Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Category: Strategy & Design

  • What a Riot Looks Like on Amazon Web Services

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

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

    What a Riot Looks Like on Amazon Web Services

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Is Amazon Web Services Right For You?

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

  • Why Your Website Needs to be Mobile Friendly Right Now

    There’s a fairly significant change coming next month to organic search and it has the potential to cause some major disruption in how your site performs in the search engines. Google announced at the end of February that it was increasing the use of “mobile-friendliness” as an organic ranking factor for a Web site. So, the main question you need to consider: is my site ready for this change?

    Why Mobile Friendly Sites are Important to Google

    It’s no secret that mobile devices are quickly overtaking desktop as the primary way we connect to the Internet on a regular basis. Smartphones now make up nearly 76% of all mobile devices according to the latest comScore data. And with all those devices come lots and lots of mobile searches.

    Google reports that it handles about 3 billion searches each day. And while Google doesn’t tell us exactly how many of those searches are mobile (some estimate it is as much as 50% of all searches), we can be pretty confident that mobile search is a fairly significant share. Why? Consider the rise of the “virtual assistants” like Siri, Google Now and Cortana. Owners of smartphones are increasingly turning to these tools to conduct searches and those take place through mobile devices.

    With that in mind, Google needs to display search results in a way that will provide the best experience for the user. And if the user is searching on a mobile device, they want to provide a result that will work well on that user’s device. Google, for some time now, has used “mobile friendliness” as a ranking factor in organic search. But with the growth in the use of mobile, Google needs to give more weight to sites that have been optimized for mobile. And that’s what’s driving the change next month.

    Will Google’s “Mobile Friendly” Change Impact Your Site?

    While no one can say for certain whether or not your site will be impacted by this change, there are a few things you can check to see if you are ready for the transition:

    1. Test your site using Google’s Mobile Friendliness Tool. Google has created a tool to test your site for mobile friendliness. The test is simple and straightforward: enter your site’s URL in the search box, Google conducts a quick analysis, and lets you know whether your site is mobile friendly or not. If it is not mobile friendly, Google provides a link to a technical guide you can follow to improve your site. If you’re not comfortable with Web design/development, you’ll need to reach out to a Web developer to help you get the site ready.

    2. Ask: Is mobile search important for your business? Depending on the type of business, mobile search may be very important to your visibility in the search engines. Retail shops, restaurants, venues and pretty much any place with a location where customers come to you will need to provide a great mobile experience. Engaged in eCommerce? Mobile commerce (called mCommerce) is on the rise, so providing shoppers with a good mobile experience is more important than ever. Bottom line: if being found on mobile devices is important, you need to make sure that your site is mobile-friendly.

    3. Find out: Do you get a significant number of visitors through mobile search today? Take a look at your Google Analytics data. What percentage of your organic traffic comes in on mobile devices? How is that data trending? If your mobile audience growing? If so, you need to create a great user experience for them while also getting your site ready for a greater emphasis on being mobile friendly.

    What You Need to Do if You Believe Your Site Will Be Impacted

    1. Be prepared to act quickly. The April 21 deadline is approaching quickly, so you do not have a lot of time. Every day you delay taking action puts you at risk for the potential to fall in organic rankings.

    2. Explore a temporary solution. Depending upon the type of content management system you are using, you may be able to put in place a mobile switcher or mobile-friendly theme. If this is an option for your site, it is one you may want to put in place while working on a better, long-term solution.

    3. Redesign your site to use a responsive design. The best, long-term solution is to redesign your site with a mobile-first philosophy. This approach allows you to create a site design that is responsive to the device your visitors are using (mobile, tablet or desktop) to give them a better experience, while also helping you maintain (or even improve) your organic mobile search rankings.

    Need Help Getting Started?

    Need help determining if your site could be impacted? Not sure how to get started with making your site mobile friendly? Atlantic BT has helped hundreds of businesses create sites that are mobile friendly and are prepared for the upcoming transition. Use our contact form or call us at (919) 518-0670 x6 to talk with a consultant about your situation and what we can do to help. We’ll explore your situation and help you develop a strategy that will position your site to perform well on mobile devices.

    *photo courtesy of Karlis Dambrans on Flickr

  • 3 Takeaways from Forrester’s Digital Advertising Report on the Decline of TV Advertising

    Yesterday, the team at Forrester Research released a report (detailed in an article on Ad Age) that projects digital advertising will overtake TV advertising by 2016. In fact, digital advertising is expected to reach a whopping $103 billion by 2019, compared to TV advertising spends that will total about $86 billion. What’s driving the change? Forrester says marketers are committing more ad dollars to digital because they can prove that it works. Basically, you can measure performance in digital advertising more easily than you can with TV advertising.

    “So what,” you might say. “That’s great for big brand advertisers. But how does this affect my business? We don’t do a lot (or any) TV advertising.” Well, friend, there are some really good nuggets in this report that apply to you, even if you do nothing with TV advertising.

    3 Takeaways from Forrester’s Digital Advertising Report

    There were three key points that stood out to me from this research, each of which has direct application to anyone engaged in digital marketing today.

    1. Measurable media is preferred. If you have limited advertising budgets, you have to pick and choose where you’re going to spend those dollars. And if you’re under pressure to produce positive ROI, you’re unlikely to spend those dollars in a place where you can’t measure the results. This is where digital has the clear advantage over TV. With digital, you can track every impression, every click, every path and every conversion (and failed conversions) to find out just how strong a performer that advertising spend was.Key takeaway: when considering advertising options, look for ways you can measure performance and develop a measurement strategy.

    1. Paid search is still king of the mountain. The Forrester report compared different forms of digital advertising spends and found that, by dollar volume, search marketing gets the lion’s share of the budget. Why? Because it is measurable. Notice a theme here? With search, you have a wide variety of options including standard search (text-based ads), display networks, shopping/product ads, video ads and more. And each of these ads is triggered by something that is intended to make the ad relevant to the searcher. And that’s a win for you and your marketing budget.

      Key takeaway: evaluate the variety of search advertising options available. More than likely, one of these options will be a strong performer for your advertising and marketing efforts.

    1. Email remains a strong performer. Compared to the other channels examined in this report, Forrester noted that email marketing is relatively inexpensive, but still quite effective. As I’ve written about previously, email marketing can be a very strong channel for marketers as part of your overall digital marketing strategy.Why? It is measurable (there’s that word again!). You can track performance within your email campaigns to a high degree of detail. And as a bonus, email marketing fosters long-term relationships with customers, which keeps them returning to you time and again. And who’s going to argue with that?

      Key takeaway: invest in a strong email marketing program, especially if you are involved in eCommerce.

    What’s Next for Your Digital Advertising Strategy?

    The advertising world is rapidly moving towards measurable, accountable ad buys. No matter if it is paid search, paid social advertising, email marketing, or the like, you must find ways to measure your efforts to ensure that you’re getting as good a return on that investment as needed. At Atlantic BT, we work with many of our clients to help them develop a digital marketing and advertising strategy to achieve the results they are looking for. Interested in learning more? Call a member of our consulting team at (919) 518-0670 x6 or use our contact form. We’d be happy to help you explore the options that work best for your company to help you get the results you need from your digital advertising.

     *photo courtesy of Bonnaf on Flickr via Creative Commons License.

  • Should You Use Social Media Logins on Your Web Site?

    If you’ve visited a Web site recently that requires you to login to a customer account, you’ve likely been given the option to use one of your social media accounts to complete the login process. Using a social media login is fast, easy and fairly common. In fact, a recent study confirmed that in the U.S., 77% of Web site visitors have used a social media account to login to the site at least once and 65% use that option “always or often.” Here are a few additional highlights from the survey:

    • 53% of those surveyed say they use social media logins because they don’t want to spend time filling out registration forms
    • 47% use the social media login option because they don’t want to create yet another password to remember
    • 46% believe the sites that use social media logins will sell the data they collect
    • 42% say they believe the site will post to a social network without the individual’s permission
    • 86% feel that data collection companies should be more heavily regulated by the government

    In reviewing these numbers, there seems to be something of a paradox: Web site visitors are willing to use social media logins even though they believe the companies will misuse that information in some way. And many would be right to say that this doesn’t make sense. But it does seem to point out that in the online space, convenience and simplicity rule the day. And if you are building or running a Web site today, this should be your take away: your customers expect you to make social media logins available.

    Let’s take a look at four benefits of using social media logins within your site.

    4 Benefits of Using Social Media Logins Within Your Web Site

    1. Simplicity for the End User. As the study data points out, a majority of site visitors want to use social media logins because they believe it will save them time. You may have a lot of data you’d like to collect as part of your customer profiles, but your customers have already set the expectation: keep it simple. They do not want to answer all your questions and provide all the tiny bits of data you want to collect. If you make your registration process complex, they will likely abandon your site and move on elsewhere. So, if you want to retain those site visitors, providing a social media login option can improve your retention of customers.

    2. More Data/Better Data on Your Site Visitors. When you offer visitors the chance to use a social media login, you instantly gain access to a lot of profile data (depending on how you setup the permissions for your connection). For example, by allowing a visitor to use his/her Facebook account to login, you now have the potential to connect your visitor, your site and your own Facebook Fan Page together. This will allow you to see better audience demographics. It also improves targeting options for content and advertising. By using a standalone visitor registration process, you would forgo these options and your data would be less valuable.

    3. Identification of Customer Social Network Preferences. If you’ve tried to build a following on the various social network available today, you’ve likely encountered a common problem: finding out where your customers like to hang out. Sure, Facebook is a popular choice, but how much of your audience uses Twitter? Google Plus? LinkedIn? By offering a social media login option, you are, in effect, polling your audience to find out which social networks they prefer. You can use this data to refine your social media efforts and build a better connection with your customers.

    4. Lower Development Costs. Building a Web site with a registration process can be expensive. And the more you ask for from your site visitors, the more you’re going to pay for development. One way to minimize some of your development costs as it relates to the account creation process is to use social media logins. In many instances, the social networks have pre-packaged code ready to use that requires minimal effort by a developer to fit it to your Web site. This will save you time and money. All while providing your visitors with what they were looking for to begin with.

    A Word of Warning About Social Media Logins

    As noted above a large number of site visitors prefer to use social media logins. But that doesn’t relieve you of any responsibilities when setting social logins up for your Web site. We strongly recommend that you respect your customers and make clear the ways in which you will use the data gathered from their social network account. Your customers are already leery of companies that collect this data. Show them that you can be trusted by providing clear policies and practices within your Web site that respect their privacy while providing them with a good experience.

    Getting Started with Social Media Logins

    Social media logins can be very beneficial for your Web site. Not only do they make it easy for your visitors/customers to connect with you, they also lower development costs and provide a wealth of data and insight into customer behaviors. If you’re thinking of implementing social media logins within your Web site, feel free to contact us and let us help you through the process. Atlantic BT has experience helping sites of all sizes implement a social media login strategy that provides the benefits you’re looking for.

    About Jon Parks

    Jon Parks is a Sr. Consultant with Atlantic BT. With more than 15 years in the digital marketing and communications fields, Jon’s focus has been in  helping companies develop digital marketing strategies to achieve their online marketing goals. You can follow Jon on Twitter (@jonparks), circle him on Google Plus or connect with him on LinkedIn.

    *featured image photo credit: mkhmarketing on Flickr

  • Lessons learned from Apple and Pinterest about respecting your customers

    Previously, my colleague Jon Parks talked about the importance of being respectful when email marketing.  The concept of it being a privilege to be in someone’s inbox is something that applies to all forms of marketing.

    Apple goes a step too far?

    Take Apple’s recent marketing stunt for example.  They decided to make a splash by giving away a free album to every single one of their customers.  It sounds like a good idea – who doesn’t like free music?  Apparently, quite a few people.  Apple’s “step too far” was that they weren’t giving people a coupon for a free album or a link on a website where they could download the album, they were actually putting the album into the users collection.  20 years ago, this would be similar to someone going into your house and putting a free album into your 5 disc cd changer.  Yeah, it’s a free album but if you’re not into U2, you are going to be plenty pissed off that someone put music into your device without asking.

    Plenty of writers and internet commenters have asked why Apple didn’t just provide a link or the option to download the album.  My opinion is that that approach would not have been new or different enough to garner the kind of attention that Apple is seeking with this deal.  I don’t think that their intention was ever to make users angry but it was about doing something that hadn’t been done before so that people would talk about it.  Even with the complaining from a vocal minority, Apple is getting that attention.   From that perspective, the plan worked but that is only because Apple is one of the most well known and most talked about companies on the planet.  A smaller business trying a stunt like this could alienate enough of their customers that there would be an overall negative effect.  

    How Pinterest Left ‘em at the Altar

    In another example, Pinterest received some negative publicity for their marketing message to users who had expressed interest in wedding related content. Pinterest had the right idea. Their users were telling pinterest what they were interested in. It makes sense for pinterest to take that data and create a customer segment that they can market to. Their problem was with the message. They chose wording that specifically said “You’re getting married” when that wasn’t the case for many users.   This probably would not be a big deal if they sent messages saying “You’re buying a new car” to users with pins of new cars, but getting married can be a touchy subject to many people if they are single or still waiting for that proposal.

    In a more personal example, I purchased a device that extended my home theater pc functionality to another room in my house.  I was already a customer of the company and used their product in my HTPC so I jumped on the product and paid a premium to be an early adopter.  The product worked, pretty much, as advertised so I was happy.  That is until I started receiving emails from the company on a weekly basis advertising the same product I had purchased for a significant discount.  I understand that buying early comes with a cost but in this case, a 30% discount only months after purchase was making me feel like I had been taken advantage of rather than getting the benefit of a product early.

    It’s all about respect

    Whether your company has loyal customers like Apple or not, the marketing lesson to learn is that you must respect those customers.  Your customers don’t want to be bothered with offers that don’t make sense for their needs.  The messaging needs to be accurate and not make assumptions about the users situation.  Purchase history or interest should be a factor in the segments created so that users are not being offered products that they already own.  Just because it’s cheap and easy to email blast all of your users doesn’t mean that you should.   Treat your customers and their online accounts with respect and you’ll reap benefits in the form of loyalty and good word of mouth.

    About John Proctor

    John Proctor is a Senior Solutions Consultant with Atlantic BT.  John helps companies develop strategies that leverage Atlantic BT’s expertise in web and mobile applications.  Keeping up with the latest technologies helps provide our clients with best possible solutions for their needs.  Outside of Atlantic BT, John is a gamer, mountain biker, sports fan, tech geek, and father.

    *photo courtesy of Alex E Proimos on Flickr

  • Email Marketing is Easy. Or, Is It?

    Ahh, email marketing. The great workhorse of digital marketing! Everyone loves email marketing. And it’s so easy to do, right? I mean, you just create your message, drop it into that nicely designed email template, fire it out to your list and sit back while the results roll in.

    Except email marketing isn’t that easy.

    Yeah, that’s what I said: email marketing isn’t easy. And in today’s post, I’m going to show you why some of the things you thought you knew about email marketing are all wrong.

    1. Email Deliverability is a Problem. A Big Problem

    One out of every six people on your list will never see your message. How do we know? Because the experts at Return Path study this issue relentlessly and their most recent benchmark report found that 17% of email messages in marketing campaigns never make it to the inbox. Where do they go? That vast wasteland where your great offers go to die: the spam folder. And who put them there? The large email providers (think: Gmail and Yahoo) and Internet services providers (ISPs) like Comcast and TWC.

    I know what you’re thinking: “But hey! I’m not a spammer. They can’t do that to me. These people are my subscribers. They ASKED to receive my email.” Well, friend, they can and they do. Why? Because the ISPs are trying to keep spam messages out of their customer’s inboxes and one of the signals they monitor is your engagement with subscribers, usually through clicks on the links to your products, content and offers.

    You want to break the cycle of deliverability problems? You’ve got to do a better job of engaging the subscribers on your list by getting them to interact with your emails.

    2. Your Subscriber List is Dying

    I know. You’ve built a sizable list of email subscribers. And it is probably a pretty good list, too. The problem: about 25% of your list goes dead every year. That’s right: 1 out of every 4 subscribers on your list goes dormant. They change their email address to a new one and don’t tell you. Or, they simply stop using that email address. Or … well, you get the idea. They are gone.

    To combat the problem, you have to continually work at developing your email list. You have to give people a reason to join the list. You’re going to need compelling offers, valuable information or inside access to your brand’s community.

    3. One Size Doesn’t Fit All. You Have to Segment Your Email Marketing List

    Take a look at your most recent email messages. Did you send the exact same message to every single subscriber on your list? If so, you’re violating a major tenet of email marketing. Early in my career as an email marketer, I was given a valuable piece of advice: it is a privilege to be able to get into someone’s inbox. You need to bring value in every single message you send.

    How do you do that? You segment your list and carry on a personalized conversation with your subscribers. If you’re an online retailer, you know who buys which products from you and when they purchase them. Your email campaigns need to segment your customers into product categories so you can present them with offers that are based on their buying habits. And that’s where you start to speak directly to your customers. By the way, it has the benefit of being good for engagement, which just so happens to help with deliverability (see point #1 above).

    4. Great Emails are Designed for “Mobile First”

    You’ve probably taken time to create a great design for your email campaign. A design that really stands out, communicates the essence of your brand/company and has a designated place for all the content you’ve generated to share in the email. Life is good and you are ready for success.

    But did you think about how your email will render on a mobile device? According to the US Consumer Device Preference Report: Q4 2013, about 65% of all email is now opened on a mobile device.

    Let that sink in for a moment. 65% of all email is opened on a smartphone or tablet device. If you do not have a mobile-first strategy for your email marketing campaign, there’s a high likelihood that your campaign is going to fall flat.

    Bottom line: design everything in your email marketing campaign with mobile users in mind. The design, the calls to action, the volume of text, the images. Everything.

    Don’t Worry. All is Not Lost for Your Email Marketing Campaigns!

    By now, you’re probably getting the idea that email marketing campaigns require a bit more effort than they did in the past. And you may be thinking: “great. I don’t have a lot of time and now I need to do even more just to stay effective with my email marketing campaigns.” I won’t lie. It’s true. You will need to do more. That’s why the best place to start is conducting an audit of your existing email marketing campaigns and developing a strategy that will help you incorporate these updated tactics to connect with your customers. And at the end of the day, isn’t connecting with your customers what email marketing is all about?

    About Jon Parks

    Jon Parks is Director of Marketing with Atlantic BT. Through his work with Atlantic BT and the digital marketing consultancy, Dijital Farm, Jon’s focus has been in helping companies develop digital marketing strategies to achieve their online marketing goals. In his spare time, Jon trains for and competes in Ironman 70.3 distance triathlons. You can follow Jon on Twitter (@jonparks), circle him on Google Plus or connect with him on LinkedIn.