First Link Priority is the rule that if a web page contains multiple links to the same destination, Google’s search engine will ignore any link that comes after the first one.

Let’s take an example of a Real Estate agent’s website:

The page contains a banner which is linked to a specific area where the property listings are located. Below that banner is a text link to the same specific area that is optimised for the same phrase as they have used in the banner – Google will identify the link on the image first and ignore the keyword rich link in their optimised phrase.

The image will not grant as much “link juice” as the optimised text link will – which will dilute the effectiveness of your SEO strategy.

Contact us for assistance in creating a SEO strategy that takes into consider the practise of First Link Priority.

At last year’s Google Searchology conference, it was confirmed that Google is returning optimised mobile websites ahead of desktop results for certain mobile queries. So, those companies who are merely redirecting a mobile user to another domain, rather than optimising the site for mobile searchers, aren’t benefiting as much as they should with their mobile site.

Mobility is a ranking factor for mobile search – by not optimising a mobile site it may be more difficult to appear in a competitive non-branded search.

Mobile search is growing faster than searches from PC’s, this leads to mobile ranking factors becoming more prevalent when developing a mobile site. By providing a mobile landing page to a mobile user makes it more likely that the user will execute the desired actions.

40% of South African’s have WAP enabled phones, which means the potential reach of mobile sites is huge. That reach is further extended by optimising your mobile site so that it ranks higher in general searches.

Talk to us about developing an optimised mobile site and extend your reach to your target audience.

Is your company truly leveraging your mobile audience? Are your listings accessible on mobile devices, and are you meeting the needs of your mobile audience?

Why go mobile?

Having a mobile site does not only satisfy the needs of the mobile user, but also increases your chances of ranking higher in search results – thanks to Google’s separate mobile index.

In addition to this, mobile users want to be able to quickly and easily perform the tasks that are important to them whey they are mobile. For example in the Real Estate industry, if a potential customer can search and find properties in the area they are currently in, the likelihood of them viewing the property and potentially buying is increased.

Some considerations:

The screen size and resolution of a mobile device is considerably smaller to that of a desktop PC, so it’s important to create a mobile website to enhance the user’s experience when they are searching via their mobile device.

In today’s age, people are expecting effective mobile websites – content, context and interface are crucial to providing an enhanced user experience. Today’s users want mobile websites that are direct, easy to navigate, and more importantly, provide them with the information they want instantly.

So why not leverage off this mobile audience to target potential new customers? Contact us for assistance in creating your mobile site.

I wanted to step out a bit. Get to a higher level and talk about the people that usually cause developers the most stress (and no, I don’t mean Project Managers). I mean clients. Customers. The people that we are ultimately building our software for. The real people that (again, usually) don’t speak “geek”. These “real people” never seem to be interested in developers fancy, elaborate code or their highly elegant software architecture. The people always seem to be more focused on the design and how easy it is to use the systems or applications that we build. Because, at the end of the day, you have to admit that clients are the ones that are paying our bills, so we need to satisfy them.Dave Hoover of Obtiva mentioned that although there are now more programmers than ever before, the world really needs good developers. Although the craft of programming is a very important part of the work involved, equally important is an understanding of the entire ecosystem that programming is a part of. This ecosystem includes anyone or anything that interacts with your software. Developers build software – you cannot have a software company without developers, but you also can’t have a software company without clients.

The quote below by Jeroen van den Bos highlights the typical relationship between client and developer:

So to help you make sure that you build the software clients want and avoid the pitfalls that usually plague software development such as misunderstood specifications, missed deadlines and lots of late nights, I’ve put together some thoughts below.

Listen, question, then listen again.

We need to carefully listen to our client’s requirements. I know it sounds terribly obvious, but it’s the truth.

The client usually has a lot to say. Some of it is clear, some of it needs a bit of fleshing out. That’s alright. Just listen. Take it all in. A lot of us have been in the industry for a long time and heard a number of relatively similar requirements from different clients. This makes us believe we have an reasonably good idea and a clear understanding of the requirements before the client has explained the whole idea. This can be dangerous, as there are often a few important ‘devils’ hiding in the detail that we miss if we don’t listen carefully.

When something doesn’t make sense or needs elaboration, question the client, but be sure to prod just enough to get the client to give you the information. Try not to lead them too much.

Roleplay

Roleplaying is vital to any successful development project

Roleplaying should be actively encouraged. It allows you to really see things from a different perspective and be sympathetic to the potential users of the system. Once you understand their perspective, you will have a deeper understanding of their needs. If you don’t get into character, you’ll never really know what the users of the system want or how to tailor the software to ensure that it makes sense to those users.

Wireframe

Building a wireframe helps you understand the system

Clients love wireframes and you should too. They can be tricky to build and time-consuming, but they’ll save you boat-loads of time in the long run. They are important to get the client involved in building the system and help them realize just how much work goes into building a system. The client will gain a new-found respect for the development process and all the detail that needs to be considered. Wireframes allow you to spot potential issues in the system before you build any code, meaning that there is less likelihood of wasting time and energy.

I’m not advocating that the whole system should be specified upfront or that re-factoring should be avoided at all costs – definitely not! But we should be able to understand the system as a whole and the workflows/processes at a high-level before we start to lay the groundwork for the system.

The other benefit of wireframing is that it works hand-in-hand with Roleplaying and forces the team to design the system from the perspective of the user.

Collaborate

In the words of one particular master...

A successful software development project is delivered by a team. The team consists of a number of people, and the client is as much a member of the team as the developers. Take the client out of the team and the project is doomed. The client can’t simply be there at the beginning to give the specs and again at the end to test what you’ve built. They need to be there throughout the project, helping with suggestions, clarifying the specs and answering any questions. The client needs to invested in the process as they understand the business to which the software is going to be aligned.

Wrapping it up

Building software systems is more of an art than a science, and needs skill, creativity, passion, sensitivity and understanding – the exact ratio and balance between these element is not something I can define though. However, if we keep striving to build our abilities in all these areas, everyone benefits, especially the client. And a happy client is a paying client.

In short, the program is designed to enable such agencies to:

• Maximize the value they can add to their projects
• Take on larger, more technical projects
• Offer their clients high-level strategic input from a technology point of view
• Broaden their offering and sales reach

For all those who missed out on the launch, you can get the low down on the program on our website, or get in touch with us directly if you want to see the full presentation with case studies.

A similar event is planned for Johannesburg in the near future. If you are in the Jo’burg area and would like to attend, you can contact us directly.

Without a doubt, the most noteworthy improvement to the site is the inclusion of address level data, which locates the listed properties on an actual map. This makes RE/MAX of Southern Africa the first agency within the South African Real Estate industry to provide this value-added technology. Previously, users could only view properties at a provincial level, which didn’t provide the user with sufficient knowledge of the area in which the property was situated. But with the newly implemented technology, users can see the exact street level address of the property for sale. Not only does this assist the user in accessing the property on sale, but it also allows them to view other available properties in the surrounding areas with greater ease.

Other significant enhancements include:

Improved usability and interface design

At first glance, you’ll notice that the new website interface features cleaner design aesthetics and improved search functionality (with new categorised search functions). This was done to improve the usability experience, cutting user search times down to the bare minimum.

Cleaner code

Another improvement is the reduced dependence on JavaScript, which ensures more pages will be indexed, leading to improved SEO, and ultimately, greater accessibility via search engines, as search engines significantly favour pages with faster loading times.

Social media integration

New additions include the incorporation of the RE/MAX social networking channels, such as Facebook, twitter, the RE/MAX YouTube brand channel, and blogs for both the CEO and Chairman of RE/MAX.

A few more features are also in the pipleline, some of which will be BIG news in the online property industry.

Take a look at the site at www.remax.co.za and let us know what you think.

White Wall Web recently worked with RE/MAX of Southern Africa to deliver a new digital initiative which “allows sales associates with profiles or accounts on major social networking sites (such as Facebook or MySpace) to add, manage and organise property listings through social bookmarking.” (Read more about this here)

This sounds exceptional from a business value perspective and has generated notable press coverage, but technically, this is one of the simplest implementations we have completed on behalf of RE/MAX of Southern Africa in the entire 5 years of working with them. This got me seriously thinking about maximizing business value when consulting…

Business Value, Complexity and Effort

When doing project work at WWW, we follow the SCRUM process. Three important metrics considered in the planning process are “business value,” “complexity” and “effort.”

Business Value is all about the value a piece of functionality will create in positioning a business to meet it’s organizational objectives.

Complexity is about how complex a piece of functionality is to produce.

Effort is about how long a piece of functionality will take to produce.

Complexity and Effort differ in that two tasks may take the same amount of time (effort) but require a far more skilled person to do the one than the other (complexity). Consider the difference between watching a 2 hour movie vs. conducting a 2 hour heart surgery.

Clients are happy when…

…they maximise business value while minimizing costs. Since both effort (time = money) and complexity (high skill = money) add cost.

Consultant’s Gold

As a consultant/solution provider you have struck gold when you find ways to maximize business value while keeping effort and complexity at a necessary low.

Fight the urge to use all your super powers all the time

As consultants/solutions providers (in any field) we have a great toolset of awesome super-powers. The urge is to use them all, all the time. We are conditioned to think “It’s not good enough to add some simple social-media-bookmarking-tool-bar to a website as a professional and respectable solution.” Surely that can’t be of great value? What will my peers say? How could I possibly do that and claim I have done something noteworthy/worthwhile?

It’s all about what you value

What we value most dictates what we will consider to be most commendable. For example, if you value a healthy family life, you will think that an 80 hour work week is excessive and stupid, but if you value hard work and maximum wealth creation, you will think that a 40 hour work week is lazy and stupid.

This issue is actually rooted in the same. As a consultant/solutions provider, if you value creating maximum business success for the clients you serve, your focus will be on business value creation at the lowest possible cost. If you value the technical implementation of a solution, that will be what you consider most commendable.

It’s also about professional maturity

A mature professional appreciates and celebrates the creation of business value.

It is immature to elevate technical implementation above business value creation because in reality, technical implementation is a means to an end and not an end in and of itself.

The Web Dev Community

As an international and local community, I think we are getting better at this, but we still have a way to go. What I mean is, I recall 3-4 years ago, techie forums (for example) being very heavy on the actual tech used in producing solutions. Some loud-mouths “out there” would lambaste others in the community for their technical implementations (even often when the resultant business value created was high, despite not-too-amazing tech)

As a community of practitioners, we need to continue create a new peer pressure: maximize business value, keep complexity and effort at a necessary minimum.

A developer/technician/consultant who gets this right is a true professional in my view.

At White Wall Web, we only do option A type sites and I will explain below why I believe that this is the only way for a business to run a website effectively. The crux of the issue revolves around scalability and website management issues – but there are also hidden costs associated to running a static site. Below I go into further detail about costs and motivation for using option A, but let me also first explain why we developed our own CMS (Content Management System) which is called WebStream.

1. Because we can – many web site companies don’t have the skills in house to do this. Often they use open source or proprietary products to provide CMS sites for their clients (which is completely legitimate). We on the other hand are a web application development company and our core business is building bespoke web products.
2. We couldn’t find any open source CMS products that worked the way we wanted them to.
3. We didn’t want to pay the high license fees for the good proprietary CMS products and then have to pass those fees on to our clients.
4. We wanted to build a framework that we could use to build larger more complex apps on top of, and could not see the logic in having this framework separate from our CMS framework. This also gives our ‘smaller’ CMS clients a more cost effective upgrade path.

Basic web principle: A good website is useful to the end user. A useful website has regular changing content.
With that in mind, lets look at the details of costs and the difference between option A and option B…

* Please note all costs below are guides which are very variable according to your requirements. Asking how much a website will cost without knowing details is like asking how much a house will cost to build without knowing details.

Option A – updating your own site

An “updateable” website is called a CMS (Content Management System) Website. This is a website that is built with an application which allows you to be able to log in with a user name and password and make changes to the content using a rich text editor (similar to MS Word).

We have built a CMS called WebStream and have numerous clients using it. A WebStream site has an upfront cost and then an ongoing monthly cost which includes hosting and email.

An advanced CMS will allow various levels of user rights and permissions. WebStream is a simple CMS – we only have one level of backend user rights standard.

WebStream Upfront Costs:

Graphic Design – we outsource this to design agencies. They will meet with you and quote you. Once the design is complete they will provide it to us in the correct format. This should cost no more than R 2 000 unless you want to get very fancy or need more than one template. (Are you a design agency who wants to partner with us? Contact us…)

WebStream Setup – we will need to get your requirements, plan them in detail, use existing WebStream modules, develop any new modules you may need, insert your first round of site content, train you on the use of WebStream. Depending on the details of your requirements, the number of “modules” or “page types” this will cost between R 3 000 and R 8 000.

Domain Name – You will need to purchase a domain name (web address). R 150 p/a. Use RSAWeb for this – their service is great.
Total Setup Budget: approximately R 5 000 – R 10 000

WebStream Monthly Costs:

400 p/m

Includes:

• hosting with UPS (uninterupted power supply) and daily backups
• 25 email accounts at your domain (web address)
• A hosting and email management console
• One hour of support included per month
• Web Traffic Stats

WebStream Maintenance: Free – you do it yourself

Total monthly budget: R 400 pm

The WebStream monthly contract is open ended – so you can cancel whenever you choose as long as you provide one month’s notice.

WebStream Examples:

www.swishproperties.co.za | www.blueprintgroup.co.za | www.capeclusters.com | www.thewritingschool.co.za | www.investmentindicators.com | www.imbongisa.com | www.classycrete.co.za |