Author Archive Roberto

Data Conversions and Scrubbing

Moving data from one database to another can be a treacherous procedure. Different fields, data lengths and formats are just some of the hurdles to getting clean data. We’ve conquered hundreds of these scenarios and have the skills to manage the whole process.

It’s often a wise decision to clean up the data before moving. Purging or transferring obsolete data to an archive makes the rest of the tasks much easier.

Our software can reformat the data into the new format in a single pass. Contact us for a opinion !

Ecommerce and Electronic Payments

Cumbersome payment systems will send your customers else where.

When I started selling my books a few years back, buyer’s told me that if they couldn’t buy it on Amazon they were less likely to put down their money. Why ? Because Amazon allowed them to log in, and have their payment info saved. Click the items they wanted to purchase, hit One-Click Purchase and wait for the delivery truck. Maybe they’re lazy, but they didn’t want to enter all their info again into another system. Can’t blame them.

Adding Paypal as an alternative, boosted sales immediately. Potential customers recognize Paypal and feel secure using it. Done deal !

Considering using a service gateway if you want to do your own card processing, it’ll save you big dollars and struggles over security issues with the card companies.

Write, and we’ll gladly share any info we have regarding your particular needs.

Marketing Automation

Software that doesn’t play nice with others, unwieldy databases or full featured sales systems that are just too expensive are some of the reasons organizations continue to perform repetitive, error-prone manual marketing tasks.

We’ve found that with even with basic tools like spreadsheets and access to an email server, a small business can automate newsletters, new member welcome letters and announcements. Let those machines do what their good at: repetitive tasks done in a consistent manner !

Our hosting solutions give you access to these tools. Ask us, we’ll show you !

SEO for mobile and WordPress sites

Search Engine Optimization are three very popular words these days. It all comes down to getting noticed when someone hits the search button. If you want your site to show up on the first page of results, you’re going to have to work for it. Unless you are into something so unique that no one else has thought of, your task is to climb over the other millions of web sites.

Loading up your Meta section of your pages with keywords was once a successful strategy. Google programmers were quick to see that and found the content of the web pages in a lot of cases was not related to the keywords. I won’t fill this page with all the iterations Google went through to arrive at the current state of things. There’s lot written about it other places.

In 2018, content is king of the SEO world. This means that the Google machines read web pages and decide how relevant a web page is based on keyword IN the content as well as head lines and sub titles. This is an oversimplification of course but it illustrates the importance of the content of your web pages.

We try to determine what the searcher is actually looking for when they enter a search term, and work back from there, adjusting content to their needs.

You are busy running your business, ours is creating content ! Talk to us and we’ll give you a FREE assessment of your current system and demonstrate how you might increase your search rank. Then, use web analytics to monitor your climb.

WordPress Web Sites and Hosting

Why is WordPress so popular ?

WordPress is one of the most widely used content management systems out there. For good reason ! It is easy to use, and offers thousands of plugins that provide functionality for a myriad of functionality from SEO to Ecommerce. There are thousands of developers continuously creating new functionality, most of it works great but sometimes not so good. We can offer one solid piece of advice. Read the Reviews !
People are very good at writing reviews, especially of products that don’t do what they advertise.

Why does it matter which host we use ?

Where you host your WordPress site is one of the most important considerations. The host is the server where your content resides and the programs run that serve up your web pages. If you choose a host that doesn’t provide a solid solution, you may have to spend some bucks to move it. Due to its popularity, WordPress if occasionally a target for malicious frivolities, often bringing things to a standstill. Backing up your data frequently, everyday if possible, can mitigate any damage but frequent security scanning provides with early warning if you do become a target.

Our hosting solutions provide daily offsite backups and security scans. Prompt technical assistance is also available if needed. Talk to us, we’ll share what we know !

Mobile Apps, IOS, Android and PWA’s

 

We develop apps for most platforms and it has been a fantasy or dream that perhaps that we could write code once and run it on all platforms. It’s not for lack of trying, there have been numerous attempts to build that bridge; Xamarin, HTML5, Ionic, etc… So if you want to build an app for your business, it is generally necessary to build two apps, IOS and Android at twice the cost and maintenance.

What’s a PWA ?

I know you have been trying to figure out what a PWA is. It is an app that is built on a new concept that uses web technology  to construct apps. Progressive Web Apps ! (PWA) These PWA’s will run in an offline mode, caching html, code and data locally. It’s a hot topic in the app world and from our experience it does run well on all platforms and is installable to the Home screen like a native app. With Google the main driver, Apple, Microsoft and others have boarded the flight.Read more about it here.

What’s the verdict ?

Would we use PWA’s to build a BlueTooth or other app that needed tight integration with the hardware? Probably not at this point, but for informational or ecommerce apps I say yes.

Stay tuned ! We keep this topic updated.

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