Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Category: Strategy & Design

  • Four proven processes for digital marketing struggles.

    Four proven processes for digital marketing struggles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The best blogs have multiple purposes. For example:

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

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

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

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

    High-level website audits turn into deeper dives.

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

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

    We’ll handle development.

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

    Do you feel any of these marketing pains?

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

  • Do breadcrumbs improve usability?

    Do breadcrumbs improve usability?

    What are breadcrumbs?

    Breadcrumbs are dynamic navigation paths throughout web pages. They show you the trail that led you to the particular page you are on with clickable links, allowing you to jump back to previous pages. 

    Breadcrumbs are most useful when websites house a large volume of information broken into clear categories and hierarchical structure. While a website like nestle.com should use breadcrumbs for its many brands, a local bakery probably should not.

    Why should we incorporate breadcrumbs in web design?

    You’re probably most familiar with seeing breadcrumbs on eCommerce websites. They helped you go back to a product category when you wanted to see other options. You knew to use this navigation element because you see them all the time; users understand the breadcrumb pattern well.

    Breadcrumbs enhance UX.

    Breadcrumbs are an important part of content strategy. They give users a roadmap to web pages and help them feel less overwhelmed. They are also beneficial because:

    • They provide contextual information to help users understand categories.
    • They make it easier for users to jump to previous pages without using the “back” button (when they likely forgot where it will take them).
    • They tell users the pattern of a site’s structure so they have a better understanding of how to find other pages.

    Breadcrumbs boost SEO.

    Breadcrumbs are recommended for SEO for several reasons. Partly, search engines evaluate the user friendliness of a website. Breadcrumbs can help reduce bounce rate and increase pageviews per session for the reasons outlined above.

    Additionally, breadcrumbs can boost crawlability and increase rankings because:

    • Google uses breadcrumbs to gain context of content (just like users).
    • Google includes breadcrumbs in the Search Engine Results page, giving users extra information that makes them want to click.

    How do I get started?

    Talk to your development team about how to add breadcrumbs to a website. For WordPress, it’s as easy as using breadcrumbs with the Yoast plugin. For other websites, it may require a custom development piece. A designer may need to find the best placement for this navigational element and provide styling as well.

    Structured data helps you provide page information directly to the Google search engine. A developer or SEO specialist can also help you include structured data for breadcrumbs. 

    Looking for ways to boost user satisfaction and conversions?

    Breadcrumbs are just one way to increase usability of your website. Atlantic BT also places value on content quality, information architecture, and UX design. If you’re interested in a site audit or consultation, reach out. We’re here to help.

  • How to balance technical risk and innovation.

    How to balance technical risk and innovation.

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

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

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

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

    Recognize the dangers of technology complacency.

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

    Low employee morale.

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

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

    Increased technical debt.

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

    Missed market opportunities.

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

    Find ways to foster innovation in a regulated environment.

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

    Encourage people to take risks and allow for mistakes.

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

    Bizjournals.com states:

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

    Create a culture where partners assume some risk.

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

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

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

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

    Feeling stuck with your technology?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Why do RFPs fail?

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

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

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

    1. Stop using price as a measure of quality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    2. Rely on references over examples.

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

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

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

    3. Look for a warranty.

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

    4. Seek vendors with flexible processes.

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

    Need help with custom software development?

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

  • What should I expect from a website audit?

    What should I expect from a website audit?

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

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

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

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

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

    1. Technical Website Audit

    Why are technical debt audits popular?

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

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

    What can I expect from a technical audit?

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

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

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

    2. Content Audit

    Why are content website audits popular?

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

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

    What can I expect from a content audit?

    Traditionally, a content audit includes:

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

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

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

    3. UX Audit

    Why are UX audits popular?

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

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

    What can I expect from a UX audit?

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

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

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

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

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

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

    4. SEO Audit

    Why are SEO audits popular?

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

    What can I expect from an SEO audit?

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

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

    5. Accessibility Audit

    Why are accessibility audits popular?

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

    What can I expect from an accessibility website audit?

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

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

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

    6. AWS Cloud Audit

    Why are AWS cloud audits popular?

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

    What can I expect from an AWS cloud audit?

    Cloud optimization audit

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

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

    Cloud migration audit

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

    7. Site Performance Audit

    Why are site performance audits popular?

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

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

    What can I expect from a website performance audit?

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

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

    Ready to get started?

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

  • WFH Workshops: How we effectively conduct UX workshops at home.

    WFH Workshops: How we effectively conduct UX workshops at home.

    What is a UX workshop?

    At Atlantic BT, we use workshops to define strategic direction of development projects. A UX workshop typically includes assembling stakeholders in a room to work on refining some aspect of the user experience with a web application. While meeting the team, we collaborate to gather requirements, perform exercises to gain clarity, and generate ideas. 

    While this method has always been a staple in our Discovery process, we’ve had to quickly adapt to changing times. Now, we are continuing to improve the process of remote workshopping.

    Through new tools and remote techniques, we’ve been able to keep our client relationships meaningful, collaborative, and productive.

    Pre-covid, what was the normal workshop process?

    Our workshops are designed to identify needed features and define interface elements, which are later translated to development criteria. 

    While each in-person workshop was uniquely tailored to address a particular need, several process elements would stay consistent. 

    First of all, we liked to have 3-5 people present in a distraction-free space. We find that less than three people removes the collaborative group element and waters down the generation of ideas. On the other hand, more than 5 people can be noisier and create chaos.

    Secondly, we liked to perform exercises with markers, post-its, and a whiteboard. These simple tools make it easy for everyone to participate in generating ideas and create clear patterns.

    Some examples of activities that could take place include:

    • A group writes ideas on Post-it notes and places them on the board. Here, they can see where they agree, disagree, and any trends in their thoughts. When people notice these groupings and similarities, it fosters deeper thinking and new ideas.
    • After completion of an affinity mapping exercise and pulling out key points, you can have group voting with color coding (put all your dots on one idea or spread across several, etc.).

    Remote workshopping creates some key challenges for participants.

    ABTers are recognizing some advantages of in-person workshops and downfalls of virtual meetings. Take a look at some of the challenges we’ve identified and our creative approach to tackling them.

    Encouraging participation.

    In-person workshops were conducted in an environment where positive peer pressure boosted participation. People are simply more likely to speak up when they are surrounded by other people who participate.

    In order to keep people engaged and prevent them from working on side activities while at home, we keep some sort of visual on the screen at all times. This could be a live prototype or virtual whiteboard as we organize our thoughts on the screen.

    Finding ways to read the audience.

    It was easier to read the energy of the room while presenting. A presenter could easily ask participants why they looked puzzled or instate a quick coffee break.

    Virtually, it’s harder to look at each person while presenting. We’ve found that having an extra facilitator to observe and note-take can bridge the gap.

    Reducing the learning curve of using a new tool.

    While ABTers are becoming accustomed to our new workshop toolsets, there’s a larger learning curve for our clients. 

    We’ve found a tool called Miro that mimics in-person white board sessions as closely as possible, making it simple for clients to catch on. Miro uses digital Post-its that users can post to a virtual whiteboard. 

    Some of Miro’s features make it even more pleasant to use than pen and paper. For example, fonts automatically scale to fit the Post-it. 

    We may also use Lucidchart for business process flow charting and mind mapping.

    Generally speaking, we try to do as much as possible in a single tool so clients only have to learn to use one.

    Thinking on the fly.

    As remote facilitators are under extra pressure to keep the group involved, virtual workshops require some thinking on the fly. We’ve found that having a structured document ready facilitates quick thinking.

    Traditionally we would start an in-person workshop with a blank whiteboard. However, we find the virtual process runs more smoothly if we pre-populate as much as possible to start. 

    As you can see in the above Miro example, we have a visual for everyone to look at from the get-go to boost engagement and keep the ball rolling. 

    So what’s the key to remote workshops?

    All in all, we’ve been able to create a remote workshop experience that engages our clients and creates a solid basis for development projects.

    The key to this success is planning ahead. We conducted practice workshops internally to test new tools, prepopulated virtual whiteboards to facilitate the process, and continue to take notes on wins and failures to further optimize the process.

    Spending a few minutes thinking about what you want to do and how you can do it is extremely valuable!