Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Category: Strategy & Design

  • ABT Hosts Crop Meetup, Drafts “Design Bill of Rights”

    First 2016 Crop Meetup Preludes Raleigh’s Annual Hopscotch Festival

    How do we turn Raleigh into a global design destination? That is—how can we, as creative professionals, help develop the creative community in the Triangle Area to the point that it’s recognized the world over?

    After an extended holiday sabbatical, Crop hosted its first meetup of the year Tuesday to discuss just that. Hopscotch Design Director Marie Schacht put on a discussion workshop in Atlantic BT’s Level 1 lounge to explore what the future looks like for the broad collection of designers and creatives in the triangle area.

    “We’re our strongest when we’re aligned and working together to solve a problem, whatever that problem is. It usually includes people from different backgrounds with different perspectives,” says Eileen Allen, VP of Experience and Strategy at ABT and Co-founder of Crop. “The goal of Crop is for us to reach out and give people from different disciplines the chance to talk with each other about design. With Hopscotch coming up, it seems like as good of a time as any.”

    A Culture of Collaboration Affirms Its Rights

    The meetup preluded the annual Hopscotch Design and Music Festivals that will take over downtown Raleigh September 8–10. With festival organizers synchronizing the two schedules to further integrate the music and design aspects, it made sense for ABT to host the event, as collaboration is cornerstone to the ABT business model.

    “I rarely ever work on a project alone for very long at all,” remarked Corey Brinkmann, ABT’s Design Manager and the other Co-founder of Crop. “That’s why we try so hard to make ABT a place that can attract the best people. A collaborative culture is only as good as the people that make it up, but that model has the potential to be more than just the sum of its parts.”

    Collaboration was also key to the workshop. About 25 people were divided into teams and then asked to draft a ‘design bill of rights’ that identified the liberties they consider most sacred as designers.

    bill of design rights

    “We the people declare that design matters. It shall henceforth be a staple factor in how we make decisions and organize the community. We will hack life and make all things better, easier and intuitional,” read one such bill. “We the people will promote the freedom to collaborate, challenge ideas to make the world a better place… using thumb wars as an ultimate tie-breaker.”

    “It’s good to do things like this as a group of designers to establish more ties to each other and to what we collectively think is important,” says Emily Davidson, Front-End Developer at ABT. “The more we collaborate with each other and talk about design, the stronger the community becomes.”

    Davidson might not be completely impartial, however. While enjoying the complimentary catered dinner, she also won the raffle grand-prize—a ticket to the Hopscotch Design Festival.

    “I always look forward to the festival,” Davidson said. “I always stumble onto great bands that I’ve never heard before and this year I’m finally going to be able to go to the design fest!”

    Davidson later described Hopscotch as “a couple of really fun, slightly weird parties and of course, unlimited inspiration” to serve as a place to “discover the people designing the future.” The organizers of this music and design festival make it a point to try and appeal to designers from completely different backgrounds.

    Hopscotch: Where the Creative and Functional Meet

    Accordingly, this year’s Hopscotch features will include talks by bestselling author and CEO of Change Academy Dan Heath, as well as graphic designer and creative entrepreneur Tina Roth Eisenberg and many others.

    Similarly, Crop is a meetup designed to bring creative individuals with various specialties together in order to practice crafting innovative solutions.

    “Designing simple is very hard,” says Allen, who came up with Crop while having beers and talking shop with a coworker. “But I really believe that the power of design is that it can provide elegant solutions to complex problems. It’s about finding a creative solution with whatever you have available. To me that’s why I love design, it’s the intersection of creativity and functionality.”

    Expect to see more events from Crop in the near future, and stay hydrated at Hopscotch.

  • 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:

    1. CrossBrowserTesting
    2. 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:

    1. Go to your Google Analytics Reporting Dashboard and set the timeframe for the past 30 days.
    2. Go to Audience and under Technology, select Browser & OS.
    3. Scroll down to the browser versions and make a list of the top converting browsers.
    4. Still in the Go To Audience category, select Technology under Mobile category.
    5. Make a separate list of the top converting devices.
    6. 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Let’s Get This Content Started

    12 Ways to Begin Long-Form Content

     

    You’ve got a brilliant idea. And it’s a detailed idea—it’s the kind of idea that merits a long-form blog post, not just a tweet or two. You dash to the keyboard and put together an outline. This only makes you more excited about writing your post. You’ve got an original idea, a relevant subject, and an organized structure. You are guaranteed to win at the Internet as soon as this content gets published.

    But first you have to actually write the opening sentence. And the more you love your idea, the harder this is—and if you can’t hook your readers with the opening, they’re unlikely to read the rest of your brilliant idea. How do you craft an interesting beginning to your long-form content that will not only guarantee people read it, but also comment on it, share it, and drive it up to the lofty heights of Google’s ranking system?

    Sad to say, there is no opening sentence that guarantees these results. However, there are proven strategies to write compelling openings for long-form content. Here are my 12 favorite ways to begin a content post, including classic strategies, less conventional openings, and hated practices that actually work.

      1. Classic Opening Strategies

    • Ask a Leading Question
      What is the biggest obstacle that digital marketing campaigns face today?

      The advantage of leading with a question is that it makes your post curious and conversational. Even though the reader cannot answer you outside the comments section, he will ponder possible answers to your question and then keep reading it to see if he answered correctly (or at least, in a way that agrees with you).
    • Use a Quotation from Those Who Know Such Things
      “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
      –Arthur C. Clarke

      This proven opening strategy works because you get to begin with the words of an expert. In addition to borrowing language by a reputed author, this technique also implies that those words support whatever you’re about to argue. The main downside is that you have to find a compelling and relevant quote from someone that the reader would recognize and respect.
    • Start with a Provocative, Short Statement
      Everyone hates ads.
      Shakespeare sucks.
      The information age is finished.

      Provocative statements have the potential to grab the reader’s attention by disrupting her expectations. She thought he was reading a nice, polite blog post and then BOOM—she finds a fundamental assumption questioned. Because surprise is key to making these work, it’s crucial these statements are short enough that the reader doesn’t see the disruption coming. You also need to actually prove whatever unexpected statement you make in the post itself.
    • Lead with Statistics or Numbers
      70% of people immediately close blog posts that don’t begin with numerical facts.

      This is arguably the most boring of the classic strategies, but leading with an interesting statistic immediately gives your post a foundation of analytic rigor. Statistics imply you’ve done your research, making the rest of the post more trustworthy. Of course, now you have to find a relevant stat from a reputable source to back up your argument. If this takes a long time, you might wish you’d tried another strategy.

      2. Less Conventional Openings

    • Let Me Tell You a Story…
      Two minutes into a presentation on gameification in marketing, the speaker used earning extra airline peanuts as an example of gaming rewards. “My God,” I thought, “he literally said customers are working for peanuts.”

      Everyone loves a good story well-told, and this strategy can get the reader leaning forward to find out what happens next. Once you have the reader’s attention, use an elegant transition to tie your story to the core subject of your content post. When the end of the story interweaves with your main point, your reader is hooked.
    • Offer a Seemingly Unrelated Comparison that Is Actually a Metaphor
      Despite some differences, premium face cream and hyperlocal digital advertising have a lot in common. For example, both use targeting on areas in need of an uplift.

      The key here is subverting the reader’s expectations by presenting insightful information in a new way. Challenge the reader’s thinking with an inventive or funny comparison, and you can pique his interest to read the rest of your post.
    • Begin at the Ending
      Not only did a major cruise line increase brand awareness by 28%, but it also booked more than 500 new passengers last quarter. How did this happen?
      Her mouse hovered over the Confirm Purchase button. We were about to find out if we’d reached the right customer at the right time, or the right one a little too late.

      Instead of building suspense like a typical post, skip to the most important part of the story. Beginning with the end is a nice way of telling a results-oriented reader that getting through this story will be worth it. Start at the climax, and you throw your reader right into the crux of the post, and entice her to find out how she got there.
    • Unexpected Humor
      “In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” –Douglas Adams

      While this isn’t the easiest approach, beginning with a surprise joke is a great way to approach a topic in a more lateral, creative way. Using unexpected humor suggests to the reader that what you wrote isn’t the same old tired discussion of a familiar topic, and he’ll be more likely to read the entire post.

    3. Hated Practices that Actually Work

    • Make a General Statement about Life
      When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…

      As much as your high school English teacher taught you not to begin with general statements to reach a universal reader, Thomas Jefferson used this approach in the Declaration of Independence. The lesson from this is that general statements CAN work, but they need to be gorgeously written and avoid clichĂŠ.
    • Beat Up the Straw Man
      After 45 minutes on hold with the cable company, I realized definitively that customer service meant nothing to them. Here are eight ways customers know a company doesn’t value them.

      Beating up a straw man is not a sophisticated way to win over a reader, but if you choose a universally scorned evil like cable companies, telemarketers, or the NSA, the reader will often so identify with your criticism that blinding hate will overshadow the reader’s reason. Before he sees through your ploy, he’s already reading your post. Sneaky, but effective.
    • Refer to a Recent Popular Post Written by Someone More Important.
      As Nate Silver pointed out in the latest fivethirtyeight post…

      Consider this the less-elegant version of beginning a post with a quote from someone famous. Here you ride the buzz of a public figure’s recent statements or arguments to introduce your own thoughts on the subject. It’s crucial that the statements you’re referring to are widely known and familiar to your audience.
    • Jump Right In (Because Artistry Is for Sissies and Nonprofits).Shoppers are buying something this summer, and the right digital solution can make sure you’re the one selling it to them. Here’s how it works.

      Let’s face it—sometimes your reader wants you to get to the point as fast as possible. This is when a direct opening is your best move. It also gives you more space in the post to discuss the subject at hand, since you’re not spending more than a sentence opening the post.

     

    A Clever Opening Is Just the Beginning

    So how do you choose the opening strategy that’s right for you? Know your subject matter cold. The better you’ve outlined your idea, the easier it will be to tailor one of these opening strategies to fit your post. More importantly, remember that your brilliant blog post is only one part of a larger content strategy.

    How will you boost your brand exposure and help your company lead the online conversation? What technology and best practices will you use to target the right content at the right audiences? We’d love to hear your answers to these questions in the comments section below—and if you need help, we’re ready to partner with you toward a smarter content strategy.

  • ConvergeSE Conference Spotlight: The Digital Transformation of NC.gov

    Converge SE is the conference for those who want to build a beautiful web.
    -ConvergeSE Homepage

    Created to promote the vision of a united and thriving creative web design community, the ConvergeSE Conference will take place in Columbia, SC on April 13-15. The speakers are leaders, adventurers, and storytellers who want every web designer and developer they work with to experience more and do better.

    One of those speakers is Atlantic BT’s Tera Simon. As our Director of Client Engagement, Tera led the largest digital transformation the State of North Carolina has ever undertaken—creating the new web presence for NC.gov and 12 different state government agencies. On Friday, April 15th, Tera will reveal how the ingredients of this dramatic change came together to create a unified portal for the citizens of North Carolina. Here’s a sneak preview of Tera’s “State of the State” presentation:

    The Meaning of a Digital Transformation and How It Differs from a Website Redesign

    The (current) wikipedia definition for digital transformation is: “changes associated with the application of digital technology in all aspects of human society.” That definition perfectly describes the unification of the NC.Gov’s 12 different agencies as part of the Digital Commons project. Some might mistakenly refer to this project as a website redesign, but a redesign typically focuses on only one brand and one website.

    What Atlantic BT’s team faced with the NC.Gov project was a landscape of multiple brands, multiple websites, and the views of multiple stakeholders for each agency. The NC.Gov website had become such a maze that the public was opting out of using any of its online resources at all. The state of North Carolina understood it needed a unified approach from perspectives of branding, governance, content, and navigation. They also needed help to determine the best platform to accommodate their multiple site administrators and contributors.

    This kind of Digital Transformation goes beyond a new website design. It goes to the heart of the connection between people and technology. It’s the story of a state government following its mandate to serve the needs of every citizen, non-profit, and business in North Carolina.

    The Team Behind the Execution of a Digital Transformation Project

    It’s not hard to imagine how NC.gov’s transformation could take a small army to accomplish. Atlantic BT’s lean team works in our Raleigh headquarters and delivers all their projects using an Agile methodology. Our work on the NC.Gov project focused on Marketing and UX, but it also brought together in-house teams of experts across over a half-dozen disciplines:

    • Web Architecture
    • Business Analysis
    • User Experience
    • Graphic Design
    • Quality Assurance
    • Front-End Development
    • Project Management

    Our team’s collaboration produced results far greater than the sum of their parts; for NC.Gov, this meant the organization of over 75,000 state agency websites into an intuitive user experience.

    Atlantic BT’s Most Important Contribution to the Digital Commons Initiative

    Beyond the daily advancements toward milestones and the innovative contributions of each individual on the project team, Atlantic BT coordinated the work of two other companies working on the project. NC’s state government brought on one company to complete the branding and the other to provide the development services. By setting up these vendors for success, Atlantic BT helped ensure that each deliverable in the overall project fit well together.

    Our vision for this joint project was that the work produced could be understood and be easily accessible by everyone who will have to utilize it. From ensuring that third-parties understand the functionality, to making designs accessible, to orchestrating content migration, to verifying  quality assurance and the integrity of the finished product, Tera and her team were there to pull it all together.