Having a non-mobile website gives your competitors the edge...

How a non-mobile website gives my competitors the edge?

In this article we’ll explain why it’s important to have a mobile friendly, and what your options are with creating one. Mobile device usage has exploded in recent years with over 60% of the web’s traffic coming from mobile devices.

Smart phones are essentially glued to people’s hands, and most of those will be surfing the web, checking emails or on social network apps. If they’re surfing, then you need to make sure you offer the best experience for the device which they are on. People shouldn’t need to zoom in and pan around to read your content, equally people shouldn’t be greeted with “you need Adobe Flash to view this content” or hover menus which don’t work on touch devices.

People have short attention spans, so your potential customers will likely move to an easier to navigate website. Now we know that potential customers could ditch your business just because it’s not mobile friendly, but this is just the beginning, on thee 21st of April 2015, Google upped the importance of this be announcing that they will be prioritizing websites that provide a better mobile-friendly experience. Or to look at this from the other way round you’ll be penalized for not having a mobile website. Customers will not only ditch your website, but competitors websites will rise above yours for being mobile friendly.

What is a mobile site and how to I create the best mobile experience?

Ok i’m in! So, what’s a mobile friendly site and how can I provide the best experience to keep customers and keep Google on my side?

We won’t bore you with detail, but in short a mobile friendly site is a website that changes it’s appearance and layout based on which device is it viewed on, so on a phone the website will be longer, with large enough to read font all without needing to zooming and panning, just scrolling, it will likely have a menu button (often the hamburger menu).

You are able to change the content which is displayed, the menu structure (often you remove sub-menus or sub-sub-menus) and how the site operates based on the device it’s being viewed on.

To create the best mobile experience you have two choices; you either have a separate mobile website, or you have a responsive website.

Responsive Website

A responsive website is the most common way to create a mobile friendly site. Responsive means that the website adapts to the device that it’s being viewed on. The website uses media queries which is a set of rules which changes the styling or layout at certain widths, a long with flexible grids and percentages to get a fluid experience. You can check if a website is responsive by re-sizing your web browser’s width and seeing if the content adapts to the new size. At Orbit Carrot we now only produce responsive websites!

Separate Mobile Website

Creating a separate mobile website is very different to Responsive web design, rather then having one website which adapts to the screen size, this method involves creating a completely new website for the mobile site.

The mobile website will normally sit on a sub domain such as /m or /mobile and the user will be directed to this version of your website when using a mobile device. This approach is often chosen when you want to keep you existing website as it is (or when there will be far too much work to make a website responsive), this approach however does create more long term maintenance, as you have to maintain two website. Some companies even opt for a desktop website with companion apps for Android and iOS, this approach however will not help stop Google penalizing your website unfortunately.

What’s the next stage?

If you don’t have a mobile friendly website then we highly recommend you talk with your marketing agency or web developer as soon as you can. If you’re not sure who to talk to, please do contact one of our specialists today! Remember over 60% of the web’s traffic is for mobile devices, do you really want to exclude over half of your potential market? Even if you have a mobile website it is worth evaluating it to ensure you are providing the best user experience for your potential customers.

Credits:

http://orbitcarrot.com/having-a-non-mobile-website-gives-your-competitors-the-edge/

3 reasons you should keep working on your bad idea as startup

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people!” -Randy Pausch

I’ve had a few email exchanges in the past with startup founders struggling with an idea. Often they’ve been working on their idea for a while, and they have found some things haven’t played out as they had imagined they would.

When we’re in the early stages of the startup, the valley of death, we will often find ourselves questioning our ideas many times. This is great, as we need to validate our assumptions, but it also means we can find the lizard brain kicking in and persuading us we should give up.

In addition to our own minds suggesting we should stop working on our idea, in the early stages a startup is so fragile that it is very easy for others to influence us. If someone remarks that our idea isn’t useful to them, or that we should do something else, or that we should get a “proper job,” it can easily make us stop and think.

3 reasons you should keep working on your startup

While the many factors can make us feel like we should stop, I want to share some motives for continuing regardless.

1. Earn the required experience and learning

“Almost always, when you learn the backstory, you find that behind every overnight success is a story of entrepreneurs toiling away for years, with very few people except themselves and perhaps a few friends, users, and investors supporting them. Startups are hard, but they can also go from difficult to great incredibly quickly. You just need to survive long enough and keep going so you can create your 52nd game.” – Chris Dixon

One thing I’ve found through personal experience as well as looking at the paths of founders I admire, is that a startup journey is a process that is best treated like a career (read: it takes a while).

Unless you are extremely lucky (and there is luck involved in startups), chances are that you won’t hit the jackpot first time around. It took me a few tries, and in the process I learned a massive amount. I often call my previous, not-so-successful startup my “required learning” that led me to have more success with Buffer.

If you have the inclination to do a startup, then I suggest that you always have an idea you’re working on, because the learning tends to only happen through doing.

2. You want to have something you’re doing

I think it is very powerful to have something you’re actively working on that is your own. Maybe you call it a project, maybe a startup, but something beyond “work” means that you have something to drive you.

This “something” can be what causes you to reach out to someone key for your success, or attend an event, or even offer to speak at an event. All these kinds of activities create serendipity which can have a huge impact.

I’ve chatted with many successful founders who similarly took the plunge at some point and travelled to Silicon Valley. One thing which always seems to come up, is the power of having a purpose of being there, a reason to get meetings with smart people. For us, we got into AngelPad, raised a seed round and got a great group of investors and advisors on board for Buffer.

Jumping on a plane to the Valley is an amazing thing to do, especially if you have something you want to achieve out of the trip.

3. Good ideas come through iteration

“real startups tend to discover the problem they’re solving by a process of evolution. Someone has an idea for something; they build it; and in doing so (and probably only by doing so) they realize the problem they should be solving is another one” – Paul Graham

In general, the startups that are most successful are vastly different today than the initial idea. I think that this is actually the norm rather than the exception. Here are three examples from a great article by Vinicius Vacanti:

• Flickr started as a web-based massively multiplayer online game called Game Neverending
• Instagram started as an HTML5 supported location-based service
• Groupon started as a way to allow groups of people to band together to accomplish a goal called ThePoint

Sometimes through iteration you uncover learning that invalidates your idea or some key assumptions. At the same time, this means that further iteration can also lead to the exact opposite: uncovering an idea or features which people want and will gain traction.

credits:

https://open.bufferapp.com/bad-idea-keep-working/

A right marketing strategy can help business to create its space in the world

Marketing plays a crucial role in every business to reach to the end user and its expansion. It is not only needed for the freshers but also for the leaders to sustain in the market.

As everything is now available online, businesses has to expand their market span and build strategies to promote themselves through various electronic media.

The right digital marketing strategy from the inception of the business can lead to its faster introduction to the market  and then to its expansion and setting up a space in the world’s market.

Are you a seller to the local community or to the world? Are you digitally available? Are you sure you are using all possible means to promote your business?

If you are not sure of the answers and really want to expand your business then you should think for digital marketing. Explaining digital marketing in a simple way: In one simple way we can say digital marketing is promoting products by one or more means of electronic media. Digital marketing uses all means that enables organisation to review its marketing campaigns and understand what is working and what is not -in real time. As the use of internet is growing with the fastest pace, people are now geared up with required information anytime, anywhere. Digital marketers review what is been viewed, how often and for how long, lead generation, what content works, what response is on social media and so on.

The tech giant Google is changing its search algorithm to favor mobile-friendly websites.

Google Is Making a Big Change That Will Massively Impact Small Businesses

On Tuesday, April 21, Google is making a major update to its mobile search algorithm that will change the order in which websites are ranked when users search for something from their phone.

The algorithm will start favoring mobile-friendly websites (ones with large text, easy-to-click links, and that resize to fit whatever screen they're viewed on) and ranking them higher in search. Websites that aren't mobile-friendly will get demoted. 

About 60% of online traffic now comes from mobile and Google wants users to have a good experience whenever they click on a mobile link.  

The company announced its impending changes back in February, giving webmasters nearly two months and plenty of information to make the changes necessary to keep their sites from disappearing from mobile search results. But the update is still expected to cause a major ranking shake-up. It has even been nicknamed "Mobile-geddon" because of how "apocalyptic" it could be for millions of websites, Itai Sadan, CEO of website building company Duda, told Business Insider.  

"I think the people who are at risk are those who don’t know about it," Sadan says. To him, that mostly means small businesses. 

"Come April 21, a lot of small businesses are going to be really surprised that the number of visitors to their websites has dropped significantly. This is going to affect millions of sites on the web," he says.

Businesses that depend on people finding them through localized search--like, if someone typed "coffee shops in Sunnyside, Queens," into Google on their phone--could see a decrease in foot traffic as a result of this update, Sadan says.

"Google has always been about relevancy, and content is king," he says. "But that's changing. Yes, they're saying content is still extremely important, but user experience is just as important. It's not sufficient to have all the right content--if people come to your site and the content is there but it's not readable, that's not good."

It's not only small businesses that are going to be affected by mobile-geddon though. 

Marketing company Somo released a study last week that found that a bunch of big brands, like American Apparel, The Daily Mail, and Ryanair, will all get punished when the change takes place, unless they update their sites before Tuesday.  

credits:

http://www.inc.com/business-insider/Google-is-making-a-big-change-that-will-massively-impact-small-business.html?cid=sf01001

How Cloud Computing Works...

Let's say you're an executive at a large corporation. Your particular responsibilities include making sure that all of your employees have the right hardware and software they need to do their jobs. Buying computers for everyone isn't enough -- you also have to purchase software or software licenses to give employees the tools they require. Whenever you have a new hire, you have to buy more software or make sure your current software license allows another user. It's so stressful that you find it difficult to go to sleep on your huge pile of money every night.

Soon, there may be an alternative for executives like you. Instead of installing a suite of software for each computer, you'd only have to load one application. That application would allow workers to log into a Web-based service which hosts all the programs the user would need for his or her job. Remote machines owned by another company would run everything from e-mail to word processing to complex data analysis programs. It's called cloud computing, and it could change the entire computer industry.

In a cloud computing system, there's a significant workload shift. Local computers no longer have to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to running applications. The network of computers that make up the cloud handles them instead. Hardware and software demands on the user's side decrease. The only thing the user's computer needs to be able to run is the cloud computing system's interface software, which can be as simple as a Web browser, and the cloud's network takes care of the rest.

There's a good chance you've already used some form of cloud computing. If you have an e-mail account with a Web-based e-mail service like Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or Gmail, then you've had some experience with cloud computing. Instead of running an e-mail program on your computer, you log in to a Web e-mail account remotely. The software and storage for your account doesn't exist on your computer -- it's on the service's computer cloud.

Cloud Computing Architecture

When talking about a cloud computing system, it's helpful to divide it into two sections: the front endand the back end. They connect to each other through a network, usually the Internet. The front end is the side the computer user, or client, sees. The back end is the "cloud" section of the system.

The front end includes the client's computer (or computer network) and the application required to access the cloud computing system. Not all cloud computing systems have the same user interface. Services like Web-based e-mail programs leverage existing Web browsers like Internet Explorer or Firefox. Other systems have unique applications that provide network access to clients.

On the back end of the system are the various computers, servers and data storage systems that create the "cloud" of computing services. In theory, a cloud computing system could include practically any computer program you can imagine, from data processing to video games. Usually, each application will have its own dedicated server.

A central server administers the system, monitoring traffic and client demands to ensure everything runs smoothly. It follows a set of rules called protocols and uses a special kind of software called middleware. Middleware allows networked computers to communicate with each other. Most of the time, servers don't run at full capacity. That means there's unused processing power going to waste. It's possible to fool a physical server into thinking it's actually multiple servers, each running with its own independent operating system. The technique is called server virtualization. By maximizing the output of individual servers, server virtualization reduces the need for more physical machines.

If a cloud computing company has a lot of clients, there's likely to be a high demand for a lot of storage space. Some companies require hundreds of digital storage devices. Cloud computing systems need at least twice the number of storage devices it requires to keep all its clients' information stored. That's because these devices, like all computers, occasionally break down. A cloud computing system must make a copy of all its clients' information and store it on other devices. The copies enable the central server to access backup machines to retrieve data that otherwise would be unreachable. Making copies of data as a backup is called redundancy.

Cloud Computing Applications

The applications of cloud computing are practically limitless. With the right middleware, a cloud computing system could execute all the programs a normal computer could run. Potentially, everything from generic word processing software to customized computer programs designed for a specific company could work on a cloud computing system.

Why would anyone want to rely on another computer system to run programs and store data? Here are just a few reasons:

• Clients would be able to access their applications and data from anywhere at any time. They could access the cloud computing system using any computer linked to the Internet. Data wouldn't be confined to a hard drive on one user's computer or even a corporation's internal network.
• It could bring hardware costs down. Cloud computing systems would reduce the need for advanced hardware on the client side. You wouldn't need to buy the fastest computer with the most memory, because the cloud system would take care of those needs for you. Instead, you could buy an inexpensive computer terminal. The terminal could include a monitor, input devices like a keyboard and mouse and just enough processing power to run the middleware necessary to connect to the cloud system. You wouldn't need a large hard drive because you'd store all your information on a remote computer.
• Corporations that rely on computers have to make sure they have the right software in place to achieve goals. Cloud computing systems give these organizations company-wide access to computer applications. The companies don't have to buy a set of software or software licenses for every employee. Instead, the company could pay a metered fee to a cloud computing company.
• Servers and digital storage devices take up space. Some companies rent physical space to store servers and databases because they don't have it available on site. Cloud computing gives these companies the option of storing data on someone else's hardware, removing the need for physical space on the front end.
• Corporations might save money on IT support. Streamlined hardware would, in theory, have fewer problems than a network of heterogeneous machines and operating systems.
• If the cloud computing system's back end is a grid computing system, then the client could take advantage of the entire network's processing power. Often, scientists and researchers work with calculations so complex that it would take years for individual computers to complete them. On a grid computing system, the client could send the calculation to the cloud for processing. The cloud system would tap into the processing power of all available computers on the back end, significantly speeding up the calculation.

Cloud Computing Concerns

Perhaps the biggest concerns about cloud computing are security and privacy. The idea of handing over important data to another company worries some people. Corporate executives might hesitate to take advantage of a cloud computing system because they can't keep their company's information underlock and key.

The counterargument to this position is that the companies offering cloud computing services live and die by their reputations. It benefits these companies to have reliable security measures in place. Otherwise, the service would lose all its clients. It's in their interest to employ the most advanced techniques to protect their clients' data.

Privacy is another matter. If a client can log in from any location to access data and applications, it's possible the client's privacy could be compromised. Cloud computing companies will need to find ways to protect client privacy. One way is to use authentication techniques such as user names and passwords. Another is to employ an authorization format -- each user can access only the data and applications relevant to his or her job.

Some questions regarding cloud computing are more philosophical. Does the user or company subscribing to the cloud computing service own the data? Does the cloud computing system, which provides the actual storage space, own it? Is it possible for a cloud computing company to deny a client access to that client's data? Several companies, law firms and universities are debating these and other questions about the nature of cloud computing.

How will cloud computing affect other industries? There's a growing concern in the IT industry about how cloud computing could impact the business of computer maintenance and repair. If companies switch to using streamlined computer systems, they'll have fewer IT needs. Some industry experts believe that the need for IT jobs will migrate to the back end of the cloud computing system.

Another area of research in the computer science community is autonomic computing. An autonomic computing system is self-managing, which means the system monitors itself and takes measures to prevent or repair problems. Currently, autonomic computing is mostly theoretical. But, if autonomic computing becomes a reality, it could eliminate the need for many IT maintenance jobs.

Credits:

Bloom With Happiness This Holi....

An Opportunity to change…

It is rightly said by Amy Jo Martin,an American author, speaker, entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of Digital Royalty :" Social media is changing the way we communicate and the way we are perceived, both positively and negatively. Every time you post a photo, or update your status, you are contributing to your own digital footprint and personal brand."

We are the brands on social media; we buy not only things but ideas, thoughts and perceptions of the world and build our image and perceptions towards the world. It gives us the real life feedback of ourselves and gives an opportunity to change.