Tag: digital consultant

How Responsive Website Design Can Take Your Business Forward

It is easy to understand this concept even if you don’t have special technical knowledge. The idea behind responsive design is to make the website usable across all connected devices. It responds to the environment created by the hardware to make viewing and interaction comfortable, pleasant and productive.
Simply put, the website is equally easy to view and to use on desktop computers, laptops, smartphones and tablets. What value can it bring to a business? Let me answer this question from the point of view of an experienced web development consultant.

Cost Efficiency
With global mobile web traffic already surpassing desktop traffic, it has become perfectly clear that there is no way back – mobile is here to stay. If businesses want to keep up with the trends and stay competitive, their website has to be optimised for mobile. It is possible to have a mobile website in addition to your existing one. This option typically requires a smaller initial investment. However, it is not cost-efficient as you will have to invest in the search engine optimisation, marketing, maintenance and future development of two different platforms. Furthermore, content duplication issues may occur and you can be severely penalised for this by Google.
With responsive website design, you will be able to focus your effort and investment on a single platform. You can expect higher return since the platform will continue to work effectively for all of your marketing and other business purposes in the long term.

Improved Visibility
Since April 2015, Google has been giving priority to websites which are optimised for mobile devices. This means that responsive website design has now become fundamental for SEO and digital marketing in general. If you want your optimisation efforts from content creation to link building to pay off, you will need to have a website which is equally functional on all mobile devices. With higher search engine rankings, your website will have more qualified leads and this will help for increasing the rate of conversion.

Higher Conversion
Eventually, it all boils down to sales and revenue and responsive design can help to improve both. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, mobile is becoming an ever more important channel for generating information and social sharing. With a website optimised for smartphones and tablets, you and your products and services will get found more easily and quickly not only via the search engines, but via the social networks too.
Around half of all online shoppers use multiple devices to make a transaction. For instance, they may find a cool product on their tablet and then buy it later on via their desktop computer. Additionally, one in four e-commerce sales is now made via a smartphone. These statistics come to prove that responsive design is necessary not only for gaining new customers, but for keeping existing ones.
As mentioned in the beginning, the core purpose of this design is to improve user experience. When the user enjoys satisfactory experience, the chance of sale increases by two thirds. You will not have to worry about missing to capture a prospect customer because your website is difficult to navigate with gestures or slow to load on mobile devices.

Become even more competitive with responsive design for your business website.

You already have a vision for your business’s responsive website? Share it with me.

The Scope of the Digital Consultant’s Work

Why do companies hire a digital consultant? The simple answer is that digital marketing and e-commerce have become so well-developed and advanced that a single person or even a team may not be sufficient to manage them. While a small local business may not have the right specialist for the job, a large company may be lagging behind competitors because their specialised department hasn’t been quick enough to catch up with the latest trends. The professional will help you get on the right track and achieve your goals. Here I will share with you how this works based on my personal experience as a digital consultant.

Key Roles
A business of any size, level and industry can take advantage of digital consultancy to improve its performance regardless of how long it has been present on the web. If you have just founded a new company or you have been using outdated and ineffective online marketing methods, you can get a head start or restart with a complete digital strategy. It will have clearly set business goals and precisely defined time frame, schedule and budget. It is my primary objective to tailor it to the specific needs of the business given its own characteristics, the marketing conditions, which it operates in, and its target audience.

Solving problems is another major role of the consultant. Most companies can clearly identify the nature of the problem related to their online performance, but cannot find the cause and come up with a solution. If you experience a drop in your online sales, for example, my role will be to pinpoint the weak points in your marketing, search engine optimisation and e-commerce website performance, to name the main areas. The next step involves determining the most effective and cost-efficient solution.
Very often, companies prefer to outsource specific projects like ones for website and mobile app development. In such cases, the role of the consultant can range from setting criteria and a process for hiring a developer to outlining a development strategy. As a consultant who has a team of developers and designers, I can execute the strategy as well.

Level of Client Involvement
Will the consultant present the ready strategy, solution or project plant directly or work together with members of the company’s team to create it? As the company or department manager, you decide how much involvement you and your team will have in the process. The bare minimum is for the consultant to have access to data and other useful materials and to establish reliable communication with the person in charge. Close cooperation usually brings the best results. This is what my personal experience has shown.

Effective Communication
No matter what the level of involvement of the client is in the actual work on the project, the two parties should be on the same page at all times. It is paramount for the digital consultant to keep the client up-to-date on the development of the project and to inform the company about any changes which have to be made. Similarly, if there are shifts in the business’s plans, the professional should know about them as soon as possible.

Managers are not supposed to be digital specialists, but they have the opportunity to hire the help which they need and to negotiate the most favourable terms when doing so.

If you are looking to hire an experienced digital consultant call me or send me an email or a message. When you contact my office at Whiz, seek Philip Philipov.

Lifting the Curtain on Bespoke Software Development

Why do businesses invest in custom written software? They simply don’t find an on-shelf product which meets their requirements. At the same time, managers are often uneasy about embarking on the journey of development, which they play an important part in. Will the product bring real value to the business? Will it perform well? Will everyone on the company team be able to use it effectively? As a digital consultant with focus on custom software building, I’d like to take you through the development process to answer these and other important questions.

Requirements and Value for Money
It is common for businesses to know where they have problems in their processes, but to be clueless about how to fix them technically. This is where the digital consultant can provide professional support. With research and analysis, I can pinpoint exactly what solutions the software should bring. We get to discuss them to define goals. With clear objectives at hand, the development process can begin. The planning and scheduling are left to us too.
The size of the investment is always an important matter. Instead of concentrating entirely on per-hour rates, it is important to run full cost-benefit analysis. A bespoke software product is a long-term instrument intended to improve processes and to keep costs down. That is why the focus should be on determining the break-even point and the return on the investment over time.

Features, Capabilities and Integration
The core purpose of the bespoke software is to help you perform a range of tasks more effectively and quickly with the use of fewer resources. That is why every feature and capability will be tailored to your specific needs. This includes taking into consideration the technical skills of your employees. The goal of my team of engineers and designers is to produce simple and functional interface and to make every operation easy and quick – no clutter, confusing menus or the need to go back several steps to check something.
Integration is another fundamental for achieving efficiency. The particular solution can be integrated with other software and with different digital platforms which you already use. If the email marketing strategy for your e-commerce website hasn’t been efficient, for example, it can be optimised with the use of bespoke software integrated with the website and with existing CRM tool. The application will be driven by customer data and have a reliable system for performance measurement in addition to a high level of automation.

Performance Testing
Quality control is crucial for successful software development. The new tool for your business will undergo multiple tests on various devices. The performance of each and every function will be carefully examined and analysed. This is how my team and I ensure that the software will work flawlessly from day one.

Deployment and Support
Every new beginning causes excitement and a little bit of apprehension. My job is to eliminate the second part completely. With the use of the right tools and skills, the technical aspect of the deployment will be hassle-free. Together with my team, I will make the learning curve for you and your people as gentle as possible via special training designed to bring maximum result in the shortest time.

What’s next after the software’s deployment? You and your employees will receive full technical support at all times.

Share what business processes you want to improve with custom software. Contact me via email or call my office and seek Philip Philipov to speak to me directly.

The Road to Website Project Success

What makes a business website loved by users and profitable for its owner?

Many people assume that the secret lies with the appearance of the website while others believe that it has to do with its ease of use. Both are true to an extent, but the reality is that a website is successful only when it is based on a strategy for reaching precise business goals and achieving the highest level of user and customer satisfaction. Let me take you through the process of creating the blueprint for the future website and a plan for its development. As a digital consultant, I always explain to managers what I do together with my team of web developers.

Market Research
Each business website has one major purpose: to attract consumers using the internet and to turn them into customers. This makes it a marketing project as well as a technical one. For this reason, preliminary market research is paramount. This research is detailed and focuses on consumer behaviour and preferences and on the strategies, actions and achievement of competitors. Data is collected and carefully analysed. This analysis makes it possible for the new website to be positioned in the most effective way to attract consumers and to stand out from the competition.

Concept Development
The market analysis serves as the basis for creating the concept for the new website. This concept is developed in great detail with the use of mind mapping techniques and software especially designed for the purpose. The result is the website wireframe. This is the screen blueprint of every page. Every section is designed with the needs of the users in mind. Its position is carefully chosen to achieve clear logical flow and high aesthetic appeal. Both technical skills and creativity are used for developing perfect website functionality – easy navigation and orientation, compatibility with all browsers, responsive web design and fast loading. The concept is focused on achieving the best possible user experience. It is presented with the use of a prototype. All specifics are precisely defined.

The blueprints and prototype include not only visual and functional representation of the ideas of the team of web designers and developers. They feature thorough description of every component. This makes it even easier for the customer to get a clear idea of what their website will be like. The software-generated blueprint allows for modifications to be made easily and quickly. This gives us maximum flexibility and allows for higher productive efficiency.

Detailed Content Planning
Once the design and functionality concept is determined, the content of the website is planned in great detail. Simply put, the elements are filled with specific content. There are several major requirements for good website content. It has to attract the user’s attention. It must bring valuable information. It has to be easy to find and to use. It is our job to ensure that these requirements will be met.

The final step involves the setup of a schedule for the execution of the website project. Throughout the whole process there is constant communication between me and the client. As a consultant, I am always available to answer questions. The exchange of ideas and opinions is of immense importance for achieving the best end result.

If you have a website project in mind, let’s discuss it. If you call my office at Whiz, just ask the person to speak to Philip Philipov. I’ll be more than happy to hear from you.