Related Posts

• Brand Building and Web Development

  Brand Building is Web Development
  
  When setting out to develop a new website for a client the first thing to consider is their brand. Defining a brand is a lot like writing a business plan for an organization. Who's their customer, what is their demographic, current corporate culture and visibility across all media along with consistency regarding these representations. Sometimes a client expects development of a website to be just stamping out code, but it's much more artistry and expertise than that going on to get it right. I wouldn't just start nailing boards together if I were a builder, the site, direction, watershed, parking, permits and a 100 other items need to be considered before breaking ground. The same holds true for web development and I would recommend reading up on these sites listed below about building your brand before developing the wrong site for your business.
  
  First, have or get the right domain name. Brandgy.com can clue you in as to why that's so important. Learn about branding your business with these no nonsense guides available through HowToBuildABrand.org These folks out of the UK know what they are doing and it's explained in a way that you can see how it effects other facets of your business. SearchEngineJournal.com puts the technical edge on your brand strategy. Their site maybe a good read for the more technically inclined, but getting found is what it's all about going forward into 2018 and beyond.

• Business Development - Advertising

  The key method of developing your business is advertising. Call it integrated marketing with all the other forms of getting your message out, but it still boils down to advertising, which is making it public and memorable.

  You may advertise in a trade magazine or on a billboard, but your website is the only form of advertising that's constantly available to your audience. Your domain name is the focal point for all of these marketing components, at the corner stone, and the foundation from where you build your brand upon.

  Get a dot com name. Other extensions may gain popularity in 20 years, but for the foreseeable future your marketing efforts will end up in the junk folder. Even in tech where .io and .ai have some traction with start ups, it translates into they're in beta, not ready for primetime. As a decision maker can you back your choice of doing business with an organization that's not really established?

  Read my last post about Branding for Authority and Affinity for more information. Here are some premium domain names that I have for sale.

• XMod Pro - The Power Tool for DNN Development

  There are a lot of developers out there that are looking for a language and trusted technology that they can build a career with, and whether you're new to web development or out to create your own Amazon site, you can't go wrong with DNNSoftware's CMS, formerly know as DotNetNuke, and DNN Dev's life saving power tool XMod Pro.

  With just these two elements, one can build a digital empire.

  
  

  Don't take my word for it, go search their sites out and take a look at the client list that builds with both of these components. It's more than impressive, and a lot of these sites are built by a single developer or just a small team. And, even more impressive are the people who started it all, built these platforms and the community they've fostered.

  I've been developing with DNN for 8 years and I'm still grateful to Shawn Walker of DNN Software and Kelly and Malinda Ford at DNN Dev. I honestly can't say enough good things about either of them or the products that they've built.

• The Speed of Technology

  The speed of technology is taking off, try and hang on.

  Technology is increasing at an exponential rate, with the pace of technological change accelerating rapidly in recent years. This is due to a variety of factors, including advancements in computer processing power, the increasing availability of data, and the development of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and quantum computing.

  One measure of the pace of technological change is Moore's Law, which states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles roughly every two years. This law has held true for several decades and has been a driving force behind the rapid growth of computing power.

  Additionally, the rate of technological change can be seen in the development and adoption of new technologies, such as smartphones, social media, and cloud computing, which have transformed the way we live and work.

  The speed of technological change is also apparent in the rate at which new technologies are being developed and brought to market. For example, the time it takes for a new technology to reach 50 million users has been decreasing steadily, from 75 years for the telephone to just 13 days for the Pokemon Go app.

  Internet usage will continue to grow over the next 20 years, especially as more people around the world gain access to the internet.

  According to data from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the number of internet users worldwide reached 4.9 billion in 2021, up from 3.4 billion in 2016. This represents a growth rate of more than 7% per year. If this trend continues, we can expect the number of internet users to reach 7.5 billion by 2030 and 9.7 billion by 2040.

  The growth in internet usage is being driven by a number of factors, including the increasing availability and affordability of internet access, the proliferation of smartphones and other mobile devices, and the growing importance of digital technologies in daily life.

  In addition to the overall number of internet users, other trends to watch in the coming years include the continued growth of e-commerce and online services, the increasing use of artificial intelligence and automation, and the expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) and other connected technologies.

• Video Games - It's No Game Anymore

  It's getting harder to tell your kids to put away the video games and get a real job when stories like this are popping up in the news. How video games turn teenagers into millionaires. The point of interest in the article that caught my eye is the statement that these careers weren't available 5 to 10 years ago and that even in this flux that we are now seeing where AI (artificial intelligence) is taking jobs away from people, other career paths are emerging. Let's hope new careers can keep up with the ones being lost to AI. Realistically, it's a lopsided equation in favor of automation. But, learning to be an entrepreneur and riding the trends of a market in flux, you just may be able to make enough to last a lifetime.
  
  Take a look through the BBC's Bright Sparks section and see what what the smart kids are doing.

• Dynamic Content is the Search Engine Target

  
  There's a lot of talk about traffic and SEO and I wanted to mention a few key points on building volume.  First, your sites needs to built correctly so search engines can read it.  That's a technical discussion for a later date, but needs to be in place for other methods to work.  Setup Google Analytics and a few others so you can triangulate and see what's actually working.  Without a measure your're driving blind.  If you don't have a blog, add one.  It will be the most read page on your site and you can feed it directly to social media.  The Post Viewed tag in the lower right corner of each article here is misleading, it's not how many times it's been viewed, it represents how many times the Read More tag has been clicked.  For the record, the main page of this Tech Notes blog gets viewed between 3k to 7k times on any given day.

  Dynamic content isn't just tailoring your site to your unique visitors, it's generating relevant and fresh new content for your site.  Having this dynamic content is what is going to improve your SEO score and the quality of traffic you receive.  There's no way to short cut this process.  Some of the most intelligent minds at Google are continually working the algorithm to weed out the junk and click bait.  If you write compelling articles and add epic content regularly, your numbers will begin to perk up.  If you work it, expect about a 25% increase in qualified traffic and that will be significant to any business that you're in.  Google has some great webmaster tools here.  Give the PageSpeed Insights test a try and see how your site scores.  Your site may need more work than you think.  Keep it fresh and keep it growing, make a bigger target.