Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Author: Atlantic BT

  • What Beyonce and Google Did in February

    The title of this blog post may have you wondering: What do Queen Bey and the king of search engines, Google, have in common? The answer is unexpected releases.

    Since the surprise release of Beyonce’s visual album in 2013, most of her fans are accustomed to unannounced music dropping. This month, on the day before her scheduled Super Bowl performance, Beyonce surprised her fans with a new song and video posted to her YouTube page. She followed the unexpected release with the announcement of a Summer concert tour, which added to the media frenzy and level of public hype.

    Taking a page right out of the Beyonce playbook, Google delivered an unexpected release of their own last Friday which made big news. Google released a revised SERP (search engine results page) layout which removes sidebar ads from the right side of the page and reformats paid ad positions. This new SERP caused quite a stir among digital marketers and advertisers everywhere. Atlantic BT is already monitoring Google’s changes and taking steps to keep our customers’ campaigns successful. However, if you don’t have an agency partner, here’s what you need to know:

    1) R.I.P to right-hand ads. In the past (that is, prior to Feb. 19), paid ads were shown in three locations on the Google search results page. These locations included above, below, and to the right of organic search results. What Google has done through their recent update is increase the number of ads shown above organic search results and remove one of the locations completely (right-hand ads). Now when you search for a term, the results page will look like this:

    Beyonce_tickets

    2) Organic got the bump. If an organic strategy had successfully placed your organization in the top organic position of Google results, you’ve been bumped. The former spot for top position in organic results is now the fourth position for paid advertising. Organically-ranking first position results have been bumped down, so they now appear below the fold on desktop search.

    3) It isn’t costing you…YET. To date, there hasn’t been a cost increase in CPC rates. While it’s still too early to tell, Google’s new SERP could lay ground for additional changes. The good news is the release hasn’t changed the CPC or PPC ad inventory overnight. The bad news is some marketers expect an increase in cost due to a reduction in the number of ad spaces. Google’s elimination of right-hand ads decreases available ad “real estate” from 11 positions to only seven. Considering the laws of supply and demand, you can understand why less ad space among the same amount of advertisers could eventually increase CPC rates.

    For the time being, the best move for those advertising on Google is to not be alarmed. Pay attention to any updates in the news about search updates and make adjustments in your account if you notice an impact in your campaign’s performance.

    Want to Know More?

    If you have additional questions about Google’s recent changes, contact a Google Partner like Atlantic BT to assist you. In addition to keeping our customers informed about industry trends, Atlantic BT’s digital marketing team generates strategies that make a difference in our clients’ online initiatives. We work hard to create conversion-oriented campaigns that are affordable, meaningful, and impactful to your bottom-line. We’d love to meet you and help you think through your next strategy, so contact us if you’d like to learn more.

  • How to Select a Public Cloud Provider That is Right for Your Business

    Last week, Verizon startled the IT markets by announcing that it was shutting down two of its public cloud services on April 12, 2016. All Verizon clients with accounts in these services must have their data moved to other services by that date or risk losing everything.

    This has, no doubt, left some clients to scramble to find other solutions lest they put their businesses and customers at risk. But beyond the immediate need to relocate data and applications, this issue exposes a larger question: how can businesses find a public cloud services provider that they can trust and work with for the long term?

    Choosing a Public Cloud Provider

    Today, more businesses than ever are moving their data and critical business applications into public cloud environments. According to Gartner, “total annual spending on public cloud services will nearly double within four years … to over $282 billion in 2018.” With that much money flowing in the public cloud space and with companies like Verizon struggling to make a public cloud work, choosing the right public cloud provider is critical.

    In the public cloud provider space, there are three main players: Amazon, Google and Microsoft. And while each has its own unique value proposition, they are all strong players and are likely to be around for a long time to come. So aligning yourself with one of these three providers can be a strong move that will secure the future of your data and critical business applications.

    Selecting a Public Cloud Infrastructure Partner

    So, which of the big three is right for your business? Naturally, that depends on what you need from your public cloud account. According to Matt Lemke, Atlantic BT’s VP of Technology, “you need make a conscious decision about the elements that are important to you. Factors such as a simple queuing service, email tie-ins and automated management of resource consumption are important to consider when making the decision.”

    Unfortunately, there is no cut and dried way to make the selection. But working with an experienced cloud services solutions partner can simplify the decision-making process. When looking for public cloud partner, Lemke recommends considering the following questions:

    1. Is the partner locked into a specific vendor? A potential partner should have demonstrated experience in each of the three platforms. If the partner only works in one vertical, you are at risk of having your data and applications locked in with only one vendor. And that could limit your future growth options.
    2. Does the partner have experience with development on that public cloud platform? Some partners are very strong at managing resource allocation and monitoring the public cloud environment on your behalf. But the strongest partners also have the ability to develop applications within the platform you choose. Look for companies that have experienced IT architects that are fluent in the platform and can point to specific projects that they have worked on within the various public cloud platforms.
    3. What kind of ongoing support will the public cloud partner provide? Moving a critical business application to the public cloud does not end once the migration is complete. You will need ongoing support to monitor resource allocation and to help you control spending. An experienced, qualified public cloud partner can offer customized solutions that will meet your needs to maintain your public cloud environment and give you peace of mind in this critical area.

    It is both an exciting and scary time for businesses considering how to secure the future of their critical business systems and data when it comes to the cloud. But finding the right public cloud infrastructure partner is a critical first step to alleviating those fears. If you’d like to know more about moving your business to the cloud, download our guide, “Getting Started with the Cloud.” This guide will help you better understand some of the decisions you need to make as you begin your transition to the public cloud.

  • A Happy Accident: Why Your Company’s 404 Page Matters

    Someone made a mistake.

    Maybe it was a typo in the URL. Maybe he followed a broken link. Maybe she was searching for a hidden page, and the search was for naught. In any case, she tried to access a page on your domain that did not exist.

    What’s her reward? No, I’m not kidding. This visitor took the time to go to your site, search your content, and engage with your brand. How are you going to show your appreciation on the 404 page that appears?

    It’s easy to treat your company’s 404 page as an afterthought, a tiny element of your digital presence that ultimately doesn’t matter. However, every touch point with a potential customer is an invaluable opportunity, and the special circumstances surrounding your 404 page make it especially important.

    If a customer sees your 404 page, someone made a mistake—and how you react to it tells that customer a lot about your company, your brand, and your service. Here are some ways to use your company’s 404 page to your advantage (with my favorite examples in hyperlinks):

    Best Practices for Your Company’s 404 Page

    Present the Right Attitude—Every time your 404 page loads (outside of testing), something went wrong. In awkward moments like this, it’s important to acknowledge the mistake without blaming the visitor or escalating the tension that can come from an error. Humor is a proven way to strike this balance—a gentle joke or funny image accompanied by a “something went wrong” message can make your visitors feel at home on your site even when they don’t find what they want.

    If your brand would rather be serious, it’s a good idea to make your error message fit your company messaging. For example, a big data company focusing on customer analytics might use a 404 message like “Even the best analytics can’t find what isn’t there. Sorry, but the page you’re looking for does not exist.” This offers a gentle plug for the company’s value while letting the visitor know that an error occurred.

    Adapt Your 404 Page to the State of Your Site—If you just redesigned your site’s look and navigation, remember to update your 404 page to match the new design. It’s also a good idea to include a message on the new 404 page reminding visitors that you just redesigned your site, so some URLs may be different. In addition, you can use this message to invite visitors to comment on the new site navigation in order to guide future development.

    Helps visitors find what they’re looking for—Chances are, whoever landed on your 404 page was trying to find a specific page on your site. To get this visitor back on track, provide links to the most popular pages on your domain, such as your blog or eCommerce page. You can also provide a search tool or steer the user to your contact section so he can tell you what he was trying to find when he landed on the 404 page.

    Learn from the kind of pages your customers wanted to find—A broken link is rarely a garbled string of letters. By analyzing the key terms your customers are trying to find when they land on your 404 page, you can gain insight into the kind of pages your customers want. For example, if multiple customers keep trying to access a /FAQ page on your domain, you should consider adding that kind of page to your site. And if a visitor landed on your 404 page because of a misspelled link on your domain, you should fix that link immediately.

    ——————————

    Because your website is the digital face of your business, you want every element of your site to represent your brand—even when something goes wrong. While your 404 page may seem like a tiny aspect of your digital presence, it represents a small but powerful component of your brand strategy. By showing that your company cares about every public-facing element of your business, your customers will have greater confidence in your ability to listen to and meet their needs. To learn more about how to design your digital presence to engage your ideal customers, visit the Atlantic BT page on creating a strong user experience.

  • Building Key Performance Indicator Environments that Work

    Earlier this summer, I had the opportunity to speak at the 2015 Digital Marketing for Business Conference. My presentation focused on building key performance indicator (KPI) environments as part of your marketing structure. It’s an important topic at Atlantic BT and one we spend a great deal of time on. It’s also a topic I’ve written a good bit about in the past in posts such as “Why Google Analytics Doesn’t Give Us Answers.” Our clients invest in digital marketing platforms, strategies and campaigns designed to help them transform their business and they need to make certain they can effectively evaluate the results. As part of our work, we use a process we’ve developed and a set of tools that we rely on to create helpful KPIs. In this post, I’ll provide a glimpse into what that process looks like and how we’ve helped clients build KPI environments that work.

    KPIs: Measuring Outcomes Not Activities

    At the outset of my presentation, I reminded the audience of a piece of advice I was given while in graduate school: “Measure outcomes, not activities.” This small nugget of wisdom reminds us that the purpose of any system is to move the needle. To make an impact. To accomplish a goal.

    And while activities are important, if you make them the sole focus of your measures you will likely miss the bigger picture. For example, accumulating a certain number of likes on your social media posts, producing a certain number of blog posts or garnering a certain number of impressions in a paid search campaign is good, but those are activities and they don’t tell us if we really achieved our goals. By contrast, getting your audience to sign up for a free trial, purchase your product or download more information as a result of those activities is far more valuable. And that’s what you should focus your measurement efforts on.

    The Four Pillars of Atlantic BT’s KPI Framework

    As a technology consulting agency, we invest a great deal in our marketing strategy and we need to measure our impact. To do this, we’ve constructed a KPI environment build on four key pillars:

    • The Client Canvas
    • Personas
    • The Content Marketing Engine
    • Selecting the Correct Analytics Platform

    The Client Canvas

    We starting the development of a KPI environment, you need to understand as much about the business environment as possible. What are the business drivers? What are the stumbling blocks? What opportunities exist in the marketplace? Who are the primary and secondary customers? By identifying this information, you will gain a much greater understanding of the business model and the critical points where prospects become leads. These become the foundation of the KPIs you’ll focus your efforts on.

    Personas

    One of the keys to success in marketing is tailoring your message to your audience. If you talk about what is important to the audience and show how you can help solve their problems, you will have a much better chance of success in the marketplace.

    At Atlantic BT, we specialize in developing personas as part of our client engagements and it is an important part of our marketing program, too. Typically, personas give a name and a face to a particular segment of the target audience. Our team, however, takes personas one step further. We create full-on profiles that describe a member of the audience segment, their preferences, their perspective, their background and what influences them. We even go so far as to use a photo that helps us keep in mind what this audience member may look like. This information becomes a valuable point of reference for our marketing campaigns. We can keep in mind exactly who we are writing for, what we are trying to say to them and what it may take to motivate them to act.

    Personas are an integral part of our KPI environment as we are able to break out our conversion data by persona. This helps us determine whether or not we are connecting with the audiences we want to talk with.

    The Content Marketing Engine

    We are firm believers in content marketing. Content marketing is the process of sharing what you know with your audience to help them make informed decisions. Content marketing typically leads to much higher levels of engagement with your audience and creates room for conversations with potential customers.

    On the surface, content marketing might seem easy. Just create content and put it out onto the Web and your audience will find you, right? Wrong. Content marketing requires an approach that balances creating the kind of content that might interest your audience and finding the right distribution channels to get it in front of them. To guide our marketing efforts, we use a framework I call the Content Marketing Engine that brings balance and order to the content marketing efforts. And while the details of the CME merit more time and space than I have in this blog post, I’ve found the CME to be very valuable to creating optimal KPI environments.

    The CME helps us create healthy KPI environments because it allows us to plan for and distribute content in specific channels. And once we know where the content is to be distributed, we know which channels to monitor and what data sources we need to pull from to evaluate the health of our marketing campaigns. In many respects, the CME is the skeletal framework for our KPI dashboards.

    Analytics Platforms

    The final piece of the KPI puzzle is selecting the correct analytics platform. As you can imagine, with content moving in lots of different places, engaging with a wide-range of audiences and tied to specific business needs, lots and lots of data will be generated by a number of different systems. Pulling that data together in a unified view is critical. I view analytics platforms on a continuum based on need and level of maturity. On the low end of the scale is a tool like Google Analytics (GA). GA is great for monitoring your Web site and can do some fairly sophisticated things to evaluate the impact of your marketing campaigns in areas such as social media, email marketing and PPC advertising.

    As campaigns grow more sophisticated, you may find you need to combine other data sources beyond what Google Analytics can provide to get a well-rounded view of your marketing efforts. In those instances, I turn to a tool called Cyfe. Cyfe is a dashboard that unifies different data sources and provides a very slick presentation that can be shared throughout your marketing team and across the organization with those that need to keep tabs on progress. It can even be shared directly with clients and put up on TV screens within your offices.

    The last stop on the continuum are the reporting tools available within the marketing automation platforms. Marketing automation tools make it possible to deploy fairly complex, large-scale marketing campaigns that span long periods of time. And some of the leading marketing automation tools like Hubspot and Marketo make available dashboards that are highly customizable based on business needs, personas and your content distribution channels. As a result, it is easy to see why these are the pinnacle of analytics dashboards. They give you a great summary of what’s going on in your business.

    The End Result: Key Performance Indicators That Work

    As I shared with the audience during my presentation, there are a lot of elements and a good bit of work that goes into building a solid, working KPI environment. At Atlantic BT, we regularly evaluate our KPIs to make sure they are telling us what we need to know about our marketing efforts, and we make adjustments as our campaigns grow and change. The end result is a KPI environment that works for us.  

  • Using Retrospectives in the Deployment Process

    Recently, I have taken ownership of the deployment process at Atlantic BT. We have had some issues with communication, consistency and flat out failures. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror and face the facts; we have to improve.

    We spend the majority of our projects in the trenches. We workshop with our clients, we design, we code, we test. The deployment is all about the unveiling; it’s time to show the world what you have done.You owe it to your customer and to your team to finish it right. The goal is for the deployment to go smoothly and pop a cork when it’s done.

    Incorporating Agile Concepts in the Deployment Process

    I like to borrow Agile concepts and use them in different ways. A stand-up is great for daily communication, identifying roadblocks and simply getting everyone on the same page. We make good use of stand-ups during our development projects at Atlantic BT, but they can also be used in other parts of our work because they present a rhythmic opportunity to communicate

    With that in mind, consider these questions:

    • Where do you need to improve?
    • What process is causing you the most headaches?
    • In your business segment, at what do you want to be known for being the best?

    When I think about these three questions, my go-to solution is a retrospective. A retrospective is about gathering data, discussing possible actions and then doing something. At Atlantic BT we ask three critical questions as part of our retrospectives:

    What went well?

    When something isn’t going well it’s very easy to focus on what is wrong. We cannot forget our victories, even the minor ones. These victories lay the foundation for future awesomeness!

    What didn’t go well?

    It’s common to fall into the trap of thinking of this category as ‘our failures’. It’s hard to look into the mirror and face your demons and admit that you have problems. If you are able to remove judgment from this section you will find it very effective. Use “I” statements like: “I notice that we lost momentum when the QA server went down” instead of “You shut down the QA server and slowed us down.”

    What are we going to DO to improve?

    It’s time for the ideas to flow. Talk about what is the most valuable change you can make to be better. It doesn’t have to be 10 things, it can be one. The most important part is that it gets done. Decide what to do and then set the accountability:

    • What problem(s) are we trying to solve?
    • What will be done?
    • Who will do it?
    • When will it be done?
    • When will there be a follow up?

    Retrospectives are great because you can use it for just about any process.

    Solving Atlantic BT’s Deployment Challenges

    After taking over responsibility for Atlantic BT’s deployments, I immediately implemented retrospectives as a part of our deployment process. In fact, there are now 3 parts to a deployment for us: the pre-deployment meeting, the deployment itself and the deployment retrospective. With each iteration we are analyzing the good, the bad and the areas of improvement.

    Each team member brings a unique perspective and approach to the meeting, therefore they must attend the retrospective. I have noticed that when our team members are challenged to improve, they rise to the occasion. They may suggest a simple change that can be done immediately or a complex change that requires a significant time investment. As a team, we discuss the value in each suggestion and decide what will be done. We are careful not to commit to completing too many action items with each iteration. We look for items that can be done with confidence before the next deployment. In a short time we have seen the creation of checklists, an alternative deployment technique and a communication protocol created.

    Our goal is to have perfect deployments. Downtime will be at as close to zero as possible, communication with all parties will be consistent and clear. While we have already made significant improvements, we still have further to go. But with each iteration we draw a little closer to perfection. And that’s a win for both Atlantic BT and our clients.

    About Dan Beard

    Dan Beard Atlantic BTDan Beard is the Director of Software Development at Atlantic BT. With more than 19 years of experience in software development, Dan’s focus has been delivering high quality software products on time. He is responsible for managing developers across multiple technologies including .NET, PHP, IOS and Android development. He has implemented and augmented Agile development practices to suit the needs of projects and organizations. You can follow Dan on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.

  • What a Riot Looks Like on Amazon Web Services

    As most of the world is aware, the past several days have been difficult ones in Baltimore. Following the funeral of Freddie Gray last Monday, a series of demonstrations quickly escalated into riots and looting in parts of the city. This is clearly one of the biggest events to impact the Baltimore region in many years and there is a tremendous thirst for news regarding the events.

    Baltimore-Radio-Amazon-Web-Services-Atlantic-BTOne of the less obvious results of a major news cycle is a huge spike in visitors on prominent news sites. Last Monday, demand on the leading Baltimore news station’s website has been tremendous. As the news station’s technology partner, Atlantic BT has been on alert monitoring the website to make certain that it continues to function at a high level.

    What a Riot Looks Like on Amazon Web Services

    The station’s website is hosted within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment. AWS is easily the most scalable and powerful web hosting environment and one that is an ideal fit for a heavily trafficked news site. But the past week has been extraordinary. Here’s a look at the volume of traffic and how much it has increased during the past several days:

    On the far right of that graph, you see two significant spikes. During these timeframes, the site saw about 42,000 page views per hour, far greater than the normal traffic load on the site. For typical websites, a traffic spike like this could significantly slow down the site, possibly even forcing it to shut down. But this didn’t happen to this Baltimore news station. The following graph shows CPU usage in the AWS environment we constructed for the news station:

    This graph shows how busy the computers are that send content to users. As you can see, despite a nearly 2,000% increase in usage of the site, CPU usage only increased by about 17% during the same timeframe. As a result, users never experienced a slowdown and they were able to get the news and information they needed.

    Why Is the Voice of Baltimore News on Amazon Web Services?

    Amazon Web Services proved to be the right environment to handle the new station’s largest online event in its history. And that’s saying a lot as the city (and the site) have experienced everything from the 2011 earthquake to significant snowstorms to the Baltimore Ravens playing in Super Bowl XLVII.

    When the news station first approached Atlantic BT to handle its hosting needs, the site was set up using a single server in a data center. This was a standard configuration and one that would typically serve the news station’s site well for its regular traffic needs. But events like those noted above would drag the site down rendering it useless. The news station needed a better solution.

    “[their] website is a critical part of their business. We wanted to create an environment that could handle high demand and keep the site online.”– Doug Eubanks, IT Manager, Atlantic BT

    Atlantic BT recommended a move to AWS and architected a custom server configuration that focused on redundancy and making the site fault-tolerant. As Doug Eubanks, Atlantic BT’s manager of IT noted, “This Baltimore news station’s website is a critical part of their business. We wanted to create an environment that could handle high demand and keep the site online and what we developed is a solution that is both redundant and fault-tolerant.” The environment Atlantic BT constructed allows the servers to “heal” themselves when they experience periods of heavy demand. And that reduced the need for human intervention, which keeps the site moving along like normal regardless of how much traffic is on the site.

    The news station’s newly architected environment was completed in April 2014, a full year before last week’s events in Baltimore. And the site has performed even better than expected during that time. In fact, the site has performed so well that the news station has not needed to reach out to Atlantic BT to address any issues with the site, something that would have been commonplace in its previous environment. And that has left the team at the Baltimore news station with more time to focus on their business during a critical time in the history of Baltimore.

    Is Amazon Web Services Right For You?

    Amazon Web Services is a solution for companies that place great emphasis on keeping their Websites and critical business applications up and running. As an Amazon Web Service Consulting Partner, Atlantic BT has helped many companies evaluate AWS to determine whether or not it is the right solution for them. Our team of AWS certified developers and engineers meet with each prospective client, review their specific situation and craft a custom solution to help them make a transition to AWS. If you are interested in exploring Amazon Web Services for your business needs or would like to learn more, give us a call at (919) 518-0670 or use our contact form to have an AWS consultant give you a call.