Author: Atlantic BT

Uncover Your Most Important Browser Rendering Issues in 6 Easy Steps

Somewhere out there, someone can’t use your website. Believe it or not, there are dozens of bugs on your website right now. You may think that your site works perfectly and renders beautifully from the latest Chrome on your Thunderbolt display, but someone out there is bringing up your website using a device or a browser you didn’t know was still alive. You don’t want to know what they will see.

That person might be a potential client who was directed to your website or landing page via a very well-orchestrated marketing campaign. Fine, so what’s the worst thing that could happen? They arrive at a destination that is not at all the beautifully designed website you intended for them to see and you have just kissed a potential client goodbye.

The way I see it, whether you’re overspending on paid traffic or under-converting, you’re losing money. You can throw more money into your advertising pit, or you can chose to do more with the traffic you’ve already attracted. Most people don’t need help figuring out how to spend more money, so I’ll spend some time helping you with the latter here.

The Testing Tools

You can’t realistically account for each and every device and browser version on the planet. What you can do is come close enough to affect your bottom line without investing a ton of money. Two tools that will help you with your quest:

CrossBrowserTesting
BrowserStack

Both of these tools let you see your website through the eyes of any visitor or potential client, even those who are loading your homepage from a Safari 7.0 browser on their iPhone 4s.
BUT WAIT—before you launch down the rabbit hole of pulling up every possible browser/device combination, you’ll want to figure out which ones really matter.

The Pre-Test

So, which browsers and devices should you be testing? For this we turn to analytics. There are loads of analytics tools out there to get the job done, but for those of you who use Google Analytics, here are some instructions:

Go to your Google Analytics Reporting Dashboard and set the timeframe for the past 30 days.
Go to Audience and under Technology, select Browser & OS.
Scroll down to the browser versions and make a list of the top converting browsers.
Still in the Go To Audience category, select Technology under Mobile category.
Make a separate list of the top converting devices.
Repeat the steps for the past 60-day, 90-day, and 180-day timeframes to measure the consistency of your results.

Here’s an example of a table that you could build to help you organize your data:

Browser	Version	%Sessions	Goal 1 CR	Goal 2 CR
I.E.		56.04%
	11.0	55.97%	96.41%	97.00%
	9.0	18.02%	0.64%	0.41%
	10.0	15.83%	2.94%	2.60%

Chrome		26.86%
	44.0.2403.157	34.38%	46.75%	38.86%
	45.0.2454.85	15.28%	7.13%	22.91%
	45.0.2454.93	14.68%	21.59%	17.24%

Safari		7.82%
	8.0	53.22%	33.33%	7.16%
	7.0	9.60%	33.33%	60.37%
	9.0	8.88%	0.00%	0.00%

Make a separate list for mobile devices:

Device	%Sessions	Goal 1 CR	Goal 2 CR
Apple iPhone	40.19%	9.09%	1.93%
Apple iPad	13.52%	9.09%	16.30%
Samsung Galaxy S5	11.1%	81.82%	81.76%
Samsung Galaxy S4	1.32%	0.00%	0.00%

Once you’ve got the data, you can raise some important questions. For example, why does your Goal 1 conversion rate drop significantly for I.E. 9 sessions? If a large percentage of sessions are taking place on that browser, it may be worth looking into. On mobile devices, maybe you’ll want to dig deeper into why Apple devices convert less than the Android devices. It could be a rendering problem.

By the way, don’t judge—the issue isn’t whether or not people should be using an older browser or device, but how you can improve their experience with whatever technology your visitors are using. This is about data, not opinions. Don’t make assumptions about which browsers your visitors are using or how much they could be converting until you get the data.

Now that you have your list of suspects, plug the browser and device info into the browser testing tools I mentioned earlier and see what comes out. If you notice any issues, they are probably related to:

JavaScript errors
Browser compatibility with vendor-specific CSS styles
HTML/CSS validation errors (the W3C Validation Service can help with this)

Fix these issues or get a Front-End Developer to do it. Bottom line, don’t risk losing sales over fixable browser rendering issues. On the flip side, there is a pink elephant in the room: the performance of older browsers is inherently diminished, which also affects usability and conversions. To learn how to tackle this issue, check out my blog post on improving the speed of your website.

June 9, 2016

Quenching the Thirst for Trivia: A Thirsty Thursday Recap

Questions were asked. Answers were given. Dreams were shattered, and a winner emerged.

“I was pretty sure my team was going to crush it,” said ABT Design Manager Corey Brinkmann, “But as soon as I learned the third round focused on 90s music, I knew we had it in the bag. My pop culture knowledge peaked in the Clinton era.”

Winning team Believeland could not wait to don their ABT attire in celebration.

Corey’s team Believeland walked away with a home field victory for Atlantic BT. Other members of the winning team included Andrea Osborn, Josh Lockwood, Curtis Martin, Christine Martin, and Lauren Lockwood. In addition to the admiration of their friends and coworkers, Believeland won new Thirsty Thursday trucker hats and bags of ABT accessories.

Fresh off his runner-up finish in Tech Toss, ABT Application Architect Chris Duffy turned in another almost-heroic performance, as his team Show Me on the Doll came in third place overall.

Chris Duffy’s team had trouble differentiating the Shakespeare of rappers from actual Shakespeare.

“We were heading for a win, but that Tupac or Shakespeare round killed us.” Duffy said. “I guess that’s what we get for not having any English major rap experts on our team.”

Thirsty Thursday Trivia had four rounds, covering everything from famous drunks in world history to the college majors of elite athletes. Allan Maule, ABT Content Strategist and host of Trivia Night, wrote and delivered all the questions for the event.

Trivia Host Allan Maule challenged the audience to an unexpected sports category.

“My primary goal was to provide a good mix of challenge and fun with my questions so no crazed trivia taker charged the MC area. After all, trivia isn’t a contact sport.” Allan said. “The most important thing was that we crushed our fundraising goal for our two causes.”

The first Thirsty Thursday Trivia night raised more than $700 for the Molly Ann Gries Foundation and for the family of Lincoln King. This puts Atlantic BT well on its way toward the $3000 fundraising goal for all of the Thirsty Thursday events.

The Atlantic BT family braved a humid night to help those in need.

“We at ABT are blown away by the generosity and support of our community,” said Eileen Allen, VP of Experience and Strategy. “With five more Thirsty Thursdays to go, we’re so excited to see how much we can raise for these two charities that mean so much to the ABT family.”

The next Thirsty Thursday event will be the return of Tech Toss. This single-elimination cornhole tournament will be hosted at Atlantic BT on June 23. Be sure to check the Thirsty Thursday homepage for more details on this not-to-be-missed competition.

More Photos from Thirsty Thursday Trivia

June 6, 2016
Free Beer Is Never a Trivial Pursuit

Join Us for ABT Trivia This Thirsty Thursday

Register and enter your team now! Only 10 Spots available!

The tech industry isn’t about knowing everything—it’s about knowing what that the competition doesn’t. Just like any other competitive market, it’s about using information to separate yourself from the herd and make progress.

But it’s important not to let competition get in the way of community. That’s why Atlantic BT is hosting its first Trivia Night at its Thirsty Thursday party on June 2. The event will benefit two worthy causes by providing an opportunity for industry professionals to come together and enjoy some good food, craft beer, and of course, a little healthy competition.

“Nobody who’s ever been #1 has been perfect,” says Victor Short, Senior UX Strategist at ABT. “Being the best is about going above and beyond. It’s about raising the bar. That’s why I’m hitting these Jeopardy reruns so hard. Alex is going to guide me to victory. I can feel it.”

There is a $5–10 suggested donation per participant that will be split evenly between the Molly Ann Gries Foundation and the Legends for Lincoln King GoFundMe. Both of these causes were founded by families in the ABT community to benefit young children.

The Molly Ann Gries Foundation

Molly Ann Gries, whose uncle Matt Deal works as a Senior Digital Strategist for ABT, passed away in May 2015 from ‘positional asphyxiation’ just two months before her first birthday. Since then, Matt and his family have been organizing efforts to help prevent future tragedies like this.

“Losing your child is the worst possible thing a parent can go through,” says Meagan Gries, Matt’s sister-in-law and Molly’s mother, “Finding out it was preventable is just about unbearable. Since May 4th, it has become our mission to help other families avoid the same heartache we’ve suffered.”

The foundation recently partnered with Snuza to give away baby monitors and breathable-crib mattresses. They are also working on a collaboration with a local hospital to distribute a small children’s book that explains safe sleep, as well as some literature about their story and what their foundation does.

“We’re hoping that by sharing a personal story, people will realize that these things do in fact happen which is why it’s so important to take measures to reduce risks,” Meagen explains.

More information on the Molly Ann Gries Foundation can be found here.

Legends for Lincoln King

Lincoln King is another child who has had a significant impact on us here at ABT. Lincoln, who was diagnosed shortly after birth with Microcephaly and ‘Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum’, also known as ACC, suffers from frequent seizures and developmental disorders, but has an optimistic future.

Kendall King, Lincoln’s father and Senior Digital Strategist at ABT, says that a new diet, while strict and demanding, has lead to notable improvements in Lincoln’s condition.

“His medications and the ketogenic diet have significantly reduced the amount of seizures he has on a regular basis,” Kendall explains. “And when he has long periods without seizure activity we can really see improvements in his motor skill development. Every day has its challenges, but we’ve been blessed with a really great community. Friends and family have been with us in Lincoln’s corner since day one, and we couldn’t be more appreciative.”

More information on the Legends for Lincoln King GoFundMe can be found here.

Trivial Competition for Great Causes

“It’s important to do things for the right reasons,” says Allan Maule, Content Strategist at ABT and host of the Trivia Night event. “I don’t need much of an excuse to grill out, have a beer after work, and show off my useless knowledge, but knowing it’s to raise awareness for good causes makes running an event like this even better.”

So come join us and bring your whole crew! Entry is limited to 10 teams. Trivia participants can either come with a team of 3-6 people, or join a team once they arrive. And while participation in the trivia challenge isn’t required to enjoy free food and craft beer, we ask that you register ahead of time to ensure that everyone is provided for. Register today to reserve your spot!

Enter the Thirsty Thursday Trivia Night

Thursday, June 2, 5pm (Trivia begins at 6pm)

4509 Creedmoor Road, Raleigh (next to Crabtree Valley Mall)

Beer and food will be provided by Atlantic BT

May 31, 2016
5 Ways to Email Market Like Obama
Obama, whatever your feelings about him are, has a rock solid internet presence. From Buzzfeed videos to snarky tweets to tumblr posts to even reddit AMA’s, he is in command of the POTUS brand (or at least his marketing team is). Although he’s strong in social media, his emails are quite the powerhouse as well.

As Joshua Green reported in on the 2012 election email campaign, supporters were surprised by emails from Obama with subject lines like “Join me for dinner?”, “It doesn’t have to be this way” and even just “Wow.” As much as these subject lines were mocked on websites like The Hairpin and lampooned on ‘The Daily Show’, the emails got results. Obama raised $690 million online, most of that coming from his emails. His winning subject line “I will be outspent” raised more than $2.6 million alone.

So what does this mean for your email marketing campaigns? Maybe it’s not realistic to expect your email marketing to earn running-for-president money, but if you take these five lessons from 2012 Obama and you could see more clicks, growth, and engagement in your 2016 email campaign.

1. Make Your Subscribers Curious

One of Obama’s most successful emails had a subject line of one word: “Hey”. No context. No explanation. Just “Hey.”

Still, people opened it. Why? They were curious. Harnessing curiosity is the greatest thing your subject line can do. As Mike Lehrer explains in “The Itch of Curiosity,” when we have a gap in our knowledge between what we know and want to know,

“This gap has emotional consequences: it feels like a mental itch, a mosquito bite on the brain. We seek out new knowledge because we that’s how we scratch the itch.”

Make your subscribers itchy. Write a subject line that they have to open instead of ignore. You don’t have to go as casual as Obama, but figure out what would make someone open that email. If it’s not “Wow”, engage interest by including sales and promotions in the subject line or hint how an included blog post could help “Unlock the Secret to Effective B2B Marketing”. Play with emotional appeals like “Rough day?” and “Don’t miss out!” or use clickbait-y, listicle style subjects like “10 reasons you’ll regret not opening this email”. If you get it right, you’ll get more opens and ultimately more conversions.

2. Give Back to the Subscriber

If you’ve ever gotten an email from Obama or any other candidate, you know that most fundraising emails provide some sort of freebie or opportunity to win a prize. Whether the donation gets you dinner with the President or swag like stickers and t-shirts, there is always something to gain. Before he dropped out of the race, even Jeb Bush told email subscribers “as an early Christmas present” December 2015 that they wouldn’t have to read a campaign email from him again—if they gave him a donation of $25.

Just like Obama and Jeb, you have to think:
- What can the customer gain from opening this email?
- What is something of value I can provide?
For Jeb, the most valuable product he could offer was simply him not being around, but you can take a different approach. If you put informative blog posts, e-books, or podcasts in your emails, customers can gain information as a product. If you add incentives like promo codes or discounts offered exclusively to email subscribers, you give them a reason to open the email and buy from you. These freebies, whether informational or more promotional, are great for inspiring curiosity and hopefully more sales.

3. Separate and Test

Just as Obama has different stump speeches for different types of constituents, you should test different email marketing efforts for different chunks of your audience. The marketing team for the 2012 campaign also took this approach, reportedly writing 18 versions of each email they sent. Amelia Showalter, the head of Obama’s digital analytics, reported that,

“We did extensive A-B testing not just on the subject lines and the amount of money we would ask people for but on the messages themselves and even the formatting”.

In that same article, the campaign’s email director Toby Fallsgraff actually admitted that,

“We were so bad at predicting what would win that it only reinforced the need to constantly keep testing, Every time something really ugly won, it would shock me: giant-size fonts for links, plain-text links vs. pretty ‘Donate’ buttons. Eventually we got to thinking, ‘How could we make things even less attractive?’ That’s how we arrived at the ugly yellow highlighting on the sections we wanted to draw people’s eye to.”

Even Obama’s team of specialists weren’t able to guess what the public would respond to. Take the guess work out. If you can test in demographics, you can really hone and figure out what your audiences need. And by doing some of these smaller, more focused campaigns, you can bring in more conversions. Separating out your audience and doing testing can extend your reach by working smarter, not harder.

4. Use Celebrity Power

Harness the power of ‘From’. You have the ability to give a name and add a personal touch to every marketing email you send. Obama, and this goes for any other candidate, often has emails coming from members of his family, Jon Carson, and even Beyonce. While you might not be able to send an email from Beyonce, you can change it up.

Try sending an email from someone in marketing or an expert that is hosting an event at your company. If you even just have emails say it’s from Amy, the CEO of the company, it adds a personal touch. If every email came from ‘The Obama Campaign’, there would be no curiosity. You know what this email is about. But an email from Beyonce, or Oprah? There’s no choice, you have to open that email.

Your team is probably made of all sorts of people, so let them all contribute. It will add a different focus to your emails and a personal appeal to vary your campaign.

5. Assemble Your Team

Obama doesn’t operate in a vacuum. He’s not operating all these campaigns by himself. Near the end of the campaign, he had a team of 20 writers working several hours a day on only testing and sending all of those emails. Seek help when you need it and use the technology you need to help you along the way. Tools like Mailchimp, SendInBlue, and Aweber all have analytics tools, the ability to make specialized mailing lists, or anything else you might need to conduct your own A/B Testing. Obama had marketing teams, volunteers to canvass for more supporters, and all sorts of people to help him. So don’t do it alone: bounce it off a friend, get someone to help, and who knows what you can accomplish.

As you assemble your team and add these best practices into your email strategy, Atlantic BT is here to help. Our marketing team can guide your email campaigns toward more opens, conversions, and engagements. That’s change you can believe in. Contact us and learn about our services.
May 27, 2016
Web Education: Preparing for GenZ

Connected!

I remember the first time an AOL CD-ROM appeared in my parent’s mailbox. It promised me thousands of minutes to connect with others through our computer. A computer, that up until that moment, had been used primarily for solitaire.

I patiently waited for the program to load. Nothing happened. Where was my Internet? I didn’t realize I needed a phone line to connect. I “borrowed” a phone cord from my parents room and figured out how to connect the computer’s modem to the phone jack. For the first time, I heard the strange sound of dial up, and the word “Connected!” appeared. I was online.

Learning to use the web has changed slightly since then. While everything in the past had to be self-taught, we can now get degrees or go to bootcamps to learn all kinds of Internet technology. Indeed, staying abreast of the latest techniques is a must for developers to do their jobs. Learning more about the latest technology trends led me to attend ConvergeSE, where I heard a keynote that blew my mind—Pamela Pavliscak’s talk on Gen Z and the Future of Technology.

As Pamela Pavliscak explained, GenZ is the first generation who are truly digital natives. They make up 25% of the population, representing how future technology users will navigate the web and expect applications and interfaces to work. By paying attention to how GenZ uses the Internet, we can both improve the quality of our own work and make future technology more accessible and useful going forward.

The Future of Community

The definition of community for GenZ is different from what I grew up with. My idea of a community was going to the park and seeing kids on the playground. Today, kids have fewer physical hangouts. Instead they hang out online in spaces like Twitch. These digital communities allow teens to have their own identities and play around with their social presence. Because GenZ uses the web to create a vast social community and develop real relationships online, their communities have the power to be both local and global.

What does this mean for the future of technology? It means we can control the context. This means allowing and encouraging GenZ to participate in grown-up conversations through technology. We also need to know how to protect ourselves and GenZ from turning toward Dark Social–the social sharing of content that occurs outside of what can be measured or tracked by web analytics. Because everything in Dark Social is anonymous, it often leads to bad (even illegal) behavior. To combat this, we have to promote a digital culture of openness that shifts how we identify ourselves and others through the web.

Communicate in All the Ways

GenZ’s communication style favors immediate, diverse, and ever-changing connections. For GenZ, phones are no longer for talking. GenZ spends more time texting and talking to Siri than they do talking to real people. They do not email. Why would they? An email isn’t real time. Emails don’t offer instant gratification or connection like text messaging or Snapchat. GenZ wants to create a memory and experience something together. This means they want to re-frame, reshape, and re-experience the moment. For them, a memory isn’t something that is set in stone. It’s a moment in time that is captured and built on.

The future of technology allows us to communicate in all the ways: to convey a mood, to show rather than describe how we feel, to constantly stay connected, even when we have nothing to say. We have to learn how to incorporate all kinds of technology into our communication, from voice to texting to video capture. GenZ communicates in bite sizes. They communicate in symbols. They speak in emoticons and emojis. The symbols provide context and create subtext for their private conversations. If we can understand what these symbols and shortcuts mean in our language, we can use the right visual and textual vocabulary in our technology and design.

Default to Private

GenZ often uses technology as a way to escape the everyday. This explains why they are usually the early adopters of new social networks. For them, new tech trends are like new wearables. For example, when I was a kid, everyone had slap bracelets. If you didn’t have one, you weren’t cool. For GenZ, being connected to the latest tech trend is their slap bracelet. They don’t want to be the only kid in school who isn’t on Twitch. GenZ is constantly online, but that doesn’t mean they want you to know everything about them—they understand how to hide and limit who can see their posts using privacy settings.

What’s our lesson? Educating yourself on how to use privacy settings is imperative. We are stepping away from wanting everyone to know everything to only wanting to share with those that we know. This trend will lead to more social networks adapting stronger privacy settings. Besides affecting how we advertise and communicate on these networks, this also means we need to learn how to protect ourselves from what we share. As we continue to create our own social brands using technology, we need to know how to portray ourselves without losing our privacy. And when we design new communication technology, we should make user information private by default.

Leave it Open

Being creative and playing is about combining off-screen and on-screen. GenZ wants to be able to create. They want to to see what they are creating on-screen. Zs want to do anything but read on a device. They want to tell stories and they are using their devices to do this, by creating art with their screens. They create short animations through different apps. They build entire movies out of photos. They do this, not for themselves, but for their family and friends.

When designing for the future, we need to leave our platforms and technology open. GenZ doesn’t want the story to end. They want to make their own choices. If there is an ending, it doesn’t appeal to them. We need to design for GenZ’s short attention spans, allowing them to operate multiple screens at the same time.

We also need to learn how to build for the worst case scenario. For example, GenZ cares less about having the latest technology than just being connected. Growing up, they typically inherited older devices from parents or siblings, so they became experts at connecting with slower tools. Our lesson? If you’re building for mobile, you need to develop apps that work well on older devices instead of focusing entirely on state-of-the-art smartphones.

Understanding Our Future

I thought back to my first online experience. No one showed me how to connect to the web. I was lucky to have a computer. I had to teach myself everything that I learned about technology.

This is not the case for GenZ. They will never need to figure out a dial-up modem or wait to connect. They were born with online technology, and navigating it has become primary for them. And one day, GenZ will be the ones who provide us with our future web education. Zs will be our teachers and we will be their students. But before that happens, we can learn from how GenZ uses the web: making our technology more secure, more connective, and more open.

What are your experiences with how GenZ uses the Internet or web-based technology? What are you learning from this new generation’s preferences and practices? Let me know in the comments below.

May 19, 2016
Who Won Tech Toss 2016?

“There is no competition more intense than grown men throwing sacks at each other, hoping to hit painted panels of wood,” said Atlantic BT Front-End Developer Dave Dekker, “Just one man’s opinion.”

This opinion belonged to far more than one man, as more than 100 attendees gathered at Atlantic BT for our first ever Tech Toss cornhole competition.

ABT Front-End Developer Dave Dekker prepares for a targeted toss.

From IBM to Durham-based startups like Industrial, tech companies across the Triangle sent representatives to compete for their chance to take home a trophy. Besides the 64 participants in the cornhole tournament, many others came to enjoy craft beer from regional breweries and some great food from the grill.

“As a former triathlete, I prefer carb-loading to cornhole,” said UI Designer Ricardo Cortes, “It’s really awesome to be part of a company that throws great parties where I can have a great time without hurling sacks of grain at my coworkers.”

With so many participants, the Tech Toss tournament had many close matches. Despite his confidence going into the tourney, Senior Marketing Analyst Kendall King was eliminated early.

Not even this graceful toss technique could prevent Kendall’s early elimination.

“The sack falls where it falls. For me, that fall just wasn’t on the cornhole board,” Kendall said, “I’ll be back next time. Mark my words.”

As the competition intensified, the tossing continued past sundown. When only two teams remained, the skies darkened with rainclouds and the tournament moved indoors. The winning team would either be Atlantic BT’s Chris Duffy and Jeremy Wiggins, or Industrial’s Mark Nesbit and Joe Holthaus.

Mark Nesbit and Jeremy Wiggins each try to ignore the other’s intimidating gaze.

After a series of frenzied sack throwing, Industrial’s team took home the trophy for first place in the Atlantic BT Tech Toss. Duffy and Wiggins of Atlantic BT placed second, and another Industrial team composed of Christopher Lawrence and Jonathan Hodges came in third.

With a toss like this, how could Chris Duffy lose?

“No one at Atlantic BT ever plans to come in second, but I’m proud of how well Wiggins and I chucked those sacks. Even so, the real winners were definitely Band Together. They were the reason we competed in the first place,” Duffy said.

ABT President Don Lockwood presents the big check to Band Together.

As the Raleigh nonprofit benefited by Tech Toss, Band Together received $1,000 to aid in their local work to advance education and alleviate poverty. Atlantic BT has sponsored Band Together for numerous fundraisers in the past, and Tech Toss is just the latest instance of ABT supporting their projects.

ABT’s Tech Toss was also the first Thirsty Thursday of 2016. Atlantic BT began Thirsty Thursday last year as part of its community outreach, drawing local technology and Internet experts to share drinks at a monthly cookout. To join ABT for the next Thirsty Thursday on June 2, RSVP on our event page.

May 16, 2016