Unleashed Technologies - Web Design, Drupal Development, Magento eCommerce and Hosting

How to Manage Platform Changes in an Evolving Web

mspinosa — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:49:23 +0000

Today, platform upgrades are coming in full versions every 12 to 18 months. How do organizations of any type successfully manage this constantly evolving web world? This is a question that often comes up for many people and it's hard to understand what the value is of continually upgrading that can sometimes result in a rewrite of custom functionality.

The answer is that not all upgrades present enough value to take on the challenge of moving to the latest and greatest version. You must determine if the benefits outweigh the risks and resource requirements. If you're not a web expert you must have the highest level of trust in your web firm to guide you based on these critical business decisions. To help you determine if the move is right for you, I'll break it down into three major parts:

Business Objective Questions
Mitigating Overall Cost of Migrations
Utilizing This Simple Strategy in Practice

Business Objective Questions

Asking yourself the following questions will help to clarify the business case for an upgrade:

What are the major enhancements of the new version and where do you derive value?
How long will the migration take in terms of man hours?
Are there new opportunities to build high value features on this platform that you passed on previously due to technology limitations?
Are you willing to pioneer this new release in light of its potential advantages understanding there may be challenges along the way?
Is there a smooth path for content migration and construction of existing structure?
Is there a significant amount of value to our clients and members? (Most relevant to nonprofits or portal-based web platforms)

Mitigating Overall Cost of Migrations

Perhaps one of the most important parts about an enterprise migration is understanding that the accuracy of your proposal's projected costs is directly proportionate to the complexity and the size of your web presence. If you have a small and fairly basic web presence, time estimates will tend to be more accurate and the migration process will be easier. With enterprise web presences it's more difficult to capture all possible issues and quotes are usually received at the very high end or you will find that during the project the billable scope will expand by a factor of up to 30% of the project's total value.

So what is one to do? The best way to keep a fluent and expected product at the enterprise level is to leverage a different model when taking on the process of migration by engaging in a growth package under a web management model. Leveraging this model provides a continuous and uncontentious relationship with your web firm that allows them to be an extension of your team during a technically challenging migration. It also (in most cases depending on who you're working with) provides discounted hourly rates and takes the stress off of fixed budgets and restrictive timelines.

Utilizing This Simple Strategy in Practice

Here at Unleashed Technologies we've experienced this scenario many times with our clients, particularly for nonprofit and membership-based organizations. We can honestly say that we have some individuals staying on Drupal 6 (skipping the jump to Drupal 7) preferring to wait for the major enhancements Drupal 8 will bring to make the effort a business/financially feasible option for those groups. Others made a very immediate switch to Drupal 7 as the benefits made sense for the organization's business objectives and were in line with the time taken to complete it.

If you're an individual looking to make an upgrade to your existing Drupal, Magento, or Legacy Custom Web App and need guidance please don't hesitate to reach out to our expert team. It's our highest priority that clients find the advantages and the challenges of a large migration before starting the process.

Responsive Design Is for Everyone!... Right?

mspinosa — Fri, 11 May 2012 16:27:50 +0000

If you're a marketing or web professional, you've been living under a rock if you haven't heard about "responsive" design. As the term buzzes it's away around the internet, design meet-ups, message forums, and web advertisements it's often hard to understand what it means in it's truest sense. Let's start by understanding what responsive design really is and then help you to understand if it's for you or not.

Responsive Web Design (RWD) essentially indicates that a web site is crafted to use Cascading Style Sheets 3 media queries, an extension of the @media rule, with fluid proportion-based grids, to adapt the layout to the viewing environment, and probably also flexible images. As a result, users across a broad range of devices and browsers will have access to a single source of content, laid out so as to be easy to read and navigate with a minimum of resizing, panning and scrolling. (Definition taken from Wikipedia so you know it's legit!)

What this all breaks down to is developing an internet presence that takes into account that today's audience is viewing your content across different devices. These devices include phones, tablets, pc's, laptops, and God knows what else. The design that is implemented is "smart" in essence and within the same set of definitions is delivered based on the screen size of your device rather than what that device is. By creating one responsive template, instead of one template for each device type, you save valuable maintenance and development time as the pool of different devices offering the ability to browse the interent increases exponentially.

It's a fantastic concept and even better if deployed correctly, but responsive design isn't something that's practical for all companies or organizations. So why would it or wouldn't it be right for you? If you want to provide truly unique, targeted experiences based on a particular medium then responsive design begins to lose it's agility in cost savings, user experience, and manageability.The best way to know if responsive design works for you is to answer the following questions:

The Responsive Design Matrix
QuestionS	yes	no
Is the content and it's structure consistent to what you want to deliver to all devices? It's important to your company based on analytics.
Do you not need the mobile view to be distinctly tailored with different graphics and content?
Do you understand that responsive design can increase delivery times in order to maintain flexibility in design?
Are you ready to commit to HTML5/CSS3, which may have a big impact on legacy browsers such as I.E. 6 & 7?
Responsive design is an investment in the future and most website will require a full overhaul to meet objectives. Are you ok with taking a fresh approach to web design and it's corresponding platform?

If you answered "yes" to all of these questions, you are probably ready for responsive design.

They seem like simple questions don't they? Let me make it even easier. Take your website and then imagine it on your phone (assuming you don't have a mobile version of your site, work with me here). Remember that image and then look at your screen again. Was it similarly structured to what you're looking at with some shifting and slightly changed images? Then responsive design will work for you.

The truth is responsive design is the future and everyday terrific steps are being made that make the questions above less of a concern. Much can be done with responsive design and Unleashed Technologies is here to help. Remember that the entire process of how responsive design is planned takes the smallest viewable screen first and works its way back to a full screen display. By essence of that process you can imagine that the process takes on a whole new life. One that needs to be quick, but mind the details for a successful project to be implemented.

If you want to know more about responsive design, I'd recommend connecting with experts like our Creative Director. They can help provide you the guidance your looking for if responsive design is the right path for your right now.

Have You Met The Monster, Scope Creep?

lnissenberg — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:04:52 +0000

It doesn’t take long on any project, regardless of its genre, to be introduced to scope creep. It is an inherent aspect of IT and web development. Call it scope creep, requirements creep, call it whatever you want, it is added features or uncontrolled changes that are outside the scope of a project. Scope creep comes about so easily and also, so elusively. A simple discussion about the “what if's” and before you know it the project scope has expanded beyond the original objectives. The problem with scope creep is that as new functionality is added; nothing else gets adjusted, such as funding or schedule.

Scope creep can be the result of one or several common scenarios. Below are some of the most common instigators of scope creep:

Incomplete project scope specifications
Inadequate change control procedures
Weak project management
Poor communication between client and consultant
Inadequate checkpoints throughout lifecycle development

Regardless of what caused scope creep, the result is the same. Scope creep equals:

Budget overruns
Missed commitments
Strained client/consultant relations
Project failure

So, how do you combat scope creep? Proper due diligence at the start of the project and open lines of communication with regular updates are key. However, as with any large, project exceptions and changes to the original plan will happen. Therefore, it's important to find a firm that becomes a partner - one that will be an extension of your team and help you continue to grow. Establishing an ongoing relationship will help keep costs low. Additionally, it enables you to build into the project as needed, and accomodates new ideas without excessive change management costs.

Knowing that scope creep is inevitable is the first step in successfully managing it. Let's talk about how Unleashed Technologies can help with your website project.

The Importance of Choosing the Right Web Host

mmoylan — Mon, 07 May 2012 12:37:33 +0000

So, you just paid to get rid of your old website and replace it with a brand new content management system. You decide to try to host it on the old Go Daddy account that you have had since you started your business, and you realize the site is cripplingly slow. Content Management Systems add lots of things your old website may not have had, like the ability to edit your content, display dynamic content, handle comments, and much more. All the added features come with one more thing: "more overhead" needed to run them. All of these new features don't have to slow your site though if you are able to find the right host.

Things to consider when choosing a new host

How technical are you?

Content Managment Systems contain complex backends in order to provide a simple experience to the end user. This means they have scripts, databases, and other installed libraries that may be required to get your site running. Upgrades and security patches are important as well. If you are not comfortable making these you will want to find a host that can offer these as part of their service or for a fee.

Do they provide services for your CMS?

You wouldn't take your Ferrari to just any mechanic to have them work on it. Getting service on your website should be no different. Your CMS will also need security patches and upgrades--this is extremely important. Having a hosting provider that can offer services to upgrade your CMS can make your life much less of a hassle. They may also offer other services to upgrade functionality and provide you with tips and suggestions for making your website better. Experts on your CMS will be able to provide you with much better service than a generic host.

Do they provide optimized hosting for your CMS?

We talked about performance and security as some of the major reasons for choosing hosts, some service providers offer performance hosting specific to your solution. Researching and finding the best ways to make your site perform could take months and a lot of money, but working with a service provider that is experienced could have you set up right away. These services can come in a combination of different ways, search services such as apacheSOLR, caching techniques, reverse proxies, and CMS optimization.

What is the ROI?

Selecting the right host can save you money in a number of ways. The first is by selecting an expert in your CMS, setup time and costs will be much lower. The same will be true for upgrades and security patches, as the cost of fixing a security breach is much lower than the cost of prevention. The user experience is also key. With a site that performs optimally, you are more likely to get conversions and you can also support more traffic. When you have subpar hosting, marketing campaigns that drive traffic to your site can cause your site to slow or even crash, which reduces the effectiveness of your campaign, and can result in lost business. With optimized hosting, you can have the piece of mind that it will perform under any circumstance.

Have any further questions about hosting your website? Let us know, we're happy to help.

Getting the Most from Magento

JSilate — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:28:29 +0000

One of the most impressive facts that I heard this week was that the user base for Magento Enterprise has doubled since the last Imagine conference. That's explosive growth and one that has resulted in Magento representing a 20% share of the eCommerce market. The following are several of the key tactics discussed in the standing-room only sessions at the Imagine eCommerce Conference to engage online visitors and make the most of Magento:

Focus on the User Experience - Whether that's through mobile-enabled and optimized content, robust security and performance, or through customer segmentation and targeted marketing, Magento Enterprise has the tools you need to create a personal, impactful shopping experience for your customers.
Optimize Your Site for Performance - Nothing kills conversions quite like a slow page load. The most oft cited statistic was that the average conversion rate drops by 7% per second of page load time. Over and over again throughout the conference, the need for performance hosting was expressed. Magento was labeled "a beast" that doesn't perform as well when hosted in a typical web environment, requiring a more robust hosting solution for optimal results. Further, the need to restrict cache size was also discussed (specifically to not allow it to exceed 38,000 entries) as an imperative to boost page speeds and, subsequently, conversion rates.
Market to your current customers - When you consider that the odds of selling to a current customer are 50% versus the 15% odds of selling to a prospect, nurturing your customer base becomes a very high value exercise. Magento enables you to build robust customer rewards programs, analyze and segment data, and reach your customers with offers personalized to their unique interests to increase brand loyalty and drive revenue.
Choose a partner that works well with your company - The Magento partner program is growing rapidly and with so many partners to choose from, it can be difficult to understand how to select the right one for you. Once you have found a match for your specific technical needs and Magento expertise, it's important to be sure that you can actually work with the partner successfully. The partner should be an extension of your team, helping you to solve your web challenges and enabling you to grow. Ensuring that the lines of communication are open and that a good working relationship exists from the start will lay the foundation for success.

Magento Imagine was a great event that had valuable networking and learning opportunities. Next year looks like it will be just as exciting with the rollout of Magento 2 and the new features and functionality that are promised to help you to continue to grow your business.

Four Tips for Doubling Your Revenue

JSilate — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:24:19 +0000

One of the most informative sessions I attended yesterday, was “Doubling Your Revenues in 6 Months.” In this session, the panel, which included two merchants and two Magento Solution Partners, discussed 20 specific, actionable items that retailers can use to substantially increase their revenue. Of the items discussed, here are the ideas presented by the panel that could be quickly implemented to start yielding results immediately:

1. A/B Testing: Try different email subject lines, different calls to action on landing pages, different placement of images, tracking what works and what doesn’t. SmileyCookie.com found that A/B testing increased their conversion rates by an astonishing 41% as it allowed them to align their messaging with what appealed most to their customers.

2. Last Chance Deals: Sure, you already sent out an email announcing a promotion, but the panel found that resending a promotional email shortly before the offer expires, especially when leading up to a holiday such as Valentine’s or Mother’s Day, with “Last Chance” or “Two Days Left for Free Shipping” significantly increased conversion rates. The added bonus is that you can reuse the first email and won’t need new creative, only a new subject line.

3. Modul Popups: Building your list is key to driving revenue and modul popups were highly recommended as a quick way to do so. Ten Thousand Villages increased their subscriber list by 1000 in just 15 days when they added modul popup functionality to their site.

4. Site Performance Optimization: This might take a little extra effort, but every session reinforced that it was well worth it. By increasing your page load times by just one second, you can improve your conversion rates and drive revenue. In this session, the presenters shared that Amazon sees a 10% lift in sales for every second of page speed improvement. Depending on your current site load times, Magento performance hosting and site optimization could improve your site speed by 3 or more seconds. What would a 30% lift in sales do for your business?

As discussed in the session, ultimately, you only have four ways by which to improve your eCommerce business: drive more traffic, increase conversion rates, increase average order value (AOV), or increase the number of repurchases. By following the tips I listed above, you’ll be well on your way to doubling your revenues in six months. Thank you to the panel, including Adam Golomb from SmileyCookie.com, Chris Fenwick of Ten Thousand Villages, Ross Kramer of Listrak and Neil Hamilton from PredictiveIntent for such a great session.

Big Announcement at Magento Imagine ECommerce Conference

mspinosa — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:29:25 +0000

Today is the first day of the conference and there where several large announcements worth noting to people that engage the Magento platform at any level. As a quick summary those major announcements include:

The Release of Magento Community Edition 1.7
The Release of Magento Enterprise Edition 1.12
The Expected Launch of Magento 2
The Future of X.Commerce

There were major upgrades applied to both editions of Magento sharing the ability to set group base pricing and allowing more flexibility in specifying customer groups. Other notable "global" enhancements include significant upgrades in the coupon system with regard to auto-generation, and for the developers a HUGE thank goodness on the addition of a REST API.

This was a natural segway into detailed discussion on the major enhancements coming in Magento version 2 where features that greatly automated management of store layouts and design were introduced/presented during the opening keynote. Also the new ability to preview and adjust pages that required workflow steps first (such as the checkout process) without having to step through that process will greatly increase the efficiency of development firms making critical adjustments. The Magento 2 release is estimated to be sometime in the first two quarters of 2013 and will truly help retailers/developers make high value adjustments to the shopping experience in a quarter of the time it takes today. There is a very serious focus right now for the platform on making the backend and frontend experience become more streamlined.

With regard to eBay's aquisition of Magento and the larger group that governs their efforts, X.Commerce is making serious strides to assist in the consolidation of technology while introducing new capabilities in a constantly evolving consumer technology setting. Their focus will be on adding valuable software packages that help provide new optionsto business challenges facing retailers today. These challenges include multi-channel management, order fulfillment, and general logistics (to name a few).

Magento is clearly defining itself as the premium enterprise open source provider in the eRetail marketplace. This is unsettling the industry dramatically as large solution sellers are offering less features lateral scalability for very high investment costs. It will be certainly interesting to see how these previously unchallenged Enterprise vendors respond to Magento's fast moving and feature rich platform.

If you want to know more about the upcoming changes and the future of Magento don't hesitate to reach out us. Our team is here to ensure that all of our clients are getting the most out of their storefront platforms.

Education Tracks of Interest at the Imagine Conference for Magento

mspinosa — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:41:53 +0000

Magento is providing two distinct tracks for the business of ecommerce and corresponding development during this years conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'll be focusing on the business track to help broaden the knowledge base of industry trends, new emerging best practices, and of course new value that can be offered back to our client base. During the conference I'll provide a daily summary of the tracks in our blog for you to follow along with interesting and perhaps also controversial topics. The tracks that I'm planning to attend include:

Tuesday, April 24th

Doubling Your Revenue in 6 Months
Conversion Optimization - Hands on Methods for Improving Your Business Online
Big Data is Worthless, It's About Big Answers

Wednesday, April 25th

Selling Internationally - Going Global with Magento
Top 10 tips and Tricks to unlocking Magento Enterprise Power

The full program for the Magento 2012 conference can be found here and please be sure to follow along during the conference as I'll be providing regular updates during sessions on twitter @mspinosa and @unleashtech. I look forward to seeing many of you out there. Viva Las Vegas!!

Looking to the Future

JSilate — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:07:14 +0000

Magento's Imagine eCommerce conference starts Monday in Las Vegas! In addition to the opportunity to meet others who are actively working with and promoting Magento, I am most looking forward to getting a glimpse into Magento's vision for the future. I'll be attending sessions in the Business and Partner Powered tracks in order to learn more about how companies are leveraging Magento to drive revenue and understand where the market is going. These sessions promise to reveal:

Tips for doubling your revenue in 6 months
Ideas for merchandising online
How to gain a competitive edge for your site
Methods for improving conversion rates
Tips for successfully reaching your mobile visitors

I will be tweeting and blogging throughout the event, so if you're interested in learning more about how to improve your eCommerce business and the future of Magento, follow me (@jensilate) and visit this blog throughout next week to learn more. See you in Vegas!

Cloud Foundry & NoOps

tmontague — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:30:45 +0000

If you have not already heard about Cloud Foundry, it is a recently hot and upcoming Open Platform as a Service project that allows for easy application deployment and scaling. The project is sponsored by VMware and has a hosted solution, which is currently in beta testing and found at cloudfoundry.com. Thanks to AppFog, PHP support was recently added to Cloud Foundry. With this additional support, Cloud Foundry is truly becoming a well rounded Platform which can support a NoOps approach to application deployment.

What is NoOps? AppFog has a great blog post about this very topic found here. In short, NoOps is the idea and practice of allowing Developers to manage the application deployment without the need to understand the backend hosting environment. This removes the need for a System Operator to be involved with an application deployment and allows them to focus on creating a reliable and stable hosting environment which the Developers can host their applications on.

With a simple `vmc push` command from your applications root folder, you can deploy your application and have it running in just minutes. Is your application under heavy load? Just add a new instance of your application with the `vmc instances <appname> <number-of-instances>` command or you can increase the memory assigned to your application with the `vmc mem <appname> <MB>` command.

There are a few different best practices for Cloud Foundry than your normal hosting environment. The one I believe to be the most important is if your application needs to store uploaded files on the web server, you will need to use an external storage server or a CDN since Cloud Foundry is designed for static application files that are only pushed by the developer. This new wave of application management and hosting is just getting started and who knows where it will take us.