Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Category: Managed Services

  • Atlantic BT’s Jon Karnofsky (JonK) to present on cross-functional teams, planning, and empathy.

    Atlantic BT’s Jon Karnofsky (JonK) to present on cross-functional teams, planning, and empathy.

    We are excited to announce that Atlantic BT’s own Director of Operations, Jon Karnofsky, is scheduled to speak at Atlassian’s Team Tour: the Series event on May 11th at 11:00am PDT.

    Atlassian is a global software company dedicated to creating amazing products, practices, and open work for all teams. You’ve likely heard of their software development and collaboration tools like Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, and Trello.

    This free virtual conference will cover teamwork trends, expert insights, and actionable ways to implement change. Get hacks for maximizing Atlassian products and see how other companies are using their tools to drive long-term success.

    In JonK’s session, he will discuss how we reorganized into cross-functional teams, the  benefits and challenges of moving to teams, and how planning and empathy can be used in organizational change.

    Be sure to check it out on May 11th – Reorganizing into cross-functional teams takes smarts and heart: here’s how we did it.

  • Five questions to ask a potential SEO firm.

    Five questions to ask a potential SEO firm.

    It’s easy for SEO firms to lie to businesses who have little SEO experience in-house. In fact, when you look behind the curtain, many SEO agencies have spammy practices or are a one man shop pretending to be larger.

    That’s why it’s important to ask the right questions when vetting an SEO agency. Better still, learn how to evaluate their answers.

    1. Ask if page 1 rankings are guaranteed.

    If an SEO firm promises rankings or immediate results right from the beginning, it’s a major red flag. For one, it is dishonest to promise something that is beyond their control. Basically, claiming that your site will rank #1 or show up on the first page for a specific keyword is not accurate.

    The reason is that nobody but the major search engines (Google , Yahoo and MSN) control how websites rank in their organic search results. No SEO firm can guarantee results because they have no control over the search engines algorithms.

    It is true that a reputable SEO firm understands what factors go into ranking websites and can help increase search engine visibility, but no quality firm will ever promise rankings. Look for month-to-month contracts, references from existing customers, or portfolio of results.

    2. Ask what is involved in a successful SEO strategy.

    SEO Process

    A legitimate SEO firm is able to explain what goes into a successful SEO strategy in plain English; not some overly technical industry jargon. Every strategy should mention important on-page and off-page optimization, tracking results through website analytics, content development, link building, and continuous tweaking/testing to increase rankings and conversion rates.

    3. Ask when you can expect to see results.

    Setting proper expectations on both ends is key. Any firm that says you will be fully optimized in 2 weeks is lying. A successful SEO campaign is ongoing and always improving.

    The first thing the SEO firm should ask you is what are you goals? Without understanding what you are trying to accomplish, there is no way anyone can give proper expectations. Once your goals are established, the following can be determined: realistic expectations based on the current condition of your website, an understanding of your competition, and how much time/money/resources you can devote towards SEO efforts.

    A quality SEO firm will not necessary be able to say that you will see results in exactly 2 months; however, they should be able to give you a range as to when you will start to see a noticeable increase in traffic and conversions.

    4. Ask how SEO efforts are measured.

    In order to track whether your SEO efforts are successful or not, you need to monitor your website analytics, ranking reporting, and any other type of marketing measurements your company has readily available.

    This is also a question for both teams. You’ll want to let an agency know how you measure success so you can align goals. Then, find out how an agency will track and report on how their efforts contribute to goals.

    5. Ask how often you’ll collaborate on progress and strategy.

    meeting1_full

    Since SEO consists of an initial SEO setup and then ongoing monthly maintenance, it is important that the SEO firm outlines when and how often you will meet to discuss your SEO strategy.

    As the search engine’s algorithms change, your SEO firm will need to get creative, try new strategies, and make adjustments as required. In an effort to have both marketing and SEO strategies running in line, meeting regularly is recommended. It is not uncommon to meet on  a monthly or quarterly basis to talk about your website analytics, conversion goals, and recommendations to improve your SEO.  It is also important to see what the firm has been doing to improve traffic, conversions, etc.

    A good SEO firm knows that they will require the assistance of their client to get them where they need to be. It is a true partnership between client and SEO firm. Because content development is such a big part of SEO, the company should devote some resources for writing articles, blogs, and press releases. Ask the firm how you can help to increase results faster.

    Need help with digital strategy?

    If you need help finding a vendor for ongoing SEO, we’re happy to help you out. Atlantic BT is also happy to perform SEO audits, offer guidance throughout your SEO strategy, and develop a website that supports SEO. Contact us to see how we can help you out.

  • 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.

  • Why Atlantic BT switched to our own shared cloud hosting.

    Why Atlantic BT switched to our own shared cloud hosting.

    Each business requires a unique hosting infrastructure to suit their needs. At Atlantic BT, we’ve seen many issues arise when businesses choose the wrong solution. They frequently come to us to help them minimize costs, recover from a security breach, or prevent future threats.

    We’ve customized two primary hosting options to serve clients: shared cloud hosting and AWS. While many people believe that shared hosting is only meant for small businesses, we find it is a good option for any company that doesn’t have specialized requirements.

    In fact, our shared hosting is so trustworthy, we recently migrated our own website from AWS to shared hosting.

    What value will I recognize from shared cloud hosting?

    Shared clouds are affordable and, when set up correctly, provide businesses with the security and performance needed to run smoothly.

    Atlantic BT uses LightSpeed Web Server and has built a custom infrastructure on Liquid Web. We limit servers to 30 websites, reducing risks of outages.

    While some people are hesitant to start out with shared hosting as they anticipate rapid growth, it’s fairly simple for our team to switch over to AWS. You could save some money by starting out with a shared option.

    What happened when Atlantic BT switched to shared hosting?

    We took some time to reevaluate our hosting setup with two primary goals in mind: reduce costs and boost performance. Initially, we were using a standard LAMP setup in AWS, paying $650 month.

    Switching from Apache to LiteSpeed Web Server gave us some immediate benefits with performance. This proprietary web server software is a popular choice, built with modern architecture in mind. Google recommends using modern web hosting software that supports newer optimized protocols, like LiteSpeed. For this reason, implementing LiteSpeed can also give you some SEO benefits.

    Combining LiteSpeed with our shared hosting platform meant that Atlantic BT reduced monthly costs by over 80% and page load from 4.1 to 1.8 seconds.

    When should you use AWS vs. shared hosting?

    In most situations, shared cloud hosting will be sufficient for your business. AWS is essential for businesses with the following requirements:

    • Regulatory compliance: For example, Healthcare of Financial businesses must be HIPAA and FISMA compliant.
    • Large need for scaling and load balancing: If your business has large surges of traffic compared your normal traffic, you may benefit from AWS.
    • Custom environments: If you need a custom environment to support custom languages, libraries, architectures, or the ability to scale; AWS is a good option. However, these custom environments are more expensive and may require more time to manage.

    Use our checklist for evaluating shared hosting providers.

    Shared hosting can be a great option when set up correctly. When evaluating providers, be sure to ask the following questions:

    1. How many websites are on a server? Packing too many websites on one server means they are competing for bandwidth. As a result, a surge on one website could impact all. Furthermore, this could create security risks.
    2. Does the plan have sufficient disk space and bandwidth? Unlimited plans are a buffet of disk space and bandwidth, but they often are lower quality and performance than a metered plan.
    3. What type of support is available? Make sure your provider has 24/7 support. And also – do they charge extra for support?
    4. Do they charge extra for standard elements? For example, some hosts will charge extra for backups or SSL certificates.
    5. What is the process to migrate to another host? Many plans include a domain name for free, but they tie the domain name to the provider and make it difficult to leave. Even then, you usually have to commit (and pay) for a year of hosting to receive the domain name for free.
    6. And don’t forget – see what other people are saying about this shared hosting option! See if other people using this provider have any issues. If so, have they provided a fix or update?

    Interested in learning more?

    If you want to learn more about which type of environment is best for your business, we’re here to help. Contact us to get started.