Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Category: Strategy & Design

Building a Website is like Building a House: An Analogy to Help Custom Web Development Make Sense

We use many metaphors (or analogies) when trying to describe what goes into custom web development. Building a website or web application is technical, complex, and sometimes tricky. Metaphors like “building a house” are helpful in aligning expectations from sales to deployment to ongoing maintenance – but they’re never perfect.

This series will cover some of the main metaphors we use, both internally and with clients. I’ll describe some of the major and minor points that correlate – but also some of the nuances that aren’t the same. You can always jump to the other articles in the series, which compares website maintenance with owning a vehicle and the experience with a development agency to fine dining.

We’re Talking About Building a House, Not Buying

Building a house is probably the most common analogy used when describing what we do. And we don’t mean buying a house that already exists; we mean building one from scratch. Imagine all the planning and decisions which you (as the eventual homeowner) would need to provide to others so you one day take out your shiny key, unlock the front door, and step into your perfect living space.

We heavily leverage the five phases of software development with custom web development, and I’m mostly going to reference the discovery, design, and development phases.

Discovery, or Why Do You Even Want a House?

You may have already thought about blueprints as part of the analogy of building a house. Let me stop you though – we’ll get there soon.

This is the house you want, you’ve always dreamed of, made for you – you’re not picking from a few pre-existing models. How would you feel if you hired a builder, and a week later they brought you blueprints only knowing you want four bedrooms? Wouldn’t you expect to spend some time explaining as many details as you can? Wouldn’t you expect the builder to ask you questions you didn’t know you needed to answer?

This is discovery. We (as the builder in this scenario) want to know as much as we can because we want you to be thrilled with your dream home (er, website) and be proud that we built it. We want to make informed choices as we move into design.

In the sales process, you’ve told us roughly how many rooms, a square footage range, desired location, and budget. That’s great, but how do you want to use your house? Do you have a family, and if so, how big is it? Do you want to entertain? Maybe you and your partner have differing wants and goals. These are analogous to the questions we ask during Stakeholder Interviews. We want to know from the people who are most vested in the project what would mean success to them.

Let’s talk about your current house. What do you like, what don’t you like? We might use public records or have a house inspector visit to provide us more detail. This correlates to our Technical Audit, where we can review your current website, crawl public web pages, and/or have a developer or architect meet with you. You might invite us to walk through your house room by room, show us where you spend most of your time, and describe what you like and don’t like. This correlates to our Contextual Interview, where we can utilize screen sharing to watch a user use the website and ask questions throughout.

As we start understanding your goals, likes, and dislikes, we’re going to start defining a list of home features. This may grow and change as we continue to plan and build, but our designer and our architect will need this list to eventually determine all the details for your website. This is our Requirements Matrix. It’s not deep in details, but should cover the main points of the custom web development. For example, this list may indicate you want a two car garage but doesn’t indicate details like dimensions or flooring materials.

Design – or Unveiling the Blueprints

You’re ready to stop talking about your new house – you want to see something! This planning period, design, has the most obvious overlap between home building and custom web development. Hell, we share role names like designer and architect, and that’s not just coincidence. What may surprise you is what those two roles perform in these scenarios don’t match up exactly between home and website building.

You’ve seen it in film and tv plenty of times. An architect pulls a giant roll of paper from a large case of them. She rolls out a blue and white graphic that’s a few feet across in both width and height. But this time? It’s your house – the open living room with a few columns, a master bathroom with multiple windows to let in light. There are details of specific widths and general drawings for stairs, counters, and toilets. We commonly correlate this to our Wireframes. There’s no color, no ambiance – but you can now start to picture the result and you’re getting something tangible from the builder. But in our case, it’s not the architect that made these – it’s the UI designer.

What else does the designer do? The main thing you’d expect – the visual representation of your final home. The mockups. An artist’s rendering of what a photo will pretty much look like when it’s built.

But wait, what about the architect? Remember when she pulled the blueprint from a case? She has a number of other large documents that you might not ever see.

There are designs on the foundation of the house. This includes the physical foundation but also information on the land and details of the physical material expected in the build. This is akin to our Architecture Diagram, which spells out what hosting platform and services that will be used. It is commonly created by IT engineers conferring with an application architect or senior developer.

There are designs of all the pipes, wires, and anything that spans your property edges to the city or other properties. This analogy gets a little more vague, but might be attributed to any Integration Specifications if the website needs to communicate with other cloud services.

A Few Analogies in Custom Web Development

Once ground is broken and building begins on your house, there’s a lot of waiting. This is, unfortunately, very common in the custom web development space as well. You’ll be in contact with your project manager (same role name for us), and you might get occasional questions from our foreman (lead developer). We’re also orchestrating with the building crew (web development team), inspectors (quality assurance, or QA), and any others who will be necessary to successfully complete your project.

We could dive even deeper in the metaphor – how architecting and writing the code can mimic physical house structure… but that’s a wholly different article!

But not everything about building a house matches custom web development!

There’s a huge assumption being made when we correlate custom web development and building a house. That assumption is: you want to plan, estimate, build, and buy a completed house. In software development, that’s not the only path you can take.

You can use Agile Development as a methodology, which (very, very roughly) means building small pieces of your website at a time. It’s not like building one room of your house, then you move in, and then you build more rooms one at a time. That’s close, but it’s more like planning, designing, and constructing your kitchen counter, then doing the same for your cabinets, and floor; eventually, you’ll have a whole room and can keep going on the next. It honestly doesn’t fit the home building analogy at all.

Sign-offs, Implicit Acceptance, and Changing Requirements

In all phases of custom web development, we want and need your feedback! The last thing we want is for you to show up at your new house and have it look like we planned, but deep down you don’t like it… We ask for feedback, sometimes actual sign-offs, at points in the process such as at the end of a phase. There’s also “implicit acceptance” which means if we’ve been positively working with you through the planning and never received formal acceptance or rejection, we’ll continue to make progress as if it’s accepted. This is to protect all of us.

The foreman brings you on site to see the house halfway through the building process. You walk into the half-kitchen, and… oof. You saw the plans for the island, but now that you see it in person? It’s… not what you hoped. Is it your fault? Nope. Did the designer or builder do anything wrong? Nope. Can it be changed? Yes, but we don’t know how easily.

This is a great same-but-different scenario with software development. Change is inevitable, so it’s fine – just know changing plans in the middle of the initial build might be tricky! If you’ve watched any HGTV shows, you may have seen that an update may need a new design or might be changed on the fly. There’s just a cost of time, and sometimes dollars.

Next Up

I hope this article, and the others in the series, help to provide you with better context in your next custom web development or web application project. However, website projects don’t end at launch. Next in the series will be more focused on the owning / maintenance of your site.

How Building a Custom Website Is (and Isn’t) like… Owning a Car

April 21, 2022
Atlantic BT’s Annie Tudora teams up with Ablr’s Kim Casey to present on Accessibility in Online Learning

We are pleased to announce Atlantic BT’s User Experience Researcher, Annie Tudora, is teaming up with Ablr’s, Accessibility Operations Manager, Kim Casey to present at WPCampus 2021 Online on Tuesday, September 21 at 10 am EST.

WPCampus is a community of web professionals, educators, and people dedicated to supporting the convergence of WordPress in higher education. This free conference will cover a variety of topics surrounding web accessibility, WordPress and higher education.

Annie and Kim’s session will focus on the benefits and challenges of online learning for people with disabilities. Annie’s personal experience with navigating higher education through the lens of a disability inspires her to advocate for accessibility for all. Kim has over two decades of experience in creating accessible products and content.

You can watch the video here or read the transcript below.

Watch her talk here – ~~Empowering accessibility in the era of online learning.~~

Annie Tudora 0:00

Thank you for joining us today for our lightning talk and powering accessibility in the era of online learning. I’m Annie Tudora, a User Experience Researcher at Atlantic BT. And I have my master’s degree in user experience design from Kent State University.

Kim Casey 0:19

And I am Kim Casey, an Accessibility [Analyst] at Ablr, a digital accessibility firm that focuses on eliminating barriers for people with disabilities. And I have just over 20 years of experience developing accessible products and training resources.

Annie Tudora 0:36

So here’s a picture of me and I’m super excited in this picture. And not only because I had just graduated with my bachelor’s in film and media at Georgia State University, but also because I had just finished what was the most difficult semester of my entire college career. I spent most of my bachelor’s degree limping around campus, and something to know about downtown Atlanta where Georgia State [is located]. The classroom buildings are very far apart. So it takes about a 15 to 20 minute walk to get from building to building. And after three years, I was diagnosed with osteonecrosis, also known as bone death. And several of my bones, and my knees and my ankle, my wrist and my hip have lost circulation and are very painful, and are essentially dead. So once I found this out, I had a very hard time getting around and my knees were very painful.

So I decided to spend the last semester in a wheelchair. And I quickly found out that the campus of Georgia State University was very difficult for someone in a wheelchair. The ramps were largely not up to code, and it made it very difficult for me to get up and down places. And the sidewalks in downtown Atlanta were very bumpy and had lots of hills. So within two weeks of using the wheelchair at Campus, I injured the cartilage in my chest and I was unable to push myself any longer. That meant that I had to rely on the kindness of my fellow classmates and my teachers to get me from class to class. And while I deeply appreciate the kindness that they showed me every day, while I was at school, it also felt really frustrating and demoralizing to have to rely on everyone else to do things that I was normally able to do. Even something as simple as getting to the bathroom. And there were days that were so hard for me that I had to call my then fiance to come get me from school because I was crying.

But after graduating, I decided that film and media was probably not the best career for me with my disability. So I went back to school, and got my Master’s at Kent State University in user experience design where I knew I would be able to create online experiences that would be accessible to everyone. My degree was entirely online. So I got to work from home, from my home office. I got better grades, and the experience was virtually stress free. Right after I graduated, I was able to get a job, a remote position at Atlantic BT as a user experience researcher and that’s where I am today with these remote accommodations, it felt like I didn’t even have a disability at all.

Kim Casey 3:44

And Annie’s story is not the only one I’d like to share with you. [This is the] story of ABLR CEO, his name is John. He was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa in college, which means that your eyesight just kind of fades as you get older. We also found that he also found that it fades faster if you’re really stressed out. So once he was diagnosed, he tried to hide it and he didn’t really want to let anybody know that he was struggling with that condition. And resultantly ended up dropping out of college. So he struggled so much that he just realized that he wasn’t going to be able to make it with the way he was trying to do it at that time. He didn’t stop there though.

Thankfully, he kept traveling around and he was offered a job in Cameroon to set up a cell communications network. And he actually had an interesting experience there where they found out he was visually impaired and almost didn’t want him to go and try to talk him out of it and ended up giving him just six months to prove himself. And he did that and more in six months and so that was a great experience for him. And it gave him the motivation to return to college.

And so he applied for another new college and on the first day of orientation found himself inside a meeting hall where he was supposed to find his name tag on a table and find the correct seat. Unfortunately, he was not able to see the name tags. So he did the only thing he could think to do was reach out to the person standing next to him who happened to be the Dean of that college. And asked her to help him get to his chair and find his name tag. And she serendipitously has a child who has a disability as well and really encouraged him to embrace his disability, find out what resources are available, And to get the help he needs to succeed. And so that experience was great for him, because he was able to learn about what resources are available to people with visual impairments, and really opened up doors for him. He met his wife. He was just really able to participate in life like never before. And all sorts of new opportunities surfaced.

He ended up as CEO of ABLR, breaking down barriers for people with disabilities, so nobody else had to struggle like he did, when he didn’t know that there were resources available for him. And these stories are not unique. Globally, there are 1 billion people with a disability. And each person has their own story. Some like John struggle because they don’t know about available resources, some are embarrassed to ask for help. And like in Annie’s case, sometimes the available resources just aren’t enough. She couldn’t get from class to class, it was a real barrier.

So whether it’s a teacher only offering materials and paper format, where they’re not digitized, and a person with a visual impairment can’t read them. Or if it’s ramps, they’re just too steep, that a wheelchair can’t access, these things really can stop people from getting the most out of their education. What online learning gives you is kind of a forced condition where different resources and different learning types are available.

And so another one of my colleagues started his college career and found that none of the online learning resources were accessible. So instead of dropping out or really fighting battles with the accessibility department, he just offered to help them get their resources accessible, and it really opened their mind. And they created this partnership so that he could help them make the materials accessible, and in turn, then he got a better education. So it’s a partnership between the student and the school. And that’s how success really blossoms.

Annie Tudora 7:38

So there’s a lot of potential benefits of online learning for those with disabilities. For one, as in with my story, there’s no need to navigate campus for those with physical disabilities or visual impairments. This can be extremely beneficial if they can do things online. recorded lectures can be helpful for certain people with learning disabilities. And of course, online learning can make recording lectures and reviewing them a lot easier. And online, you’re usually provided with a digital text to support learning. And this can be easier for screen readers as opposed to a paper text. This can also be enhanced by allowing magnification capabilities, adding alternative text and level of headings. And then there are auto generated subtitles for zoom. And you can record those zoom videos and review them later.

However, just because one thing can benefit some people with disabilities doesn’t mean that it benefits everybody with disabilities. And we’ve also seen a lot of challenges in the online learning space. So for one, online learning actually decreases the visibility of disabilities. So some people might have a visible illness, if they have a wheelchair or something like that, you might be able to tell that they have a disability. But for me, if I don’t use my wheelchair, then there’s no way for you to know if I have a disability or not. And that’s what we call an invisible illness. And in a research report in 2011 found that when students with disabilities study online, they were reluctant to disclose that they had a disability even in the face of inaccessible online learning material. So online learning can actually make it harder for teachers and educators to know who has a disability and what kind of accommodations they might need. So even though zoom may supply with automated closed captioning, they can also be very subpar and confusing, which could lead to even more confusion than before, but this can be solved by providing closed captioning on recorded videos or transcripts for media with video or sound. And factors such as home distractions, social isolation, and self motivation can be difficult for many people with learning disabilities, and even if you don’t have one. An inaccessible third party software can be a problem when a professor prefers a teaching supplement outside of the materials provided by the school, which may have been vetted for accessibility.

Kim Casey 10:36

So that brings us to how accessible online learning can benefit anyone and why really, we should be looking into this. Online Learning has come a long way in terms of accessibility over the past couple of years, obviously, because of the pandemic, it’s sort of been a forced accessibility 101. But accessibility is a journey. So I think at the beginning, you kind of feel overwhelmed. It’s a lot of work. But then once you start thinking and incorporating it into your everyday life and all your regular lessons. Then it becomes something that you just maintain and nurture over the years. And with a commitment to accessibility. The benefits to everyone include; you’re building your content on a good foundation, so that you’re thinking about accessibility at the start. You’re trying to anticipate any needs that might arise from everyone in your audience, and you’re considering your audience regardless of their ability. You’re more intentional with your content. So you really are starting to think and break down, “how am I best going to reach this student?” and “how best can I present this information in a way that will help everybody learn?” And you’re also making your online or your content uniform, so that everything is the same. Everybody gets the same experience, whether it be in all digital, or if it’s a visual format. Everyone’s getting the same content, and just increasing awareness about accessibility and understanding different learning types and different needs of online learning consumption.

Annie Tudora 12:11

I believe in the social model of disability, which states that a disability is “the impact of an inaccessible socially constructed environment on a person with an impairment rather than something inherent in the person with disability”. Which means, that the problem isn’t that people have disabilities, the problem is that society and our social order hasn’t created solutions and accessible experiences for everyone. The pandemic has presented us with a unique opportunity to increase accessibility and online learning. With the correct considerations and implementations, we can give those with disabilities more opportunities than ever before. And with those implementations in place, people with disabilities will find themselves in a world where their disability doesn’t impair them in their learning or chances for success.

Here’s our work cited.

Kim Casey 13:15

And we realize that accessibility is a big subject matter. So we welcome any chance to speak with you about any questions you might have. You can contact me at kim.kc@ablr360.com. I also provided our ABLR, LinkedIn link and a QR code that will take you directly to our website if you want to find out more about digital accessibility and just creating accessible content. There’s also contact information for Annie. Her email is Annie Tudora, and that’s spelled t u d. o ra at Atlantic bt.com. The Atlantic bt website is there as well along with LinkedIn and we thank you for joining us today. It’s been our pleasure to talk about accessibility and online learning and we welcome the chance to talk with you soon. Thank you.

Anne Tudora 14:08

Bye. Thank you

August 30, 2021
Figma’s Remote Collaboration is the Future of Design Tools
Sketch has long held the title of “industry standard” for user interface design. However, the global pandemic has shifted countless companies to work remotely, creating a slew of difficulties with online workflows and processes.

Like the Google Doc of design tools, Figma offers an antidote to online collaboration pain points. Additionally, it helps preserve a sense of togetherness and teamwork in a time where remote work is the norm.

In this increasingly online environment, Figma found a place in the Atlantic BT family. Here’s why we love it.

Figma makes online collaboration easy and fun.

1. Real-Time Interactions

Unlike Sketch, which is a Desktop app that runs on Apple computers only, Figma is a web-based app that runs on almost any operating system. You could even choose to run it as a desktop app if that’s your preference.

Anyone can quickly share a project board, prototype, or mockup with a simple Figma link. We often share a link right on slack in order to collaborate with developers, clients, and other team members.

In the past, designers would have to export drafts of a design minutes before a meeting to ensure all the latest changes are incorporated. With Figma, designers can change elements on the fly. Collaborators can drop comments and feedback anywhere on the design and receive responses from the designer in a back-and-forth chat.

2. Observation Mode

Clients and team members are able to watch the designer’s cursor as they work on projects in real-time using Figma’s “Observation Mode”. Seeing everyone’s cursors moving around the project provides a proud sense of teamwork that was often missing in early stages of the pandemic. Observation Mode has several other use cases, including:
- Design Critiques: Give a live demonstration to stakeholders and team members.
- User Testing: Observe with users as they flow through prototypes. Users will be able to use their own equipment, and we gain better insight into their experience early on in the design process.
- Presentations: When audio or visual issues become a problem in Zoom or Google Meet, Observation Mode can be a good work around to keep clients synced to a presentation. Additionally, observing in Figma can help offset the Zoom fatigue of virtual meetings and presentations.
3. Design Systems

Figma’s online collaboration also boosts productivity and cooperation between design team members by enabling design systems. Together, these design systems are stored in cloud-based libraries.

For example, Figma allows designers to create styles for fonts, colors, grids and other presets that anyone can apply to their designs. As components are designed, they are stored in a library that team members can easily search and drag into their own file.

When it comes to developer hand-off, Figma maps its components to code that developers can use when building out the application.

4. Whiteboarding With Figjam

Adding to Figma’s collaborative capabilities, they recently released a collaborative whiteboard tool called Figjam. We have quickly learned that a good whiteboard tool is a must when communicating remotely with clients and other team members.

Before the pandemic, client ideation workshops involved filling out sticky notes and writing on whiteboards. These workshops are crucial when it comes to discovering clients needs, wants, and pain points for their application or website. Online whiteboard tools provide a remote and user-friendly alternative to analog workshops and with it a few advantages.

With online whiteboard tools, it’s no longer necessary to take up wall space with sticky notes for affinity mapping and data gathering. Furthermore, the information from these sessions are saved to reference and edit later if the need arises. Tools like Figjam and Miro can be used to create personas, user journeys and flows, site maps and other deliverables all in one place.

As an extension of Figma, Figjam offers some unique capabilities that other whiteboard applications do not. Figjam allows users to copy and paste both their low-fidelity and high-fidelity designs directly from Figma. This makes it easier to create wireflows, user journeys, take notes and make annotations on the designs.

Since Figjam comes with Figma, your experience design toolset is complete. So pull out some virtual sticky notes in Figjam and rearrange them to your heart’s content!

Figma vs. Sketch Cloud

Following Figma’s lead, Sketch developed Sketch Cloud in order to share designs and prototypes among anyone with a link. While Figma was designed with online collaboration as the goal, Sketch Cloud is limited. Designers must upload their designs into the cloud before sharing them, which inhibits real-time changes and participation.

Going forward, programs like Sketch will have to adopt a “remote first” approach, lest they lose their coveted title of “industry standard”.

Embrace online collaboration tools as the new normal.

Even as offices reopen, online collaboration will likely remain an integral part of the design process. It is possible that a hybrid system of in-person and virtual interaction will be the new norm going forward.

At Atlantic BT, we are always testing new tools to streamline collaboration and quickly prototype. It’s impossible to ignore the advantages that online collaboration has afforded software and web development processes – with the right tools, that is!
June 14, 2021
What should a software development contract look like?
The reason to start any relationship or partnership with a formal agreement is to create a backstop, ensuring all legal expectations are covered and compliance needs are met. A software development contract provides transparency and protection for businesses and their development partners.

Plainly defined terms should keep a project moving forwards and align expectations between both parties. In the worst case scenario, you may need to refer to the contract to prevent a disagreement from becoming an expensive lawsuit.

What’s included in a software development agreement?

As we discussed above, it’s important to make sure there is a sufficient legal backstop should things not work out with a vendor. But this is a rare use case. At Atlantic BT, we primarily use contracts for setting expectations.

Some elements you should expect in a contract include:
- Governing legal jurisdiction
- Separation or termination terms and costs
- Ownership of the code
- Definitions of acceptance
- Authorizations for points of contact
If any of these baseline elements are missing from a contract, you may want to find a new software development partner. You risk finding yourself exposed to legal challenges of code ownership, expensive or combative separations, or having to litigate in a different state than where you are incorporated.

What are some examples of red flags?

The most obvious red flag for a software development partnership would be the lack of a formal agreement. Some developers are not sophisticated enough to hire lawyers to generate professional and legally binding contracts. Without a contract, you are opening your business up to unnecessary risk of employee solicitation, customer solicitation, unfair billing practices, or liabilities for licensing/payments that are unexpected.

Another common issue would be businesses hiring offshore developers or third-party contractors without transparency. Look out for language around including subcontractors without approval or awareness. Some “software development agencies” may not actually have software developers on staff at all. If they’re hiding this fact, there’s a chance the outsourced development is low cost and low quality.

Also be wary of hidden licensing and termination clauses. Make sure you know what you own at the end of the agreement and how costly it may be to get out of it.

Finally, find out how code is deemed “acceptable” for a project. Software development companies should have formal acceptance procedures which outline standards for quality, security, and user experience.

What can you expect from an Atlantic BT software contract?

As a software development company, our primary goal with our client contracts is to be flexible and create language that both sides deem fair and balanced. This is the basis for delivering quality software that you can own and can be proud of.

We are even flexible to use your contract as a starting point and refine until we are comfortable with the language and terms.

Here’s our process for starting partnerships.

NDAs protect intellectual property.

Engagements begin with a straight forward mutual non-disclosure agreement (mNDA). Now, both parties are protected from disclosure of intellectual property and trade secrets.

A Master Services Agreement defines legal parameters.

We then move into the Master Services Agreement that helps define the legal jurisdiction and other parameters that help govern the partnership. This includes items like flexible payment terms, acceptance, warranties, liability, terms and termination, intellectual property rights and exclusions, third party software, non-solicitation, indemnification, and the other legal essentials.

Statements of Work and Retainers govern development.

There are then two types of contracts that govern the actual development work: Statements of Work and Retainers.

Statements of Work outline defined projects.

For Statements of Work, we work in a decent mix of planning and agility. While the project is defined, we know businesses have shifting priorities over time. Statements of Work can be augmented during the project lifecycle with change orders and email approvals.

Retainer Agreements handle shifting needs.

We create Retainer agreements in one of these scenarios:
- There is a need for staff augmentation
- There are many shifting initiatives that are not clearly defined
Retainers have defined budgets, roll over hours, and flexibility to grow and shrink with some notice.

Ready to start a software development project?

Finding an agency that is trustworthy and transparent in their contracts is the first step towards building a partnership. If you have any questions about our process, we’re happy to talk.
June 4, 2021
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.

May 4, 2021
Amplify B2B CRO in 2021.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) has been an element of B2B digital strategy for years. But as more businesses rely on websites as a primary sales channel, bare minimum CRO strategies grow outdated. You’ll be left behind if you aren’t experimenting with CRO on a regular basis.

How did B2B businesses implement CRO in the past?

In the past, CRO usually meant A/B testing “as needed.” Tools like Hotjar or Crazyegg were the most common mechanisms to see how users behaved. You may have made small tweaks based on heat maps and recordings.

Platforms like Optimizely and Google Optimize were used as tools to test out new ideas or respond to perceived issues. For instance, maybe someone wanted to test using a new opening statement on the home page. Or maybe they realized people drop off on product pages so they tested some new layouts.

How is CRO changing for B2B companies now?

Frequency of tests increase.

Tools used for A/B testing and tracking site behavior are still relevant. However, the way companies are using them is changing.

According to Sitetuners.com:

“Businesses will need to shift to a longer-term perspective in their digital marketing and conversion rate optimization efforts in order to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. This means optimizing the entire business as opposed to tactical responses to issues that arise. Tactical optimization is useful but it can only do so much.”

Instead of reactionary, tactical testing; understand there is constant room for improvement and test every day. Make a minimum amount of tests required of marketing teams. After all, running 10 small tests is bound to provide more useful insights than 1 carefully researched test.

It’s also important to note that tests are only useful if results are compiled in a way that teams can easily draw insights. If not, it’s easy to repeat testing the same concept over and over instead of creating new hypotheses and moving forward.

AI amplifies opportunities.

The largest way we see AI impact CRO is with chatbots. In fact, Backlinko states that Chatbots saw a 92% increase in use in the past year, proving it to be the fastest growing communication channel. Roughly 41% of consumers claim to have used chatbots to assist with purchases, and 33% of consumers hope to be able to use a chatbot to make reservations online.

You may have also noticed that Machine Learning algorithms are built into search platforms, offering tailored recommendations for people searching. Additionally, real-time price adjustments may be applied to customers, maximizing the probability of a purchase.

Dynamic web pages make custom content easy.

There are many tools available to display dynamic content. This means that you can integrate software with your web platform that shows different versions of content based on a user’s behavior or data.

For instance, maybe your website is segmented by industries served. Someone who has viewed eCommerce content may be served with eCommerce resources. Someone who viewed eLearning content may be served with eLearning resources in the same content block.

Most Marketing Automation tools now offer dynamic content in both emails and web pages. Other site optimization tools, like Omniconvert and Optimizely, offer similar capabilities.

Page speed cannot be ignored.

User expectations for page speed are through the roof. A Google study found that 53% of mobile ad clicks immediately exited when load times exceeded 3 seconds. Furthermore, 47% of consumers expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less. A fast website is much more likely to hold users’ attention and convert.

Additionally, with Google core algorithm updates around the corner, it’s more important than ever to make load times a priority with your website. This update will include a factor called Page Experience, which heavily incorporates site speed into rankings.

Companies are investing in well-researched Information Architecture.

Information Architecture (IA) is the structural design of organizing information and its findability. For sites with large amounts of diverse content, a well-researched IA is critical to optimize conversions.

A popular IA question: should we group content by our personas, product and service lines, or industries?

The answer is – it depends. Building a successful site structure takes careful analysis of your business offerings and the tasks users wish to perform on your website.

Aside from organizing web pages into a clear structure, you’ll also have to organize data with clear labeling and categorization called taxonomies. Site search relies on taxonomies to serve users with information relevant to their queries. Your site search is only as useful as your taxonomies!

All in all, incorporating clear structure will help users navigate to needed information quickly, reduce frustration, and enhance search capabilities; in turn boosting conversions.

Looking for ways to enhance your B2B CRO strategy?

If you’re still doing the bare minimum with CRO, it can be difficult to choose the most effective newer methods to prioritize. Atlantic BT can help you build a roadmap and implement tools and best practices that will drive your business forward. If boosting site conversions is a primary goal, reach out for a free consultation to get started.

April 30, 2021