Unless you’ve been living under a rock with no Internet access, you’re probably well aware of the prevalence of mobile devices like iPads, iPhones, and Androids. In addition to the increased use of mobile devices, there’s also the change in behavior. More and more people are engaging across multiple access points.

Facebook revealed 600 million users now access Facebook from a mobile device. Furthermore, a significant portion of these mobile users don’t view the social network from both mobile and desktop. Many view it just from the desktop, but there is also a growing number that only view it from mobile (102 million users, or 10.68 %). Back in July, when Facebook revealed the 543 million mobile and the 955 million total numbers, mobile consisted of 56.86 percent of the company’s total members. That number has been steadily growing with each update.

So, if you’re still reading this then I’m sure you feel the pressure to go mobile. The first thing you should do is open up Google Analytics and look at the “Devices” report under “Mobile”. This will show you which mobile devices people are using to access your site. Take a look at how your website renders on these devices and decide if you need to make any changes. You want a website that users won’t need to pinch, tap, or squint in order to view.

Three Steps to Developing a Mobile Presence

1. Have A Clear Objective

Understand the how users will engage with your site on mobile, beyond readability.

Ask yourself if a mobile user would have different needs than someone accessing your site through a browser.

Think about proximity, location and ease-of-use. For example, a person attending your site for charity walk might want to have to have start times, or GPS layout for the course. Attendees to your annual meeting want to access their itinerary for workshops and sessions with alerts and locations as they are about to start.

2. Choose Your Mobile Option

Create a Mobile Site – Creating a mobile site means creating a completely separate website for mobile devices. The great thing about creating a separate mobile site is the user experience. Because the site is designed for specific dimensions, the content will be easy to view and interact with. The downside is the expense and work.

However, if you use Contensive, you can utilize mobile templates and a module called MobileView , to automatically render a mobile site, and allows you to select which pages to display on mobile devices and which pages to hide and you won’t have to duplicate content creation efforts.

Create a Mobile App – A mobile app that contains your website content can create even a better user experience then a mobile site. Users can access your content off-line, integrate location features, and receive push notifications for any updates. The downside of a mobile app is the cost and maintenance.

Create a Flexible Width Website – This is the easiest and cheapest approach to creating a responsive website. This website uses the flexible with approach, meaning that it automatically resizes itself in response to the device. The downside is you get what you pay for and more often than even with fluid sizing the content isn’t going to work or look right.

3. Test, Test, Test

You certainly want to test your mobile site before launch, but you also want to test after. The reason why is that you have very little information for how people will actually use your mobile website. Testing your mobile sites after they go live will help you improve it much faster.

1. Affordability

Why continually pay large amounts of money for online advertising when, with some up front effort and cost, you can benefit from ranking at the top of organic listings for relevant search terms? Unlike with paid ads, your traffic does not suddenly drop drastically when you discontinue an advertising campaign. Of course you will need to put in some effort to maintain a top ranking, but once you get recognized by Google as a top website for certain search terms, you are likely to stay there for a long while.

2. Increased Visibility and Traffic

As you optimize your site for relevant search terms, you will see the number of impressions (people who view your site as a result of their searches) increase steadily. Google searches actually provide visitors who searched for the terms targeted by your website. These people are actually looking for your product, therefore bringing prospective clients directly to you.

3. Improved Brand Credibility

People searching for products and services on Google tend to feel that the highest ranked sites are the most reputable ones in the industry. As you move up in the Google rankings, more and more people will visit your site, which further builds your reputation and improves your rankings even more. On the other hand, many people find ads annoying, and they do not provide any credibility for the company placing the ad.

4. Quantifiable Results

With analytics and reporting tools you will be able to determine your position for various search terms, as well as website impressions and visits. You can also discover additional search terms people are using to find your website, which may lead to ideas for new products or services and additional opportunities for optimization.

5. Competitive Edge

There are over 250 million websites, and you need a way to make yours stand out from the competition. Implementing an SEO strategy is an essential step to ensure that you are ranked higher than your competitors for relevant search terms so that potential clients are more likely to visit your site first and hopefully convert into a sale before they even get the chance to visit a competitor’s website.

-Leslie Koenig

What is a product backlog in Agile development and how is it used

Have you ever wondered, "What is a product backlog in Agile development and how is it used?"

In answering that question, it helps first to understand the core benefit of the process: the Agile method gives you the ability to make fast and powerfully effective course corrections as you construct your product backlog.

Power and agility have always been a winning combination.

Athletes who combine power with light feet and quick correction capability are usually the ones who out run, outmaneuver, and outscore their opponents.

In aviation, the F-22 Raptor fighter jet has "supermaneuverability" -- the ability to turn on a dime, yet maintain incredible power and control, in ways that outperform normal aerodynamic technology.

These analogies illustrate how product backlog works when you're applying the principles of agile development.

It's all about speed, effectiveness, and maneuverability.

The Crucial Role of Product Backlog

Venture Beat makes this important observation about product backlog:

A backlog is where you define and prioritize the functional and non-functional requirements of the app. Each feature within the app must have requirements associated with it. If the development is left open-ended and lacks requirements, then you are more likely to get something you didn’t expect.

In other words, product backlog ensures that every little component knows what it's supposed to do (and not do).

Going back to the sports analogy, it's very similar to crafting a successful play in football: the 11 players on the field know exactly what their job is -- and what their job isn't. (You really wouldn't want a 350-lb lineman trying to run a passing route to catch a pass.)

How the Agile Scrum Revolutionizes the Backlog Process

As you map out all of the requirements for your app's features, the scope of the work can be intimidating.

That's where the "Scrum" team in Agile development comes in.

This method saves you the inflexible, tedious burden of having to document every requirement in your product backlog at the beginning of the process -- a very imposing, slow-going road over the mountain, especially at the start when you haven't built much momentum yet in your project.

How is this accomplished?

The major stages of developing product backlog -- mapping out the requirements for features and bugs, for example -- are no longer kept separate. You don't do each type of work one at a time in a linear path like an assembly line (also called the Waterfall method). Each type of work in a Scrum is combined, developed, and refined all together into "sprints." This allows incredible flexibility, speed, and quick correction capability.

Mike Cohn of Mountain Goat, one of the top trainers in the Scrum method, wrote this about product backlog in Agile development:

"Typically, a Scrum team and its product owner begin by writing down everything they can think of for agile backlog prioritization. This agile product backlog is almost always more than enough for a first sprint. The Scrum product backlog is then allowed to grow and change as more is learned about the product and its customers."

Other crucial stages, like listing all technical work or additional research that is needed, are also combined with the other stages. The team -- as they review their agile list of features, bugs, needed tech work, and research to-dos -- then decide together which items are the highest priority and which of those can be done in a single "sprint."

Greater Transparency and Collaboration

This sprint-by-sprint, all-stages-combined process allows insightful transparency for the customer. In fact, it gives the customer real-time collaborative opportunities throughout every stage of development. They no longer have to walk away and wait for the team to make their way down the assembly line of the Waterfall Method.

It also helps to have a wonderfully talented team of engineers, analysts and designers -- something that we're very proud (and grateful) to have at Contensive. To discover more about agile development, contact us and learn how our talented, hard-working team can help.

The Apple Watch has grabbed the most headlines so far, but the new Apple gadget represents just a small drop in a very large tech tidal wave heading our way. According to IDC.com, global wearable shipments will likely hit 112 million units by 2018.

What this means for mobile app companies can be summarized in one word: revolution.

And, just like it has been doing for everything else in the last 10 years, Apple is leading the way with the Apple Watch.

iGeeksBlog.com thinks the Apple Watch is a great idea because, among other things, it makes Apple's SIRI service immensely better, it's safer to carry (and harder to lose), and it means less time wasted on the phone. And mobile apps that design themselves around the Apple Watch's Star Trek-like SIRI voice interaction could go in some interesting directions.

But, as fantastic as the Apple Watch might be, it is only the beginning. Here are some other fascinating (and jaw-dropping) wearable gadgets that could transform design potential for mobile apps and, ultimately, change our world.

Feels Good to Look Good: Mobile Apps for "Smart" Clothing?

Companies are developing smart clothes. The most obvious application, physical fitness, is already well underway. Companies make smart shirts that measure your heart rate, breathing rate, steps taken, and other physical actions, and the shirt automatically sends it to a physical fitness app on your phone that compiles your fitness data.

MakoInvent observed the next step in smart clothes:

Apart from smartwatches, there are also wearables in the form of fashion...clothes such as Ralph Lauren’s Smart Polo Shirt. These devices are being tested for the possibility to assist field-based or remote working employees, through ‘bring your own wearable’ (BYOW).

Employee uniforms with smart technology embedded could produce a limitless array of possibilities, from on-the-job safety to job training and performance monitoring, for mobile apps -- especially, as MakoInvent noted, for employees who spend most of their time in the field or in remote locations.

Myo Armband (For Everyone Who Has Always Wanted to Be a Jedi)

If you're a Star Wars fan, how many times have you pretended -- either as a joke as an adult or in serious play as a kid -- to use the Force on something? Every person who has seen Star Wars has secretly wished they could move a giant vehicle with their little hand -- Yoda-style.

Thalmic Labs has brought that wish a step closer to fulfillment. Although no one will be moving giant spaceships into the air with a hand gesture -- at least not yet -- their new wearable gadget, the Myo Armband, can move just about everything else that is important in our digital worlds.

How?

They've designed an armband that tracks your muscle movement on your arm, hand, and fingers with incredible precision. The armband then translates your gestures into commands that can operate any Bluetooth-equipped computer or smart device. You can then control any device you already own just like Tony Starks controlled his Jarvis computer interface in the Iron Man movies.

So what's it like to use it?

Mashable.com writer Lance Ulanoff tried the Myo Armband and explained his experience:

In one instance...I controlled a Keynote presentation. I would wake Myo, wave my arm to the right or left to change slides and then, because Myo was set to sleep after two seconds, wake it up again to gesture to the next slide.

The more I did all this, the more adept I became at all kinds of gestures. One of my favorites was the demonstration where I turned on Myo, clenched my fist and then slowly turned my hand one way or the other to control the temperature of an on-screen thermostat.

Just like the arena of smart clothing, creating apps for mobile devices or computers that interact with Myo Armbands creates new frontiers -- and new challenges -- for mobile app companies.

And that's where we come in. Our highly dedicated, talented team of engineers loves challenges. If you have some wild ideas for mobile app creation -- whether or not it involves wearables -- contact us and see how we can help you make those dreams reality.

Having an effective website can be a huge revenue booster for any small business. As the web becomes more ingrained in our daily lives, not having a website or having an outdated, ineffective website can have a negative impact on your business. There are a few traits of effective business websites that every business should try to replicate in their own designs, or when working with a business website development company. Try to keep these traits in mind when having a new website designed.

Clean and Readable

Although web design might seem like the appropriate time to get artsy and really try to impress your customers, resist that temptation. A clean and readable design is the most important traits of any effective business website. A good website should catch the eye of the visitor without sacrificing readability. It is critical that the information on the page is easily digested by your audience as it plays the most critical role in their decision to purchase your product.

Although "screen real estate" has always been a focus for web design companies, recent web design trends have shifted toward leaving more white space within the design. This helps to space out the design elements of the website and allow for easier reading and digestion of the information on the page.

Simple and Straight-Forward Navigation

Although your homepage might be the main draw to your website, all websites have several other critical pages that customers go to for information and to learn more about your product or service. Making it easy for them to navigate from one page to another is important for nudging them along toward making the purchasing decision. A good rule of thumb is to try to ensure that every page of your website is no more than 3 clicks away from the homepage.

Original, Informative Content

When your customers have questions about your product, service, or industry, you want them to come to you for their answer and not a competitor. Having high quality, informative original content on your website can be a huge draw for new customers. Many businesses opt to publish a weekly blog, with each post covering a different aspect of their industry each week. This helps to establish your business as an authority while helping to educate your customers. Try to publish original, informative content on a regular basis.

Brand Voice and Personality

Every business has its own unique voice and personality. It is important that your businesses' brand voice is accurately portrayed on your website as well. Don't be afraid to include pictures of your team, or go against the grain when comparing your own website to your competitors'. Try to convey the unique traits that your company has on your website.

Responsive Designs for Mobile Users

In 2014, mobile usage overtook desktop PC usage online. Around the same time, Google announced that they would be giving increased exposure to mobile-ready websites in their search engine. For these reasons, all businesses should have a mobile-ready website to cater to those users. Responsive technology has come to the forefront as the most popular mobile web design technology and is an excellent choice for any business. Responsive technology is ideal because it doesn't require separate web designs for separate users, it simply re-sizes your current website to fit well on mobile screens.

If you would like an effective website for your business, please do not hesitate to reach out an contact us today. We will examine your current web presence, identify where it could be improved and put together an initial action plan during your consultation. We love working closely with businesses to improve their revenue and help them reach a wider audience.

Content is engagement. To engage with a customer you draw them into an interesting ongoing relationship, a relationship which keeps them returning to your website on a regular basis. Without dynamic content, your website may be superficially interesting, but it only holds the customer's interest for a limited period of time. Content as engagement means that the customer wants to return to your site because they receive something of value every time that they do.

Whether you sell a physical product or a service, you have a lot of competition online. Ask yourself what distinguishes your site from the competition, and then ask yourself whether you will even have the opportunity to show your stuff to the potential customer or whether your site will never even be looked at. There are tools such as search engine optimization (SEO) and to be sure, being at the top of a web search is valuable and worth pursuing. However, it is not enough to be high in search engine rankings.

While potential customers will search for a product on the web if they have to, before they even take that step, they search their own recollections and experiences. If they can recall a vendor who has captured their imagination, they will never even do the generic web search, they will look for that resource that they already know. A successful content as engagement strategy means to become the resource that people already know rather than the result that people search for.

It's not enough that a potential customer has seen your site a single time. Compare this to driving by a billboard advertising a plumber a single time. You have seen the advertisement, but by the time that you need a plumber in a year or two years, you have also seen a million other things. Now consider driving past the same billboard every day on your way to work. You are constantly reminded of this plumber, and though you still may not need a plumber for the same year or two, when you do need one, you will be more likely to think of what you have been seeing every day as you drive past it.

The same idea holds true of websites. Just because someone browsed your site a single time a year ago does not mean that they will remember you when they need your services. As with the commuter, the web user is bombarded with an ever-increasing amount of information, and if nothing stands out about your site, there is no reason that the customer will think of you first.

Content as engagement means that the customer will voluntarily come back to your site before they need you. They will remember that you exist out of the thousands of your competitors. Essentially it is stockpiling goodwill against the day that the customer needs a vendor like you. When that day arrives for the customer, you want to be the thing that the customer knows rather than the thing that the customer searches for.

Content as engagement obviously must change, be current, and develop continually. No matter how impressive your site is or profound your original blog entries, if there is no change in content, there is nothing to make potential customers come back to visit again and again. This increases the chance that they will forget you before they need what you provide. With dynamic content, customers come back just to see what you have to say and what you think. You become one of their sources of information, and that keeps you in the forefront of the potential customer's mind.

For assistance developing your business social media presence, please contact us.

An Essential Element for your Website

With a record number of Americans accessing the internet via a mobile device, it is crucial for any business to develop a website that is responsive, or in other words, mobile-friendly. According to Think with Google, "When a question or need arises, our phones are far and away our most trusted resource, with 96% of people using a smartphone to get things done."

Designing a site with a responsive web design intact is essential for optimizing a viewer's mobile experience, which over time, increases conversion rates. A responsive website allows webpages to adjust in response to the size of the device the viewer is using. Navigation becomes simplified, the webpage maintains a consistent flow, and webpages load faster. This ultimately leaves the viewer less frustrated. In fact, Google found that

"When your site or app is clumsy or slow, 29% of smartphone users will immediately switch to another site or app if it doesn't satisfy their needs (that is, they can't find information or it's too slow). Of those who switch, 70% do so because of lagging load times. And 67% will switch if takes too many steps to purchase or get desired information."
By keeping it simple and leaving viewers with a positive experience, they are more likely to return.

Sites that are responsive are ideal for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). When a website is search engine friendly, it ensures that viewers will be able to find it. Additionally, Google prefers responsive design and uses mobile friendliness as a ranking criteria. If a website is not responsive, it will have negative SEO and decreased search engine rankings.
And lastly, since new devices for web browsing get released continuously, a responsive web design will always adjust to the proper screen size, making certain a site looks flawless and operates seamlessly.

If you're ready to make your website responsive, contact us and let our talented team of engineers, analysts and designers help you.