Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Category: Development

Here, you’ll find insights on programming languages, frameworks, and techniques that shape the web and software landscape. Whether you’re a developer looking to refine your skills or simply curious about how things work behind the scenes, this space offers practical knowledge and thoughtful perspectives.

  • An executive’s guide to choosing the right site search.

    An executive’s guide to choosing the right site search.

    Why is site search important?

    Did you know that website visitors using site search are 216% more likely to convert than other users? Your website’s internal site search fosters conversions by helping users find the information they need in a hurry. 

    But site search doesn’t have to be “hands off”; you can gain even more benefits by going a step further. For example, you can build lists of visitors who search certain terms in Google Analytics. Now you have an engaged segment for remarketing ads that are more likely to convert. 

    Or, simply gather information on search queries and use the data to optimize content. Popular search terms can provide direction for SEO, content priority, and user-friendly navigation labeling.

    What key features can site search provide?

    At a minimum, your site search should include features that a user would expect, like fast results, filtering options, breadcrumbs, synonyms, and typing ahead.

    On the admin side, your site search should include reporting on key terms and usage, a Google Analytics integration to help you compare queries to behavior, and the general ability to integrate with your tools.

    Some top tier search tools go above and beyond, including features like AI auto ranking, proximity matching, and personalization.

    Which software should I choose?

    At Atlantic BT, our teams have experience implementing Swiftype, Algolia, and ElasticSearch. All of these options offer standard features, fast results, and plenty of integration options.

    We would recommend using Algolia or Elastic Enterprise Search in almost all situations. Take a look at a few scenarios where you would use each.

    Algolia

    In most situations, Algolia is the best option. That’s because it includes well-defined API documentation, framework integrations, and a developer-friendly platform that make for simple implementation. It is also the platform that offers the best pricing for low volume performance while offering the most advanced features for high volume websites.

    Some of Algolia’s unique optional features include A/B testing, merchandising, AI auto adjusting of result sets, and search result personalization. Because it directly integrates with Magento 2 and Shopify, Algolia is usually the best solution for eCommerce stores.

    On the other hand, if traffic is high volume (like exceeding 1 million searches per month), there are a large amount of pages indexed, or there’s no need for special features; Algolia is probably not the best option.

    Overall, Elastic Enterprise Search is the best option for sites that have very high volume search traffic (or a very high number of indexed items), but do not have a need for some of the more advanced features that Algolia offers. Because it’s self-hosted, it’s a popular choice for applications with strict security requirements because data does not have to be sent to a SaaS solution.

    While Enterprise Search has no limit on queries and documents, server size will have to increase to keep performance optimal. At high traffic volume (1 million hits and above), Elastic Enterprise Search will still go up in cost. However, it increases at a significantly slower pace than Algolia.

    Elastic Enterprise Search also offers a maintenance-free crawler, Elastic Site Search. It keeps content current while intuitive customization features and robust analytics provide full control over search relevance. 

    If you’d like to enhance your search quickly utilizing a web crawler, Elastic Site Search a great option for you.

    Atlantic BT has experience implementing site search in all sorts of industries. We can make a recommendation based on your business requirements, set up site search with your website, and integrate site search with other software. Reach out for a free consultation to get started.

  • What issues does a content audit expose?

    What issues does a content audit expose?

    When restructuring a complex website, an important first step is to inventory existing content and analyze findings in an audit. 

    The purpose of a content audit is to see which pages exist, decide which ones are valuable, and expose any hidden issues with the website. 

    Content audits tend to expose issues with site structure, technical SEO, orphaned pages, or content value. Take a look at how it works!

    Unveil any strange categories, taxonomies, or hierarchical issues.

    With an outdated or limiting CMS, many companies get in the habit of creating pages without housing them in a logical place. Websites can grow larger over time, creating a mess of page categories, tagging systems, and menus.

    By closely examining pages, a content audit breaks down this mess to guide decisions about the restructure. And good news for you – with a combination of an updated CMS and clear site structure, it will be easy for you to create new pages moving forward. 

    Diagnose technical SEO issues.

    A content audit can also help you diagnose any missed opportunities with SEO. And we’re not talking about expensive monthly backlinking campaigns. There are many ways to optimize your website for search engines by simply building SEO-optimized page templates.

    The content inventory step will show all meta and H1 tags in plain view, allowing marketers to quickly find patterns in how they were generated. Are these page elements exceeding character limits? Missing keywords? Missing altogether? Your new website should have auto-generated meta tags that fall within guidelines. From there, follow best practices to manually optimize key pages.

    At Atlantic BT, we will even take content audits a step further, cross-referencing additional tools to find slow pages and opportunities to incorporate schema markup. 

    Find orphaned pages.

    During a content audit, we trace navigation to all pages and get familiar with paths users can take. If we see a page listed and cannot find a way to navigate there, it’s likely an orphaned page.

    Orphaned pages, or pages that are impossible to get to by clicking through a website, are harmful for both SEO and user experience. According to Search Engine Journal:

    Orphan pages aren’t great for either users or crawlers.

    Users can’t reach those pages through your site’s natural structure so if there’s important or useful information on those pages, it’s wasted.

    This can create a frustrating user experience.

    With no internal links, no authority is passed to the pages, and search engines have no semantic or structural context in which to evaluate the page.

    Without any way of knowing where the page fits into your site as a whole, it can be more difficult to determine which queries the page is relevant for.

    If an orphaned page seems unimportant, you should likely delete it. If there is some value, we’ll find a way to fit it into a new site structure and ensure there is a navigation path.

    Find groups of low-value content.

    Do you have multiple versions of similar pages? A random tagging system for blog posts? Our team can determine the importance of content by referencing analytics data or understanding your business goals.

    However, we consider a content audit a collaborative effort. We’ll rely on you to ultimately decide if a page is valuable for your business.

    What step comes after the content audit?

    An outdated website structure feels like a mess. Even after a content inventory reveals the existing site structure, it can be daunting to take steps toward simplification. 

    Based on our findings in the content audit, Atlantic BT can make recommendations for a new website structure. Does it make sense to categorize by industry, services, or personas? We can help you visualize the options and design a site that is simple for visitors to navigate. Give us a call to learn more.

  • Four proven processes for digital marketing struggles.

    Four proven processes for digital marketing struggles.

    Many of our clients have marketing teams that handle ads, content, and overall strategy. But even with a well-structured marketing team, it’s easy to spin your wheels on elements of your website that don’t have a clear formula for success. 

    In this grey area, we’ve found some patterns in what our clients need help with. From careful research and testing with hundreds of websites, we’ve compiled some best practices in how to handle common marketing struggles.

    1. You know SEO is essential, but you’re unsure where to spend your time.

    Everyone seems to understand the importance of organic optimization. But as your competitors start to invest in SEO, you quickly realize that you can’t do everything without a large specialized team.

    So how do you identify the quick wins or your “best bang for your buck” initiatives? One way we help our clients discover these quick wins is by completing an SEO audit in an effort to point them in the right direction. 

    Our SEO audits are generally not a one-size-fits-all template. Instead, we take some time to understand your business goals and review your  Google Analytics profile. From there, we identify  pain points and discover opportunities that are worth taking a deeper dive by leveraging other tools.

    These deep dives provide actionable steps to get you ranking for the best keywords. For example, we might:

    • Find page two keywords and provide an internal linking strategy to help achieve page one results.
    • Evaluate site speed performance and identify the top development changes to give you a boost.
    • Provide keyword clusters that help you build a focused content strategy.
    • Generate lists of “unlinked mentions” so you can reach out for backlinks over time.
    • Create guides including best practices for your continual reference.

    2. You’re unsure if your site structure is optimal.

    Does your site have all the necessary information for a potential buyer? Are the right pages prioritized in your navigation? Are the pages named correctly? Are the URL’s optimized? Does the hierarchy make sense?

    There are many factors to consider with creating an improved information architecture. At Atlantic BT, we tend to use a mix of our own well-tested techniques and apply SEO best practices. It’s also important that we follow a certain order in this process, as many steps have dependencies.

    1. Initial workshop(s): First, we work with your team to help you choose the best categories and page names that will make sense to your customers. This is usually a workshop where we gather business information and ideas. In some instances, we’ve built these strategies in a quick 30 minute meeting. In others, we test naming conventions with card sorts and interviews.

    2. Visual recommendation: Then, we take this stage into consideration and  recommend a hierarchy and sitemap. This step may also include categories and filtering options for certain areas of your site. For ultimate clarity with a messy concept, we create both a visual map and a spreadsheet.

    3. SEO optimization: Finally, an SEO specialist will review the recommendations to create optimal URLs and select the best target keywords for each page. At this stage, we may also map the appropriate 301 redirects.

    4. Implement and measure: When these steps are complete, it’s easy to work with developers to implement. We can measure the success of the new site structure by observing conversion rates, heat maps, and other website metrics.

    3. You’re unsure if you’re getting the most out of your blog.

    A blog strategy goes beyond topically relevant content. When asked what is the purpose of your blog, are you able to answer?

    The best blogs have multiple purposes. For example:

    • Attract people who could potentially be interested in your product or service. Provide educational resources, describe problems they may face, or share news to keep them in the loop of latest trends. You’ll need to build paid or SEO strategies around bringing in new prospects with this content.
    • Inform people on why your solution is the best option for their problem. This is where you talk about your process, unique differentiators, and company culture. You can provide value to new users or cater this content to people who are already familiar with your brand. It’s also ideal content for remarketing campaigns.
    • Build confidence in customers’ decision to choose you. Continue to publish content on how your company is innovating and staying ahead, and inform existing customers of anything you think they should be aware of.

    No matter what your buying cycle may be, it’s helpful to list out existing content and ideas for new content. Fitting these ideas into your buyer’s journey will help you spot any missed opportunities. Atlantic BT can help you map out your content strategy in this way, which is called a gap analysis.

    4. You’re looking for ways to improve without knowing what you need.

    You always want to keep improving your website to stay ahead of your competitors, but the marketing activities that prove successful start to become weekly tasks. With so many set activities on a daily basis, there comes a point where it’s hard to step into a high-level view and find new opportunities.  

    High-level website audits turn into deeper dives.

    Sometimes people ask us for general website audits to find any missed opportunities as a safety measure.

    Atlantic BT can conduct a quick general site audit that identifies areas that may require a deeper dive. For instance, we may begin by reviewing site performance, keyword analysis, heat maps, and competitor websites. Based on our findings, we may recommend something more specific, like a UX audit, SEO audit, or site speed audit. 

    We’ll handle development.

    A deeper dive can help us build a marketing roadmap for you to follow. Because marketing and development are closely tied, these roadmaps often include development work. Atlantic BT can seamlessly step in to support you in the development pieces if needed.

    Do you feel any of these marketing pains?

    Do you relate to any of these struggles? We’re happy to help in several ways. We conduct discoveries to build strategic recommendations, and we can help you evaluate what technology will fix core issues. Reach out to hear from an expert and learn more.

  • How to balance technical risk and innovation.

    How to balance technical risk and innovation.

    While following strict corporate regulations makes sense from a risk management standpoint, it can be debilitating to innovation. 

    Issues like regulatory compliance, privacy protection, and data security result in a plethora of processes and policies to reduce risk. Unfortunately, this red tape also slows down the hiring, development, and technological advances needed to move business forward.

    Processes slowing change is especially dangerous if technology is part of your competitive advantage.

    So how can you combat a culture of limits and protect your core competency?

    Recognize the dangers of technology complacency.

    What happens when your technology is stagnant? Your organization’s growth is hindered due to these issues.

    Low employee morale.

    Outdated technology can make you feel stuck. Employees may no longer enjoy working within an application and feel frustrated leveraging it to perform needed tasks. They may not be able to find needed information with poorly connected systems, which weakens decision making.

    Feeling limited can lead to turnover, a lack of creativity and initiative in employees, and ultimately less innovation.

    Increased technical debt.

    Not only does outdated technology hurt morale, applications will incur expenses from technical debt. Past decisions that were meant to eliminate risk prove harmful over time. This may have been a quick security patch or the decision to delay a helpful feature.

    Missed market opportunities.

    What are the costs of going through your business strategy with slow technology, security gaps, or a poor user experience? You may opt to forgo some opportunities all together, giving your competitors an instant advantage.

    Find ways to foster innovation in a regulated environment.

    These two simple changes to a company’s culture can start remedying the harmful practices that slow you down. 

    Encourage people to take risks and allow for mistakes.

    While industry regulations will always be a requirement, there may be some other areas where risks are permissible. 

    Bizjournals.com states:

    Roger Perlmutter, the new research and development director at drug giant Merck, gives leaders and their teams the opportunity to take chances without punitive risk. Most wrong decisions at low- to middle-management levels won’t kill the company, and when people engage and take full ownership of their jobs, the result may yield something wonderful.

    Create a culture where partners assume some risk.

    You’re the expert in your industry and business model, but a partner can specialize in the necessary development piece. 

    Find a partner who can focus on the complex technical pieces of a project, assuming the risks of development time and budget. This partnership should empower you to focus on higher level strategy.

    For instance, in this example with Mutual Drug, Atlantic BT handled contracting an established 3rd party CSOS auditor to evaluate their application. We then performed multiple internal audits and tests to save our client the significant costs of multiple official audits. 

    Handling the nitty gritty back and forth and auditing gave our client some peace of mind. The partnership ultimately led to a stronger, streamlined, and compliant new application that launched their business forward.

    Feeling stuck with your technology?

    Many businesses come to Atlantic BT for help when they feel limited by their mission-critical applications. We can help by integrating systems, recommending the best way to spend budget, or building new features. 

    But most importantly, we understand the nuances of industries with strict policies. That’s why we create flexible processes that work for you – in terms of billing and accounting, development, deploying, and project management.

    Reach out to one of our experts to learn more about how we can help.

  • Failed RFPs are expensive. Here’s how to find better vendors.

    Failed RFPs are expensive. Here’s how to find better vendors.

    When you find yourself in a scenario where custom software is essential, you have three options:

    1. Develop the custom software in-house.
    2. Find a partner to handle the entire project.
    3. Partner with a vendor who integrates with your team.

    This middle ground of working closely with a vendor leads to writing an RFP and evaluating responses.

    Why do RFPs fail?

    Many RFP partnerships fail due to poor vendor selection or unclear project requirements and deliverables outlined. You may have even lost faith in the process of trusting partners altogether.

    Consider that it might not be the RFP process that’s failing, but rather using outdated methods for evaluating your partners. After all, they’ve probably responded to enough RFPs that they’ve learned what you want to hear at the surface level.

    Try these evaluation tactics to dig deeper and choose better partners.

    1. Stop using price as a measure of quality.

    We are trained to believe that price and quality is a linear relationship: the more you pay, the higher the quality and the less you pay, the lower the quality.

    However, price is not exclusively tied to a company’s output. It’s also closely tied to internal efficiency and how streamlined internal processes may be.

    A vendor who has found a highly efficient way to produce a quality product may have the same price as a company who cuts corners to produce a low quality product.

    According to CIO.com, “The highest priced technology partners often spent longer amounts of time on the project, with too many unnecessary staff members and account managers. On the other hand, the lower end of the market often lacked the skill and technical ability to produce consistent quality.

    Picking a technology partner is a completely different experience than shopping on Amazon. You cannot go to a vendor and simply pick the lowest price for the exact service you need. It can be a nuance-filled and complex process.”

    For this reason, your perfect partner is likely in the middle ground of high and low price.

    2. Rely on references over examples.

    Most organizations like to see vendors’ examples of past work and testimonials to help them evaluate expertise. This may come in the form of case studies or quick client quotes.

    The problem is, these are surface-level validators that can skim over some of the important nitty gritty. You’ll want to take a step further. Always ask for references to discover:

    • How the vendor handled issues that arose during the process
    • How the vendor performed in terms of budget and timeline
    • If the final product was satisfactory and truly provided business value

    3. Look for a warranty.

    Vendors who truly believe that their services will be satisfactory will offer some sort of guarantee. This may be in the form of month-to-month contracts, commitment to fixing bugs for free, or free work when a project exceeds budget.

    4. Seek vendors with flexible processes.

    Is your vendor the same? What happens when two rigid organizations work together? Look for a partner who can mold their development, deployment, project management, and billing processes to fit your organization’s standards.

    Need help with custom software development?

    Whether you need help defining business requirements, writing an RFP, or are in the stage of looking for vendors; we’d love to learn more and see how we can help! Get in touch for a free consultation.

  • What should I expect from a website audit?

    What should I expect from a website audit?

    A website audit can refer to many different ways of analyzing your website, from SEO assessments to UX analysis, cloud optimizations, and code reviews. 

    A reasonably-priced audit can give you a boost when attempting to improve the performance of your website, and even help save you money in the long run. Website audits can also serve other purposes:

    • Get a fresh pair of eyes on your website to check for gaps
    • Help you plan ahead for major web projects, streamlining the process
    • Get the expert opinion of a specialist

    Take a look at some of the most commonly requested website audits from Atlantic BT, why they are popular, and what you can expect:

    1. Technical Audit
    2. Content Audit
    3. UX Audit
    4. SEO Audit
    5. Accessibility Audit
    6. AWS Cloud Audit
    7. Site Performance Audit

    1. Technical Website Audit

    Why are technical debt audits popular?

    With accrued technical debt, you face tough decisions in regards to weighing costs and benefits. Will the amount of time, energy, and budget poured into refactoring your website’s technologies be worth it?

    A technical audit can help you uncover hidden forms of debt and give you a starting point to make informed decisions.

    What can I expect from a technical audit?

    An overall review of your code, infrastructure, and integrations are part of a technical website audit. We can also help with a skills assessment of internal staff to make sure it lines up with the applications and infrastructure they need to support.

    A technical audit on code could include several tests to manually review code, static and dynamic analysis, Linting, and unit test coverage reporting. 

    Atlantic BT will additionally review documentation for weaknesses and hold conversations with your internal teams around coding practices, software methodologies, CI/CD, and DevOps.

    2. Content Audit

    Why are content website audits popular?

    A content audit is usually an early step in a website redesign. Content audits help provide clarity for what content needs to stay, where it should be placed on a new website, and what content is excessive. 

    These website audits not only enhance messaging and provide user information, but also shed light on opportunities for SEO and enhancements for page structure.

    What can I expect from a content audit?

    Traditionally, a content audit includes:

    • Taking inventory of what content exists
    • Analyzing the performance existing content to determine quality
    • A gap analysis to find missed opportunities and build a plan for new types of digital content

    Atlantic BT also ties information architecture into a content audit. That means beyond planning for new content types, we also assess the best way to categorize, structure, and optimize content for findability. 

    Within a content inventory spreadsheet, we also map where the content should go on the new website while providing an optimal URL structure.

    3. UX Audit

    Why are UX audits popular?

    A UX audit is also an important step in redesigning a website. It involves evaluating an existing website’s design, messaging, and performance to drive business value.

    While many businesses would like a UX audit to boost revenue, others are looking to boost efficiency for employees with their internal systems or reduce call volume by making information easier to find online.

    What can I expect from a UX audit?

    A UX website audit involves defining business goals, digging into user data, and gathering insights to build a plan to improve your website’s performance. 

    A full-scale UX audit from Atlantic BT might include:

    • Compare to business objectives – the first step is to see if the page or website being evaluated does what you want it to do, from driving conversions to enhancing customer satisfaction.
    • Evaluate against user objectives – next we see how well the users’ needs are met, for information or task accomplishment. We look for clarity, ease, efficiency and effectiveness.
    • Heuristics evaluation – this is evaluating how well the site performs against broad-based standards of performance against expectations users have based on the best sites they use.
    • Analytics and feedback – we love to ‘listen to the customer’ directly from sources like website analytics, comments and feedback from forms, customer service, or any other inputs you may have, and see what they tell us about your website.

    Any website audit includes evaluating to a set of criteria; business objectives are defined through things like mission statements and OKRs – user needs are often defined by marketing personas, and so on.

    We use whatever criteria you have available, or we can perform stakeholder interviews and persona workshops to help refine or update those definitions to evaluate against. 

    • Requirements gathering – Stakeholder interviews, surveys, and workshops
    • User research – Gather customer feedback, review analytics and website behavior, create persona profiles 
    • User testing – Surveys, tree testing, contextual inquiries, and card sorts
    • Design review – Make recommendations for design to meet industry best practices and accessibility requirements

    4. SEO Audit

    Why are SEO audits popular?

    Without SEO specialization, it’s hard to know exactly what search engines are looking for. And there’s no tool that will single handedly spot weaknesses.

    What can I expect from an SEO audit?

    Atlantic BT will use a combination of tools and personalized review. We provide recommendations for the following areas:

    • Technical SEO – page speed, site structure, and schema 
    • Content optimization – content structure and keyword optimization
    • Event tracking – Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager setup
    • SEO Strategy – Existing position analysis and prioritization of focus areas

    5. Accessibility Audit

    Why are accessibility audits popular?

    Accessibility audits are important to prevent lawsuits in many sectors where accessibility is mandated by law. However, even if there is no legal risk for your business, if you aren’t making your content accessible to all, your business could still be missing out on a large population of users with disabilities. Furthermore, most accessibility UX enhancements end up being beneficial to all, providing a better user experience and positive image of your brand.

    What can I expect from an accessibility website audit?

    Many businesses provide accessibility audits by running a website through an automated scanner. The issue here is that there are many elements that tools cannot see. 

    Atlantic BT offers a comprehensive scan which includes a broad software scan, careful review by a trained professional, and a follow up consult to build a roadmap based on findings. 

    You can also try our WCAG color testing tool for free!

    6. AWS Cloud Audit

    Why are AWS cloud audits popular?

    A website audit could help you optimize your current cloud environment or help you streamline a migration to be as seamless as possible.

    What can I expect from an AWS cloud audit?

    Cloud optimization audit

    For those who already have an AWS cloud environment, a website audit will help take full advantage of the services purchased and eliminate whatever is unnecessary.

     Atlantic BT will collaborate with your IT team over several calls, review code (or review infrastructure with read-only access), and provide a consult to review findings.

    Cloud migration audit

    On the other hand, others may be looking for a website audit to help them access their situation and plan for a migration. Atlantic BT will gather workloads and business requirements, determine which AWS services will best support your business (keeping efficiency in mind), and create a plan to test and securely migrate data.

    7. Site Performance Audit

    Why are site performance audits popular?

    When your website loads quickly, it ranks higher on search engines and boosts conversions after users land. Not to mention, Google rewards ads connected to fast websites.

    As the benefits of fast websites become widely known, your competitors are beginning to invest in page speed optimization. They are now better equipped to “out-perform” you in every sense!

    What can I expect from a website performance audit?

    There are many free tools to help you scan your website for performance issues. After using a vetted tool to scan your website, Atlantic BT will:

    • Review the recommendations and prioritize based on impact and effort
    • Build a roadmap to help you start implementing these optimizations
    • If you wish – proceed with the implementation and continue to monitor and test results

    Ready to get started?

    If you need some help but aren’t sure if a website audit would benefit you, we’ll get you on the right track with a free consultation. We’ve been building websites since 1998 and thus have 25 years of experience identifying the key issues that are holding websites back from outperforming their competitors.