• 01 May 2012

    To Internet World Expo 2012

    On the 25th of April 2012, Ruth & I visited the 20th yearly event of Internet World Expo. The weather was terrible and I was almost certain that it was going to keep a lot of people away. Well, I was wrong. This is Europe's largest digital business event we are talking about!  Despite the rain, thousands showed up at the Earls Court exhibition centre. As soon as we entered the venue, the singing butlers of Rackspace hosting wowed us! Great promotion I must say! After our little chitchat (and emptying the bowl of chocolate on the table) with Doron of Rackspace hosting, we went to hang out with the Telerik Sitefinity team.

    Personally I wanted to attend as many seminars as possible on Social media but that was the busiest theatre! People were queuing at least one hour before each seminar and I only learnt this lesson after missing 2 consecutive seminars. Anyhow, there was a lot of other stuff going on too, we did attend some brilliant lectures. As a digital marketer, I really liked the seminar with Sean Duffy (Email Marketing Consultant at Emailcenter) where he talked about the usefulness of multivariate testing in email marketing campaigns. The presentation of John Engates (CTO, Rackspace hosting) on the future of cloud was also very informative. We specially loved and enjoyed the seminar by Gabe Sumner (Product Evangelist, Telerik) where he talked about using responsive design to build a new generation of mobile-friendly websites. I remember talking about responsive design to a lot of clients since this is something our ninja developers are really good at (it’s not a sales pitch, they really are!). Sitefinity 5 comes with a module to help customise your site for responsive design. This seminar reminded me why we do what we do (did I forget to mention that we’re Sitefinity partners? Don’t forget to check out the post about our visit to Sitefinity and Beyond.)

    We picked up plenty of other tricks throughout the day and will be blogging about them soon. Keep an eye on our upcoming blogs!

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    Category: Sitefinity

    Author: Farah Tahsin

    Tags: Internet World,

  • 12 Apr 2012

    Google Is Watching You!

    Google is watching you

    A little birdie told us that Google is looking for over-optimised pages and sites which means that all of the websites that have great SEO but lower quality content are going to be penalised. So, in case you have a website which happens to have way too many keywords on a page (Header, footer, image descriptions, site map, you name it!), or you are exchanging huge numbers of links with sites that you actually don’t have any relevance to, you better be careful!

    What we believe in LSITS is, it’s not necessarily useful to be number one in Google if you continue to have a high bounce rate. What’s the purpose of ranking higher when your visitors leave your website without even taking a look at your content or your conversion rate is really poor?  

    We are just happy to know that our clients are not worried about getting caught in this crosshair of Google's update. Do you think you should be worried? It’s really worth keeping an eye on your rankings and also improving the quality of your content in case you haven’t done it yet. Better late than never! If you want to know more contact us.

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    Category: Website

    Author: Farah Tahsin

    Tags: SEO,

  • 10 Apr 2012

    When You Need A Bespoke Software Solution

    I sometimes wonder why on earth my local pub offers ‘Chicken Tikka Masala’ if it doesn’t taste anything like real ‘Chicken Tikka Masala’ at all! I wish they gave me a chance to show them how I really want it. Recently I went to a proper Indian restaurant that gave specific attention to my needs and made it just the way I wanted.  I believe today’s business owners face the same kind of problems, but in a different way! The key decision for them is whether to use off-the-shelf application or to have a bespoke solution build according to their specific needs.

    The answer varies according to their specific requirements. It might appear as though an off-the-shelf solution might typically be less expensive than a custom-made system (the ‘Chicken Tikka Masala’ at my local pub cost me just £4.50. Bargain, right?), especially if it could be downloaded almost free of charge! Nevertheless, eventually your specific costs would depend on whether or not the program's functions suit your needs. Nobody knows it better than you if you really need a bespoke application or not.

    Know Your Needs-
    • Have a look at current solutions. Before deciding upon a brand new solution, it is best to determine whether any existing system within the company can be easily scaled or extended to meet up with your company need.
    • If your requirement can be only partially met or not addressed by the solution, it is quite essential to concentrate on determining business requirements-not technology or design requirements. Bear in mind: Business first, technology second.
    • If a significant percentage of your core business needs simply cannot be supported by an off the shelf software, you should probably consider getting a bespoke software written for you.
    Have You Got the In-House Skills?
    • I didn’t have the time or energy to make the ‘Chicken Tikka Masala’ at home even if I’m sure I can cook better than the one they served me! There are other important things to do than cooking! Sometimes you might have the resource in house but they are busy doing other projects!    
    • Sometimes you don’t have the resource in house and in that case, it's never cost-effective to allow employees gain these expertise and experience through developing business-essential applications.
    Last but not the least, if you are cost-conscious and don’t mind spending a little more time applying regular security patches to your applications, then you can use an off-the-shelf solution. But in case your software needs to do something totally unique or you've got particular design or functionality requirements, or perhaps you want to stay ahead of your competitors, then you may want to consider having bespoke solution developed. The Indian restaurant did charge me a bit more, but it was totally worth the money!

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  • 09 Apr 2012

    SEO Tips for Beginners

    So you have finally realised the importance of SEO. You’re probably flipping the pages of SEO for dummies or other resources and thinking about optimising your website to get your desired ranking. Before you hire someone who promises to do the SEO magic and bring your website on page 1 of Google overnight, there are few things you should know about SEO. I would try to give you few tips you should keep in mind while hiring a SEO consultant.

    • Do not fall for fancy names like ‘Google Guru’, ‘SEO Master’, ‘Google recommended SEO expert’ etc. Companies are just trying to grab your attention and Google doesn’t recommend any particular SEO.
    • Don’t be tricked by the membership status of SEO consultants. Having ‘SEOMOZ’ or ‘SEMPO’ membership doesn’t make them better from the others as these memberships are bought, not awarded. 
    • Take my advice, stay away from companies who provide you guaranteed ranking and conversion based on their special relationship with Google. All the SEO consultants have relationship with Google, and it is complicated, trust me!  Not even the most experienced SEO consultant can offer you guaranteed conversion as it’s beyond his/her control. Conversion rate depends on a lot of external factors like your market share, your brand’s awareness etc. Same goes for quality traffic as you only get quality traffic through conversion!
    • Always check if the company has its own blog. If they do not have their own blog that shows that they don’t care about their own SEO. How can you expect people to help you who don’t help themselves at the first place!
    • Don’t let SEO companies confuse you with jargons like image & hyperlink optimization, W3c validation, page rank etc. They are all part of page optimization and if the company is trying to charge you separately for them, you should think twice! I will discuss more about pricing tactics used by different SEO companies and how you can differentiate the real SEO expert by asking for their pricing in the next blog.

    Always do your research on SEO before you hire someone to handle your SEO. Gaining some knowledge about SEO will help you to make the right choice. So, keep doing your research and look out for our next blog!

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    Category: Website

    Author: Farah Tahsin

    Tags: SEO,

  • 05 Apr 2012

    Is forecasting a nightmare?

    My best friend runs a medium sized software development company and the last time I saw her she looked devastated. She had everything you require in a software development company, brilliant developers, QA team and excellent marketers to bring her all the new business. Her only problem was that she was missing financial management software. Her office manager preferred the old fashioned way and there was a major disaster with the planning and forecasting of the company.  She simply could not predict how certain major decisions would impact the company’s financial position.

    My friend wouldn’t be in this situation if she had a financial management software application designed to improve all aspects of the company’s financial planning. If you are in the same situation, you could probably benefit from a financial management software package to streamline and automate all financial activities of your company including budget creation, allocation, and management; cash flow analysis; accounts payable / receivable and so on.So, does your company need financial management software? Let’s figure it out-

    •     Have you noticed any lack of discipline/structure within your company’s financial processes and policies?
    •     Are you getting contradictory financial information from different department throughout your company?
    •     Are your employees finding it difficult to combine and validate financial information for the reporting/analysis?
    •     Does any department within your organisation have outrageous spending pattern/ cannot comply with the budget guidelines?
    •     Do your employees have difficulties presenting accurate sales figures to the board or complete a profit analysis on the company?
    If so, then your company should probably consider a financial management software application. Contact us to find out how we can help you to get a unique software developed to suit all your needs.

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  • 02 Apr 2012

    Our customers love us because...

    Our customers want their software solutions to be built right. We deliver in small increments instead of mapping every little thing out in advance from start to finish: in this way they can identify any errors in the early stages. Unlike our competitors, we don’t use an old style Waterfall process. Thanks to Agile approach of development we’re able to get closer to the finished product sooner.

    Many software houses find plenty of resistance to it since it's not just how they have carried out things before. However, they have to agree on the great benefits of Agile programming which our clients enjoy. These include-

    • Frequent customer contact
    • Regular delivery of smaller, useful increments and build quality as an alternative to cram everything in by the end
    • There is less possibility for misunderstanding
    • Early detection of errors
    • More flexibility for everyone
    • Last but not least, higher quality software

    All these benefits ultimately bring about higher profitability for our clients and they absolutely love us for this. Don’t believe me? Check out our testimonial page!

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  • 02 Apr 2012

    CONVERT YOUR WEBSITE VISITORS TO SALES LEADS

    You start off planning and building your website by just building a list of things that you believe you should make people aware of about your business. Needless to say it's your list about what you believe other people should know about you and the products and services that you offer and that is where we all make our 1st big mistake. That’s quickly followed by another one.

    A website is public and most people design it as if it is a window into your world. Often people think of their website as though it's a shop window where they can easily display appealing things to encourage and entice ‘would be’ customers into the store. This is an age old business plan and it is just transferring a high street shop scenario onto the internet.

    Just like a high street shop of course people can look through the shop window go "Yep!" and just simply walk on by. This happens for numerous reasons and I am confident we have all been there. Perhaps we were frightened to go in and enquire about prices; maybe time was a bit short. Perhaps they think they might be bullied into purchasing. And so on.

    Mistake 2) If you do a whole lot of work and Google does list you as one of its "top ranking websites" or you have perhaps "paid out" for some Pay-Per-Click (PPC ) advertising then exactly the same thing can happen. Converting "interest" into sales is really what your website should be about.

    If you can engage a potential client in conversation then you have a chance of converting an enquiry into a sale. To start the conversation you could attempt;

    • Offering a free sample.
    • Giving advice can engage you with possible customers.
    • Getting lots of LIKES on Facebook and followings on Twitter can be a big help.
    • Your web site must be great and have content that people find interesting which is up to date and full of fresh new items.

    A newspaper sticking with the same front page every day soon will not sell any copies and will lose circulation very quickly. For those who are just starting off on setting up a web site the best advice you will definitely get is seek help because it's not the straightforward task that you probably think it is. Pick up the telephone and get a web development company such as Lightspeed to help you out.

    We can get you quickly up and running with

    • Search Engine Optimisation that will give you an increase in quality traffic.
    • Great web design and features designed to see you converting your visitors into sales.
    • Using a simple to administer CMS which keeps content current and relevant to the fast changing world.

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  • 14 Feb 2012

    Finding Solutions to Project Management Issues

    Sometimes, despite reading through your entire background, gutting it and giving it a go, you simply can't understand why something doesn't work correctly. Or possibly you can't work out how to make progress. There is a fantastic site available on the market for all  Project Managers. It’s called PM Stack Exchange.

    If you are not informed about it, the Stack Exchange network is really a thriving community of questions and answers, born out of programming hub Stack Overflow. The plethora of sites elevated is continuing to grow lately to add in many diverse subjects including cooking, photography and maths. To start with, have a look at the question asked by our very own Gary Fenn on Charting Kanban.

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