather, then there may be times when you get a little wet. It’s at these times that you might start to feel miserable. You might also decide to return to your hotel room to while away the hours until the rain stops.

But here’s our advice: Don’t let the rain ruin your holiday. Don’t let it dampen your mood. And don’t let it turn your travels into a washout. Pack your rain gear so you can still enjoy some outdoor activities. Or if it’s really bad, take part in a fun indoor activity instead of spending more time at the hotel. Visit an escape room, leisure center, museum, indoor climbing wall, or any other type of place that could up the fun factor.

#3: Do something you have never done before

Sure, you could do what you have always done in the past. You could visit the same places, take part in the same activities, and sleep in the usual accommodation. And while there’s nothing necessarily wrong with any of that, falling into a routine can make your travels a little too samey.

So, instead of falling into repeated patterns, consider stepping out of your comfort zone. Try activities that could be considered dangerously fun, such as river rafting and shark cage diving. Eat foods you have never eaten before, opting for local delicacies instead of those foods that are similar to what you have back at home. And don’t assume you need to stay in a hotel. There are all kinds of accommodation types you could try, including these unusual places. By doing something different, your travel adventure will be far more memorable, so consider the comfort zones you need to step out of.

#4: Put down your phone

Smartphones are both a blessing and a curse. Yes, they can be useful while you’re away, as you can use them for taking photos and keeping in touch with people at home. If you download a GPS app on your phone, you can reduce the risk of getting lost too! But if you spend all of your time looking at your phone, perhaps scrolling through your Facebook pages or taking selfies of yourself at every popular attraction, you will undermine your travel experiences.

When you put down your phone, you will get to experience more of the world around you. You will see the world through your own eyes and not through your phone’s tiny camera lens. There will be opportunities for you to communicate with the people around you, including the locals who may be all too happy to chat with you. You will be less prone to stress too as if you’re forever opening up your social media pages, you might see something that annoys rather than delights you. So, put down your phone and enjoy your surroundings. You might miss out on so much otherwise and that could hinder your enjoyment.

#5: Wander off the beaten track

There’s nothing wrong with visiting all of the usual touristy places while you’re away. It’s okay to hire a guide to show you around too. But if you spend all of your time wandering along the paths well-traveled, you could miss out on something glorious that could be in another direction.

So, don’t always follow your guidebook and don’t always go to where tourists are congregated. Explore by wandering along the paths less traveled, as who knows what you might see when you turn a new corner. You might see very little but then again, you could stumble upon a place of immense scenic beauty that takes your breath away. There could be unique eating places and stores that you might miss out on too, especially if you head to touristy spots with all of the usual big brands. But if you head to the places where the locals hang out, you might stumble across something against the norm.

#6: Slow down

If you’re rushing from one place to the next in an attempt to see absolutely everything your travel destination has to offer, you’re going to tire yourself out. You won’t get to experience each place to its fullest either, especially if you don’t stay for longer than a few minutes.

But when you slow down, you will get more of a feel for the places you visit. You will have more time to relax too and that will do much for both your body and mind. So, reduce your itinerary so you don’t have to rush everywhere. Focus on the places that you really want to see and leave anything else for the next time you travel.

So, we hope these tips were useful! By following them, you might enjoy your travels more, so give them some thought the next time you’re away.

How To Build a Stock Trading Platform in 8…

Plan on How to Build a Stock Trading Platform

After Robinhood filed for IPO (though the excitement was a bit short-lived) and the January GameStop event made trading fun, users ran to get into it. At least, in America, apps like Robinhood, Webull Financial, and Fidelity have gotten lots of traction. Soon, European traders will get into trading-through-apps too—solutions the Trade Republic are already getting their rounds led by Sequoia and raising $900M. This article will talk about these solutions and explain how to build a stock trading app in eight steps.

1 Step – Initiate The Project

First, determine the type of your trading app, decide what users will trade with on your platform — stocks, cryptocurrencies, CFD, and ETF are the most common options.

Decide who’ll be the primary audience of your app — expert traders, first-time traders, traders who aren’t particularly good at distinguishing setups or interested only in healthcare stocks, etc. Don’t be tempted to divide your audience by age or gender. Segment them by what pains they have within trading and what jobs your app will allow them to do better. (Like, if that’s an app for intermediate traders, live support or a premium community of more experienced traders will help them hop onto the “advanced” train, etc.) Answers to your questions will become your value proposition (VP).

Study your competitors — apps that serve the same people with the same pains. It’s tempting to attempt threatening E*Crypto or Robinhood. There are other apps like Schwab Mobile (great for beginners), Merrill Edge (that converts cash into stocks automatically from your card), Thinkorswim (that provides a live scanner great for day trading), and so on. Determine what you can do better than them, study reviews of their apps. That’ll help you to refine your positioning.

2 Step – Determine the Scope

Figure out what features will allow you to express your VP most efficiently.

Common features for stock trading platforms are a dashboard with stock charts from stock databases and corresponding company profiles, payment gateways, search, authentication, and user profiles. Through UX research, figure out what users are unhappy with the standard look/feel of these features in other apps, and improve them. (For instance, it’s useful to make an option of paper stock trading — trading with fake money — visible if you target beginners — or to include customization for the way charts look, because lots of people, for instance, like candlestick charts better than bar charts.)

Then, think about more complex features: whether or not your app will provide live updates, will it be possible for users to create watchlists or look up news about companies they follow, will the app offer analytics of the user’s previous trading activity, etc. Lots of fintech apps also offer personalized financial advice, historical data analytics, community-based activities — you choose it.

The more features you decide to implement, the bigger the technical part of the scope.

3 Step – Security Plan For Your App

Security features are also part of the scope, but they deserve a special place in the article.

According to Verizon, 60% of all cybersecurity threats are financially motivated — and the fintech industry is the one good target for hackers.

Have a cybersecurity strategy from the beginning: from password policies and multi-factor authentication to automatic logouts and warnings to users about not reusing their passwords. Otherwise, things aren’t going to look pretty.

Don’t forget about encryption, PCI DSS, and requirements from your industry regulators you’ll need to comply with (SEC is one of those in America).

4 Step – Onboard Development Team

For the stock trading app, you’ll need

• UX/UI designer to help with prototyping/design.

• Back-end programmers who specialize in Python, Java, Node.js, or Ruby; who worked with stock trading APIs like Alpaca; payment gateways; API management tools like Postman; PaaS tools like AWS, Azure, or Heroku.

• Front-end programmers (f.i., JavaScript or ReactJS devs).

• Mobile developers (Swift for Apple, Java/Kotlin for Android — or, if you’ll choose the cross-platform way — React Native, Flutter, NativeScript, etc.)

• Cybersecurity specialists or DevOps folks who will handle security issues, incident reporting, other risk-management- and threat detection things.

Hire people who already have experience either in fintech or in other heavily regulated industries.

5 Step – Choose PaaS and MBaaS Platforms

There are two types of cloud services managed by a third party and are a good fit for fintech solutions: PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) like AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Microsoft Azure, Salesforce — and MBaaS (for mobile development, Mobile-Backend-as-a-Service) like AWS Amplify and Azure Mobile Apps.

If you got intimidated by the sheer amount of specialists required to build a platform — and want to create just a small mobile trading app, AWS Amplify will build a backend for it and help your, e.g., React Native developer connect various APIs to the project. PaaS providers like Azure help you manage the runtime of a trading platform, middleware, servers, networking, and storage.

6 Step – Use a Reliable 3rd Party API Solution

Many stock trading APIs exist: Alpaca Market has already been mentioned, and it’s free. There are also Robinhood API (also free, but often can’t handle the trader volumes), Polygon APIs (there is a free option and packages from $99/m to $499/m), and many others.

Choose according to what kinds of data you want, if you want WebSockets and snapshots, whether or not there is enough info in the developer communities about working with those APIs. Search for security incidents related to APIs you want to use.

7 Step – Create User-Friendly Interface – (UI)

The survey says, 48% of users believe visual design is important whenever assessing website credibility. Credibility is vital for fintech solutions. Also, stock trading is already kind of intimidating and overloaded with cluttered visuals.

Fix that perception by creating a simplistic, accessible UI with distinct typography, easily understandable navigation, and data visualization that doesn’t make users want to cry (especially if that’s an app for beginners.)

8 Step – Develop, Test and Deploy Your App

Implement continuous integration and delivery into the development process. You’ll manage to optimize time for after-testing bug fixing by integrating it into programming (in other words, you’ll test extensively while you’re developing.)

Don’t forget about user testing. It’s better to include it at every milestone of your development — after you developed your most important features, integrated the analytics, polished your UX. That is necessary for staying in contact with your customers instead of being stuck in the development loop — and that will allow you to build a truly user-centric trading app.

Best Marketing Strategies For Travel Agencies

What Are the Best Online Marketing Strategies for Travel Agencies?

The internet has given people the tools to organise many of their trips and vacations by themselves. That’s why travel agencies need more robust marketing efforts to draw in more customers.

Let’s uncover some of the best strategies to position your travel agency to grab more sales.

Optimise Your Website

Seize the chance to convert online visitors into customers by making your site attractive to the eye and easy to navigate.

Making your website impressive and user friendly helps keep your visitors on your site for longer. The longer customers get a taste of what you have to offer, the more likely they’ll be to decide to purchase your services.

Consider optimising your website to make it:

• Fast
• Clear and easy to navigate
• Mobile friendly
• Attractive

How do you know if your efforts are yielding fruits? Make the most of analytical tools like Google Analytics to evaluate the success of your website, and keep tweaking your site until you hit the sweet spot.

Offer Extras

As online sales training often teaches, in a transaction, both sides want to walk away feeling that they’ve gained something valuable. So, consider using special offers as a way to add value and pull in more customers.

For example, you can offer your customers one free entry to a tourist destination when they book through your agency within a limited timeframe.

Optimise Your SEO

Statistics say that more than 90% of travellers hunt for information online when seeking out travel advice. So, it’s important to optimise your website’s SEO to make sure the right customers are finding you. According to HubSpot, 75% of buyers don’t look beyond the first search engine results page.

Content like blogs and videos is a great way to step up customer awareness about your services. It’s also a great way to enhance your SEO.

To negotiate your way to a higher ranking on search engines, optimise your content for the right keywords. A higher ranking can help you appear higher up on Google and score more sales for your travel business.

How do you know which keywords to use? Using keyword tools Ahrefs, Google Search Console, Surfer SEO, or Google Keywords can help you decipher what customers are searching for online.

You could also consider staying up to speed with the latest trends in SEO by taking training to keep your content in pole position.

Remember to keep your content interesting to maximise the value to the customer. In the travel business, it’s often about selling the experience, not just the destination. So, craft your content in a way that feeds into people’s curiosity about other people’s travel experiences and the customer’s wanderlust.

Email marketing

According to a survey by CMO Council, 86% of people prefer receiving their marketing messages via email. McKinsey and Company also revealed that email marketing is 40% more effective than social media marketing.

Consider tapping into the potential of emails. Why is email marketing a powerful tool to boost sales?

Emails can pull in new online customers while cementing relations with your existing customer base. By sending emails, you communicate personally with your customers on their own time, so they don’t feel like you’re invading their space. Plus, emails are easily customisable and cost-effective.

Use your emails to communicate valuable information to your customers. For example, you can send travel tips like visa requirements and information about how your services can help travellers. Be sure to lead customers to explore your website to find out more.

How do you improve the success rate of an email campaign? Some of the strategies you can use include:

• Using relevant and punchy subject lines.
• Keeping calls to action straightforward.
• Making your writing succinct and brief.
• Personalising your emails.

Social Media

Using both emails and social media can help you tap into a wider market.

Sales training often highlights social media marketing as a cost-effective way to engage with customers and spread the word about your services.

For example, you can use Instagram to showcase beautiful travel destinations so customers get a vivid picture of their dream vacation. You can also ask your customers to post pictures of where they’ve travelled to lure new customers.

Before you embark on the social media journey, train yourself to do some background research on your potential customers. Find out which social media sites they frequent. Once you know where to find your clients online, reach out on that platform with engaging content.

Make an effort to actively engage with your customers and respond to comments to curry favour and warm prospects up before price negotiations.

The frequency of your social media content output will depend on the platform you’re using and how your target market responds to your content.

Final Thoughts

Optimise your website and develop a strong content marketing strategy to negotiate your way to a higher position on search engines to clinch more online sales.

Consider following the advice from some of the most effective sales training courses. Couple your content strategy with a rich email and social media campaign to help your travel agency soar above the competition.

Sensational Newcomers in the National Rugby League 2021

The NRL tournament for the 2021 season is just around the corner. Every year players from each time sign off. Young recruits enter the team and into their first-grade side.

Rookie players gain attention from Rugby enthusiasts as their first season determines their career potential.

In the last season, newcomers like Payne Haas, Bronson Xerri, Ryan Papenhuyzen, and Maika Sivo gained fame and success.

Here is a list of up-and-coming players who will be influencing the NRL odds in the 2021 season:

Brandon Wakeham

Kieran Foran’s long-term shoulder injury gave an opening to the young player. The 21-year-old player appeared in three NRL matches last season and ended up with a Golden Boot nomination. Canterbury Bulldogs’ halfback Brent Sherwin has been training the player who dreams of a spot in the round one team.

Harry Rushton:

The 19-years old player is an English recruit who has joined the Canberra Raiders for the season. Raiders fans expect Rushton to follow his former team players George Williams, Ryan Sutton, and John Bateman.

Tesi Niu:

The 19-years old rookie player gave his grand debut performance for the Brisbane Broncos last season. The Broncos look forward to the flair and skill of Niu to help them with a come-back from last season’s horror show.

Josh Schuster:

Manly Sea Eagles have recruited the 19 years-old player who is full of energy and determination. The skilled back-rower stunned audiences with his stellar performance last season and has raised the odds this season. Schuster will be battling against Kieran Foran and Dylan Walker for the number six spot.

Dom Young:

The English player gave his debut performance in the Super League with two games for Huddersfield. Young’s muscle build and speed are seen as a welcome addition to the NRL this season. The 19-years old rookie will be playing for the Newcastle Knights.

Jake Averillo:

One of the most awaited players in the NRL 2021 is Averillo. The 20-year-old player played with the Bulldogs last season when fans noted the young player for his versatility and strategic skills. Averillo might take on a starting halves role alongside Kyle Flanagan this season.

Franklin Pele:

Pete is a front-rower joining the Cronulla Sharks for NRL 2021. The player is part of the top 30 rosters in the team. Fans compare the young player to Payne Haas in terms of his skills. The massive physical build of Pele with a weight of 132 kg is an extraordinary addition to the Sharks.

David Fifita:

The 20 years-old player is a budding rookie joining the Gold Coast Titans this year. Fans regard the back-rower for his speed and footwork. Fifita is the fierce player to boost the odds for the Gold Coast Titans in the 2021 season.

Harry Grant:

Harry Grant displays immense promise to take over the highly coveted number nine spot from legendary player Cameron Smith. Fans will be keenly watching the 22-year-old sport throughout the NRL 2021 season. He played with the Tigers in 2020 and gave an outstanding debut performance. The young Melbourne Storms player has the potential to fill the void left by Smith.

Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow

The rookie addition to North Queensland Cowboys is the 19-year-old Tabuai-Fidow displaying exceptional talent. Rugby enthusiasts noted the electric performance by the young player in the NRL Nines Tournament last season. The player is looking at a spot on the wing or full-back for the 2021 season with the Cowboys.

 

Why Should You Move Abroad?

Travelling is one of the most wonderful experiences available to you. When you travel, your mind is opened up to different cultures, and your eyes are opened to the beautiful landscapes the world has to offer. Moreover, it is easy to fall in love with a place when you visit it while on a trip.

But what do you do when you find you love a place a bit too much? How do you deal with the thoughts occurring to you, that maybe you could live there permanently? It might seem drastic, to up and move your life to another country. You probably have roots where you are: friends, family, work…

Yet, moving abroad comes with its own benefits, that may or may not outweigh the negatives. So, you’re left wondering: what are these benefits, and will they convince you?

A change of lifestyle 

Life, for most, is a 9-5 job, staying at home in the evenings and waiting for the weekend. Abroad, people live different lifestyles. For example, in Spanish culture, many places shut down in the middle of the day for a break or a sleep. This time, called a siesta, is wildly different from the culture of the UK and USA, which promotes burnout amongst its workers. 

The stage of life you are in 

Moving abroad is a big change, one that can shake your life up. However, there are certain times in life when you need a big shakeup in your life, and often these times vary from person to person. Most commonly, this occurs in mid to late life.

It’s easy to fall into a routine when you get older, and settle into accepting life as it is. Unfortunately, it can feel like the best times of your life are over, and now you are left in the dredge. This, of course, in no way has to be true, but it’s easy to slip into this way of thinking.

Moving abroad can shake up your whole perspective and show you that the exciting times of your life aren’t over. You can meet new people, form new connections, and explore the world as you did as a kid.

Alternatively, moving abroad can be great for people in their youth. Moving abroad at such a young age forces you to be brave, self-sufficient, and open-minded: all qualities that will be necessary for living a fulfilling life later on down the line.

No matter where you are in life, moving abroad can change your life if you feel stagnant and bored.

Cost of living 

If you are struggling to make ends meet, moving abroad might be the right decision. The cost of living can be a lot lower in other countries, and, at the same time, there may be better-paying work opportunities for you. Plus, the actual cost of moving doesn’t have to be too expensive if you visit this website to find good movers.

When your cost of living is low, you have more disposable income to spend on traveling and truly experiencing life.