caltexsydney.info

I’m a strong believer in preparing website content before initiating graphic design and this applies to both websites and blogs. Some will argue with me, but I’ll fight this battle and dig in because I know content before website design is the right approach.

I believe:

Strong website design extends past colors, fonts, and layout boxes.

Strong design focuses on the user.

Website design should be crafted around the user, their needs, and the desired outcome of a website visit. It should be focused on the user’s challenges and the website’s ability to solve these issues.

It should not be focused on coding trends and prepackaged templates.

Design Trends Come and Go, But a Focus on the User Should Not

I’ll receive emails from people discussing their website design requirements and many times these lists will be focusing on specific project criteria like infinite scroll, hamburger menus, hero images, video backgrounds, and motion.

Rarely do people approach a design firm and present data based on their visitors, the user’s needs, and the ultimate goals of a website visit.

Website owners get caught up in design trends, their competitors’ websites, and what they believe is modern and current design elements. In doing so, they lose track of the actual website visitor.

All too often people select a website template or blog theme and get caught up in the graphical presentation or bells and whistles it offers. It’s an emotional buy that supersedes the desire to help the actual website visitors.

Once they buy the stock theme, they force their content to fit within the template’s available content blocks. Or worse yet, they force a custom design to adhere to the same style and presentation of a top competitor’s website.

In most cases this leads to disappointment and buyer’s remorse.

The reason this occurs is this process follows the path of purchase, design, development, and finally content. That path is in the wrong order. The process is going backwards and it leads to frustration.

Content First Leads to Educated Design Decisions

Documenting your desired user flow, visitor paths, and call to actions is something that is typically done after the graphic design is completed. Unfortunately that’s the wrong approach because it forces you into matching content to the website theme or design. It should be just the opposite.

Before you find yourself falling in love with a competitor website, coveting a stock WordPress template, or reaching out to a graphic designer, you need think through the goals and objectives of your website or blog.

You need to document your user personas, their individual challenges, your solution offering, and the paths you’d like these visitors to take within the website.

While graphic design in very important, it must take place at the right time within the project to truly allow you to showcases the website, content, and offering in the best light possible.

One of my favorite quotes on this subject is:

“Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.” – Jeffrey Zeldman

Messaging and content are the building blocks and foundation of the website. This means they should be carefully thought through and documented well before any colors, fonts, and layouts are considered.

The design elements should complement, highlight, and showcase the key messaging and most important content.

Focus on the Right Content

While I am saying you should have content written before beginning design, I’m not saying that you have to have all your content written. That would be a difficult task to accomplish for most website owners and businesses.

I encourage clients to focus on core website sections and pages. During the sales process I usually go through their website and look for areas I think would benefit from custom design templates. These will vary based on the client, industry, and target demographic.

Here are some common areas that can benefit most from a content first strategy:

Home
Main about or company page
Main services page and individual service pages
Main storefront and individual product pages
Resource section, categories, and/or resource items
Personas
Landing page templates
Main blog page and individual blog posts
Contact page
Sometimes I’ll suggest just a few custom design templates and other times I’ll suggest fifteen to twenty. It really depends on the complexity of the content and the variations in the content flow and call to actions.
As we progress into a project with a client, we like to have as much information as possible on core elements and how these might be altered based on different areas of the website.

Content elements that matter in a content before website design approach:

Headlines and subheaders
Core messaging
Paragraph text
User personas and visitor paths
Call to actions
Images
Videos
Navigation
Social media accounts
Search engine optimization
The more your graphic designer knows and has available, the more unique and targeted your design will become.
Finding Balance

Not all situations will allow a content before website design approach. You have to find balance and you have to pick and chose your battles.

If this approach is going to be difficult, I suggest starting with universal elements such as navigation, SEO, and call to actions. Then begin narrow down the focus by reviewing user personas and their visitors paths.

Making it big in business can be extra challenging most especially in this digital age. The irony with all the existing marketing and promotion strategies is that it has also made the competition much stiffer and difficult.

Well, big businesses have it much easier because they have enough working capital to spend on print and broadcast advertising. They can also launch massive promotion campaigns among their target audience by conducting events. On the other hand, for small businesses, their resources are quite limited. They can do flyers, brochures, calling cards, among others. However, they would find it disadvantageous to engage into much more expensive advertising campaigns.

The coming of the Internet has changed the playing field drastically. This is because this new information medium has given small and big businesses alike an additional marketing strategy that is not as expensive as the traditional ones. In fact, it is so effective, most marketing and promotion strategies of many businesses are now concentrated on this medium, all exerting their effort to build a massive online presence.

Indeed, building an online presence definitely offers businesses the needed boost in terms of advertising. Here are some of the reasons why building an online presence can be very advantageous to companies:

It allows businesses to become more accessible to its customers. Online presence has allowed businesses to reach its target customers. In the same way, it has made it possible for customers to easily access businesses for possible services or goods that they would need without having to leave the comforts of their homes. This has changed the landscape of consumerism and most people would prefer transacting with businesses that can offer this kind of off-site service.

The online space can become a business’ office space. Instead of spending for rent or purchasing a physical office space, the established website and other social media sites can become an avenue where customers can go and inquire, purchase goods, or avail of services.

The Internet expands the reach of a business’ market. The physical world has so many limitations. A small business in a small town can only cater to its immediate locale. However, establishing an online presence has allowed small Asian stores to sell their goods to people in America without having to spend so much on advertising. Online presence literally opens a portal where business has become boundless almost surpassing geographical limits.

When used effectively, it can complement traditional marketing and advertising. Given that online media has yet to dominate the top-most sought after information media, advertising though print and broadcast still helps in reaching the more traditional customers. And, when used together, they will be able to craft a very effective business promotion strategy.

It can be used as leverage over competitors. If used properly, online presence can help a business boost its reps especially if its rivals in the market do not use this kind of promotional campaign.

However, building online presence is not just about setting up a website and uploading contents to your heart’s content. That is why it is also very important to know the various strategies in place that could be used to effectively boost a business’ online presence.

Let’s face it; digital technology has changed life as we know it.

I don’t know anyone who isn’t doing digital things in some way.

Do you?

Digital and social media, thanks to the Internet, have broken borders, how we communicate, and how we deliver information-including the news. Disruption occurs at such a rapid pace these days, that to remain competitive, you always have to be reading the tea leaves. And, that includes digital and social media disruption.

What are the trends you have to keep any eye out for in the year ahead?

Augmented reality: The very definition of “reality” is already beginning to change. Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, has suggested that we will live in a world where at some point we will not be able to tell the difference. Augmented reality blends the real world we see every day around us with a supplemental or added reality brought to us by digital technology and GPS. The Pokemon Go craze of last year showed us the future was here with augmented reality. See more augmented reality enter the digital and social media worlds.
Virtual reality: Virtual reality is a computer-generated, three-dimensional world that can be entered, typically with some kind of device, such as a helmet or goggles. Facebook owns the leading virtual reality company, Oculus, which just had a massive judgment against it to pay $500 million to the game company ZeniMax. Despite that legal situation, virtual reality is big business and corporations are moving quickly to position themselves as the leaders in providing all of us opportunities to enter other realities.
Live video: I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen a lot more live videos posted on Facebook. Once Facebook Live was introduced in 2016, people young and old were suddenly hitting the “Live” button and all of the sudden I was seeing my friends in their kitchens or on the beach. Look for this to only increase as people get more comfortable just sharing their lives-live-on social media platforms, including the social media giant, Facebook.
Social media shopping: Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have done an excellent job of integrating advertisement without impacting the user experience. This integration is going to continue. You’ll see more ads and marketplaces on social media sites as consumers make some of their purchases within these platforms.
Organic promotion: Organic reach, the type of promotion that brands were able to get to their followers and supporters simply by posting, is continually being throttled by social media platforms. The limiting of brand promotion will only continue as the social media giants, such as Facebook, continue to develop platforms so that users remain longer and longer. Let’s face it. These are businesses. Platforms like Facebook will continue to degrade the ability of brands to promote to supporters without paying a price.

The ease of making financial transactions and financial services in general, had first been revolutionised when telegraph companies introduced wire transfers. But with the coming of new age financial services like Bitcoin and Ripple, it is the time we address the question of what the future holds for the financial services of the world.

Traditional Wire Transfers

Let us begin by first taking a look at how things have been going on for these past 150 years since wire transfers were first introduced. Transferring funds using a wire transfer method via a bank is not a single step process but a multi-step process. It is like this:

The sender approaches his or her bank and orders the transfer of funds to an account. Unique codes like BIC and IBAN codes are provided to the bank by the sender so that the bank knows exactly where the funds need to be transferred.

The sender’s bank contacts the receiver’s bank by sending a message through a security system, such as Fedwire or SWIFT, signalling it that a transfer needs to be made. The receiver’s bank receives this message, which includes settlement instructions as well, and then asks the sender’s bank to transfer the amount specified in the message.

The sender’s bank now transfers the amount. This is not done in one go but bit by bit, so it can take anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days for the entire sum to be transferred.

To make the transfer, the two banks must have a reciprocal account with one another. If that is not the case, the transfer is made through a correspondent bank that holds such an account.
As one can see, this form of transfer relies overly on a mediator, takes more time than it should, and can prove to be costly as the banks charge some fee for their service. Distributed currencies like Bitcoin provide a viable alternative to this process.

Decentralized Currencies

What sets services like Bitcoin apart from traditional services is that they do not rely on a central mediator but rather operate using cryptographic protocols. The process is therefore faster, simpler, and much more efficient. The system is quite transparent to both end users as well while traditional systems are susceptible to fraud due to the complex process involved.

However, there is a downside to this too. With services like Bitcoin, it is simple to trace a transaction back to each unit value’s creation.

Solution? A Common Ground

More and more people are opting for services like Bitcoin and peer-to-peer mobile transfers, where a network operator could help users transfer funds by simply sending an SMS. Although these are indeed more efficient, they are a long way from global acceptance because there are many who still do not have bank accounts, plus there is the issue of limited user identification in such services.

What would be ideal for everyone is if banks could tap into the potential of decentralized currencies and overlap the source code of services like Ripple on their existing system to form a hybrid of the two. It would kill two birds with one stone as:

Decentralized currency systems provide more efficient transfers

Bank systems ensure only registered users access the service, taking away the possibility of foul play.
Conclusion

The world has come a long way since the last time an indigenous financial service system was introduced. There is definitely a crying need to improve this traditional service and decentralized currencies like Bitcoin have shown them the way.

To make the correct judgement, you need the essential insights, and this is what it means by “qualify”. If you are not selling the product or service to the correct lead, you will end up wasting a lot of money, time, energy and resources. So what you should do to qualify leads and prospects? How will you know whether a prospect is fit for your offer? Will the lead ultimately lead to a sales opportunity?

You should invest your money and time only after qualifying someone. Only then you should start selling the service or product to the prospect.

If you are not quite experienced you will jump at the given opportunity without properly studying the prospect. What happens here is you are trying to selling something on an assumption without the proper background check. It may or may not culminate in sales. Only mindless salespeople will do this kind of marketing and they will end up losing their energy and time chasing wrong leads.

Instead of talking all the time, try to listen to your prospect. Then you will understand whether he/she is a qualified prospect. If you listen to them your chances of selling will be much higher.

Spend time on qualified prospects, and you’ll achieve significantly more costly deals.

Even if you get a qualified lead you must put in a lot of effort to make him/her your customer. You must know all about your valuable prospect or else you will miss an opportunity to sell your product or service to them.

If you end up selling a product to a wrong customer or to people who should not have bought your product, it is not just bad for the customer but bad for you and your company.

To find a quality lead you must know how to evaluate a prospect. For instance, you must know what their drawbacks are. How have they evaluated your solution? What type of an organisation they belong to? These details are essential to personalise your pitch for your prospects.

Know their pain points and also about their organization and personality. If a salesman is not able to close a deal it shows that he did not know all the important details about his prospect and hence he did not properly qualify as lead.

Ask as many questions as possible to your customer and gather the correct information. There are certain qualifying questions which every salesman should be aware of. We list out the most important ones.

Customer profile

A prospect should match your ideal customer profile. How big is the company? What industry are they in? Where are they located?

Needs

You must know your customer’s needs to qualify the prospect. And you should know how to fulfil their requirements and requests. You should have an idea what result they are aspiring for, and how the result is going to impact their company or team.

Decision making process

You should also know how they make decisions and how many people are involved in the decision-making process. Are they impulsive buyers or do they take time to buy products?

For instance, some companies take almost a year to purchase products. But if you have a sales target to achieve in the next four months then they are not your qualified prospects.

Competition

It is said that you should keep your friends close and enemies closer. So you should know about your competitors. You must know whether the lead has worked with any of your competitors and also what are the decisive factors on which they will base their decision on.

If you are informed of these things, you will be able to easily find out whether he/she is a qualified prospect or not.

Investment banks help private as well as public companies and organizations to gathers funds in both debt and equity capital markets. These banks were originally founded in order to raise capital and provide guidance on corporate financial strategies, such as acquisitions and mergers. Investment banks assume many different roles such as handing safety issues, providing institutional and public investors with brokerage services, providing corporate clients with financial advice, offering guidance on acquisition deals and mergers and more. These days, you can also find banks to have ventured into bridge financing, foreign currency exchange and private banking. Know about the two main types of investment banking companies India.

Basic bank for invest

This kind of bank tends to issue bonds and stocks to customers for a predetermined sum. Then the bank invests this sum which has been used by the client for buying bonds and stocks. Such types of investments vary across different banks. In the nations where this type of investment is permitted, investment banks come with networks of lending and financial organizations that they can derive profit from. Other banks also make investments in construction and property development. Customers with bonds and stocks would tend get payments from the amount of profit that is made on the sum that they have invested for a particular time period.

Both the investment bank and the client derive profits from the sum initially invested by the client. As these types of banks are completely familiar with the trade methods, they are often consulted about corporate investment activities like acquisitions and mergers by both big and small corporations and business houses.

Merchant bank for investing

This is the other kind of investment bank. Such kinds of banks participate in trade financing and provide business ventures with capita in the form of shares and not loans. These banks have their businesses based on how secure shares are. Such types of institutions only fund those business ventures which have only started in the world of business. Generally, startup merchant companies do not get any financing. Merchant banks can be regarded only as investment banks which are ready to invest some amount of the capital of the organization. The money is put in the form of an equity investment. The company acts like research and advisory firms in India into the transaction and offers advice. In case you want trade financing, you will like to get in touch with a merchant bank rather than an investment bank.

Over the past few years, SEO has evolved faster than the previous decade. And this has made it harder for users to keep up with most recent updates. The launch of Penguin and Panda changed the way things worked in the past. In short, the way Google used to rank website has changed a lot. But if you want to reach your objectives, make sure you avoid some common SEO mistakes.

1. Avoiding RELEVANT CONTENT

In the start, Google said that it would rank websites that have the most relevant content on its first page. This statement is still valid. What has happened is that the search engine has become a lot better at achieving the objectives. In other words, now, Google is in better position to know what is relevant and what is not.

So, what you need to do is offer content that is relevant and avoid content is not relevant to your niche. Of course, the content should be informative and unique.

2. Following Tricks

People have been using many illegal ways of cheating the search engine algorithms for traffic, exposure and backlinks. Some of these tactics can still give you a temporary edge, but they are bad for your blog or website for the long-term.

So, you should avoid using low-quality, duplicate content, keyword stuffing, questionable redirects or cloaking for traffic. It may be tempting to go for these short-cuts, but they will just hurt your ranking, and may even get you banned for good.

3. Overloading your site

It has been a common perception that photos, videos and other graphics make a website more appealing for the viewers. To some extent, this perception is true; however, there should not be too much of it or your website will take ages to load. Your viewers don’t have all day to wait for your site to load. If your blog takes longer to load than other websites, the viewers will just click away. You will not only lose viewers, you will also lose ranking against other websites.

4. Making navigation difficult

Navigation is one of the most important factors for any website. It’s important for both viewers and search engines. Ideally, your viewers should be able to get the desired information from your website in one or two clicks. This may not be an easy task for you. So, what you can do is put important content on the main page of your site. This the users will be able to get what they want more easily.

5. Misunderstanding THE BACKLINK PROCESS

You may not want to be obsessed with obtaining a lot of backlinks. Although you don’t have to have backlinks from authority websites to establish your credibility, it helps a lot. However, what you need to do is try to get backclinks in a nature fashion. But it’s not a good idea to buy backlinks. This is one of the worst mistakes that you can make.

Quality content is the key to SEO success. Content doesn’t just mean your text contents. Images must be an integral part of your content strategy. At times, single images can be far more effective than your 1000 word blog post. It also helps you improve blog post quality and performance.

Images, Infographics, Videos and all other multimedia contents on your web page will help you in increasing the user engagement on your site and makes the visitors stay on your site for longer duration which helps in reducing the bounce rate.

Not just adding images to your contents, you should also optimize those images for better SEO performance. Optimization of images must be the one important aspect of your on-page SEO process.

If you are using images in your content, there are many aspects to be considered related to SEO.

Relevancy

Using images doesn’t mean that you should fill up your content with loads of pictures. You should use it only when it is required and also you should use images that are more relevant to your content.

Placement of your images is an another important aspect. It should be placed at a relevant location in your content according to your text content.

Use original images

Originality always helps in improving your user experience and your authority. Usage of original images will be helpful in improving your SEO performance. You can create original images with a graphic designer or you can take your own photographs with a quality camera. It is the reason top White hat SEO companies employ talented graphic designers for creating quality images.

If you are not able to employ an in-house graphic designer or if you are running out of time, you can always use high quality images from the web. But the important factor to be considered is it should be copyright free.

There are many tools available for getting copyright free images without any cost. The most popular ones are Unsplash, Flicker, Freeimages.

Image Size

Images are the main source for damping your site’s speed. And site speed is a crucial factor in your SEO performance. So, you should be extra cautious in using images without compromising your page speed.

It should not also affect your image quality, you should have a correct balance between. You can achieve this by reducing the file size by compression. You can use tools like Photoshop for compression.

File name

Search engine crawlers are visually impaired, it can even interrupt a 5000 word text content, but it cannot interrupt a single image and what the image is about. It is the reason using a keyword rich file names for your images is an important aspect in image optimization.

Google bots and other search engine crawlers can read your image’s file name and if it is named with your target keyword, it gives a signal to search engines about the image topic and thus helps your SEO performance.

For example, if your image is related to selling sports shoes, rather than using the file name as “IMG_89868″ you can use it as “Black_Tennis_Shoes”.

Alt text

Similar to the file name, search engines can read Alt text of the images. Alt text is known as “Aleternative Text”, is an HTML attribute used to describe the content of images.

You should use Alt text which is relevant to your images and it should be clear and descriptive. You can use your target keywords in the Alt text but be cautious about Keyword stuffing.

If you are not focusing on Image optimization, you are missing a huge opportunity in improving your SEO performance. You can use above mentioned best practices in your on-page optimization process.

American youth currently face challenging realities along their way to adulthood. With parents working longer hours and the absence of grandparents and other community adults who used to make up support systems, the intergenerational fabric of community has been frayed. Youth development strategies aim to reweave community fabric in a new way – one that takes the supports and opportunities young people should have, and re-institutes them in the context of young people’s realities today. While many of these realities are harsh ones, we know that young people themselves want to be involved in their communities. The importance of building positive youth/adult partnerships in this process cannot be stressed enough.

The mobilization effort is based on influencing three critical elements: information, attitudes, involvement. The transformation of each of these areas, both in the public and private domains, is a necessary condition for change. For example, in the area of information, the country is currently focused on collecting primarily negative youth information, e.g., teenage births, dropouts, and juvenile arrest rate. Inspiring a 180 degree shift, we need to collect information such as: average number of hours youth participate in after-school activities, computer to youth ratio in non-school hours, and the percentage of youth who hold part-time jobs. The three elements are intertwined, for how information is gathered and communicated impacts attitudes as well as how and if people choose to become involved.

Only through broad community commitment, strong public will, and diverse partnerships can youth development take root, go to scale, and be sustained over time. Ultimately, the mobilization must be supported by partnerships among all of the systems in a community that affect young people (i.e., education, corporations, health care, juvenile justice, religious groups, and recreation). To build these relationships and establish youth development infrastructures to improve developmental paths of adolescents will take at least 10 years.

Localities currently spending their resources on efforts to “fix youth” will need to pool, redirect, and increase their financial commitment to youth development. These additional dollars will ensure all youth equal access to supports and opportunities, especially youth living in economically distressed areas.

Our information on the services young people need, and use, is still hit or miss. Communities do not know what they have or what they need. They usually have no way to tell how well services are being used and what services need to be improved.

Good information is important for youth services for exactly the same reasons it is important for everything else. Accurate, accessible standardized information lets people find the services they need and use them effectively. It lets communities manage, evaluate and improve their services and determine the need for changing them, eliminating them, or developing new ones.

Many national efforts to measure outcomes presently use deficit-driven indicators to assess young people’s condition in society, such as teen pregnancy rates, juvenile crime numbers, and percentages of high school dropouts. Although these measures are important, they do not tell the whole story about young people’s experiences. Measures that reflect positive conditions and experiences of young people are also important.

The accelerated trend of the past decade toward empowering our nation’s young people to succeed has fostered a new awareness and commitment to this most valuable resource. Some basic questions are:

- How much do we currently spend?

- How much should we spend?

Some progress has been made through new initiatives in education finance reform and services integration, providing more effective delivery of social, health and educational services for children and youth from the classroom up to the government. This document establishes an initial framework and formula for assessing the financial resources and mechanisms necessary to move American society closer to this ideal. The following were found to be potential root causes of these trends in spending:

- Devaluation of adolescents.

- Lack of consensus on youth development.

- Lack of adequate and protected funding. Funds are not protected and dedicated in the manner necessary to sustain the long-term, comprehensive process that is youth development.

We can support the move toward the ideal by:

- Seeking new types of information.

- Building on the after-school momentum.

- Making a sustainable public investment.

Youth development is an investment that must be made by each sector of the wider community – public and private. Examination of the federal-state matching, local dedicated taxes an incentives for business and philanthropy could lead to models for providing adequate and sustainable funding for youth development. National intermediaries must work to cultivate this leadership at all levels of government, and at the grassroots, by creating constituencies.

Several states are taking the lead from California, Oregon and Illinois by offering state-sponsored retirement plans that encourage or require private sector employers to participate.

The plans are referred to as auto-IRAs because eligible workers are automatically enrolled, generally within 30 days of employment. The default contribution rate is typically 3-5% of a paycheck and the employee can stop, restart or transfer plan assets depending on their needs. Referred to as “public-private partnerships” by the Pew Charitable Trust, there is no cost to the employer. Proceeds are managed by a private financial firm management for a pre-determined fee. The plans are subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) like other sponsored pension and benefit plans.

This article provides an overview of the states that currently offer savings programs, as well as those that plan to do so in the future.

OregonSaves

Oregon was one of the first states to implement a savings program for employees of small businesses who are not otherwise eligible for a workplace sponsored pension plan. Titled OregonSaves, it is a state retirement program that is available to an employer or an individual planning for the future.

OregonSaves had almost $57 million in assets as of mid-2020. Employee contributions averaged $127 to $135 per month as of that time.

Enrollment is automatic for employees, with contributions being made through payroll deductions. Each employee account is portable and can be moved from one job to another.

All Oregon employers, regardless of employee size, must facilitate the State’s program for their employees if they do not offer an employer-sponsored retirement plan. The plan is working with small employers to make the process as simple as possible.

CalSavers

CalSavers is available to California workers whose employers do not offer a workplace retirement plan, self-employed individuals, and others who want to increase their savings. Plan participants contribute to an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) that belongs to them.

California employers with more than 50 employees must register with CalSavers by June 30, 2021 if they do not already sponsor a retirement plan. Registration is available to all California employers with at least five employees.

The CalSavers program opened statewide in July 2019 and had $4.3 million in assets as of mid-2020. On average, participating employees contribute $105 to $120 monthly. Like the Oregon plan, the default savings rate is 5% of the employee’s pay and employees are automatically enrolled after 30 days of employment. They can stop, restart or transfer plan participation at any time if they change employers.

CalSavers Retirement Savings Program is designed to simplify employer participation with no employer fees, no fiduciary responsibility, and minimal ongoing responsibilities. Employers that fail to offer participation in the plan as required are subject to fines.

In May 2021, a federal appeals court in San Francisco dismissed a legal challenge to the CalSavers plan.

Illinois Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program

Illinois launched its Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program in 2018. It is a state-facilitated retirement program that is open to employees who work for an eligible employer as well as other employees who want to enroll independent of their employer. Approximately 32,000 Illinois employees saved $8.5 million in the first year of the Illinois Secure Choice program, according to state reports.

The Illinois Secure Choice account is a Roth IRA for the employee. The default savings rate is 5% of gross pay. Employees are automatically enrolled through payroll contributions after 30 days of employment. An employee can opt out at any time. Plan participants are charged a fee of 0.75% of assets per year ($0.75 for every $100 saved), which pays for program administration and operating expenses.

The Illinois Secure Choice had 5,544 registered employers as of May 2020. There are no fees for employers to facilitate the program and employers cannot make contributions to their employee accounts. Employers serve a limited role as a facilitator. As of November, 2019, employers with 25 or more employees that have been in business for two years or more are required to participate in the program. Employers that already offer an employer-sponsored retirement plan are exempt from this legislation.

New Jersey Secure Choice Savings

The “New Jersey Secure Choice Savings Act,” was signed into law in March 2019, with a two-year time frame scheduled to take effect in March 2021.

The Act requires employers that have been in business for two years and have 25 or more employees to participate in a retirement savings program administered through automatic payroll deductions. Private sector employees of businesses of any size are able to participate in the retirement savings program. Smaller or newer employers could join voluntarily. Failure to comply will result in fines to the employer.

Employees will be automatically enrolled at the leve of a 3% paycheck contribution. The annual contribution maximum is $6,000 for those under 50 years old, and $7,000 for those 50 or older.

Connecticut Secure Choice Savings Plan

Connecticut employers with five or more employees must offer a retirement plan to employees, and private employers with four or fewer employees may choose to do so. Employees are auto-enrolled within 120 days of employment, and employees must be notified of their rights within 30 days. Employers are not permitted to make contributions to the program.

The Connecticut Retirement Security Authority, a quasi-public agency, was formed in 2016 to oversee the program. The state estimates that as many as 600,000 employees may benefit from the plan.