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Many companies now look to custom software development as the ideal solution for organization and management. Some, however, avoid it completely, favoring off-the-shelf solutions instead. While the reality is that any company can utilize custom software development, Phoenix is full of industries that should ALWAYS consider it over any other solution for a variety of reasons. Here are the top three:

Financial Services

The world of finance is very different from any other industry today. Not only is understanding the data and math behind complex processes like securities valuations, risk and trading a must, there are also myriad compliance issues to consider. From portfolio managers to the traders themselves, those in the industry know that sacrifices in functionality can mean lost profits, and that’s not a choice you want to be up against. Custom software development here is a must. Because financial services companies are all different and they have a niche environment in which they must work, challenges abound, and only the right program can meet those. 

Healthcare

Patient care, insurance, HIPAA security, regulation, certification, billing and coding – the list of concerns when you’re dealing with any healthcare organizations is vast. While the list of vendors selling one-size-fits-all software programs is lengthy, for most healthcare entities, cookie-cutter software simply won’t make the grade. Each healthcare organization has its own angle, its own concerns, its own budgets, and choosing a software project that means meeting every aspect of an organizations needs is a necessity. You need a team that has expertise with medical software projects and knows enough about health interoperability standards to create the right solution to meet your needs.

Logistics

Business is about being at the right place at the right time, and in the logistics business, you understand that you need a software solution that will allow you to process and move as quickly as possible. In an industry where the margins are slim, a half-second delay caused by software not specifically designed to suit your needs is either going to cost you time, money, or a customer. The only way is to go with something that has been specifically optimized to meet your exact needs. 

Even if your industry is not listed here, there’s a strong possibility that off-the-shelf software won’t address all your company’s needs. In the long run, customized software development is always going to be the only way to move forward for your company. Off-the-shelf software is developed to appeal to the mass markets of your specific industry. By using off-the-shelf software you disregard the fact that the needs and potential of your business are as unique as the business itself and locks you into using the same technology as your competitors.

Kinetik I.T. has vast experience in developing unique custom software applications for all types of industries. Whether your business simply needs a current application enhanced or you need us to develop a complete solution from the ground up to fit your business, contact us and we will show you how we can make a difference in your organization.

Whether you’re migrating to a new platform, building a new store, or simply upgrading the one you have, shifting ecommerce platforms or making changes to your current system could actually do your company more harm than good. Unfortunately, the little things have the potential to kill your current optimization strategy, and a big shift in your site could mean a shift in your ranking. What can you do to implement your changes while preserving your rank? These tips can help.

Keep an eye on the information architecture during migration as well as the URL structure.

If you have an established site, the search engines know what to expect. The better your information architecture and URL structure, the stronger your SEO program. That could change as you work on your store, so be aware of the fact that you don’t want your pages competing against each other and you want everything you do to strengthen your site as a whole.

Look out for duplicate content!

There is no faster way to get your site in trouble from an SEO perspective than to have duplicate content on the site. Proper planning on the part of absolutely everyone involved can help you avoid this problem, though.

Don’t lose sight of traditional SEO tactics.

Ignoring standard SEO simply because you’re dealing with ecommerce isn’t necessarily a good idea. While there are some practices that may not be perfect for those with an ecommerce site, others, like solid text, are just the gold standard no matter what kind of site you happen to have.

When you’re looking for help optimizing your business’s ecommerce platform, call Kinetik I.T. We can develop a customized solution without compromising your overall SEO efforts, ensuring you get the services you need without losing any page rank in the process.

In the first years of the Internet, websites offered information in straightforward (if not always attractive) formats, created by men and women with specialized training, often self-taught. Today, nearly anyone can create a web presence—a blog or website, compatible on multiple devices and across various platforms. As a business owner, it’s possible to create a site, but the real question is: will it deliver the results you’re looking for?

While the “build your own website” ads look appealing, with easy-to-fill-out forms and low prices, they may not be the best choice for your business. Choosing a company specializing in professional website building offers many advantages over the drag & drop, fill-in-the-blank, pre-formatted online builders.

Cost

While hiring a company to design your website might cost more money up front, the benefits reaped from a fully functioning, easy-to-use website can be enormous. By using an online site to build your website, you could miss out on different ways and  techniques to create more traffic for your site. This is the expertise you need  that a website company brings to the table.

New Trends

When choosing a website company, you get the expertise and knowledge of a large set of individuals. These experts know what is trending in design and how to create a user-friendly site with calls to action.

Saving Time

Most businesses and individuals do not have the time or in-depth knowledge required to build a truly useful and informative website that sets your company apart from the competition and provides a great user experience for any visitor.

Exact Specifications

Do you have specific design specifications you want incorporated into your new website? Do you have a vision for what your website will look like? If this is the case, an online website builder will be unable to fulfill your website dreams. Only a website company can sit down with you and talk through the wants and needs of your new website and advise on the best way to accomplish this.

Statistics clearly state the case: nearly 100 million people use the mobile web daily, and smartphones are outselling PCs faster than ever. Transitioning to include your business site on the mobile web is a must.

So, how does your current website look on a mobile browser? If it’s not designed with optimized mobile settings, the aesthetic may not carry over well to a smaller, handheld device. Aside from a poor user experience, a sub-par mobile site can compromise the look, feel, and content of your company’s website, negating the time and money invested in developing thoughtful messaging and concise branding.

The simple fact is that, due to the limited amount of space and generally slower connection speeds, a mobile design needs to be both more simply designed and more task-based than the standard companion website.  Here are a few reasons to consider this shift to a mobile-optimized site – sooner rather than later:

1. Appearance: Your site’s design probably does not look as good as you think it does. Mobile web emulators abound online, offering an easy way to view your site across devices. Type in your URL for a glimpse at what potential customers see – does it offer the user experience you’d like customers to have? If not, it’s time to develop a mobile site.
2. Lagging behind: Chances are, your competitors already have a mobile site. Even if they were not early adopters, the biggest companies in every industry have a mobile site, and it’s a sure bet that your competitors are in that mix.
3. Increased traffic: Mobile sites mean better SEO. Google is bent on ensuring searchers have the best possible experience, and while no one is saying exactly what that entails, it’s certain that mobile sites for mobile users factor in somewhere, so capturing those who are looking may mean you have to go mobile.

You need only look around – to see the multitudes using phones to read, shop, and research – to understand how necessary a mobile website is for today’s business. Kinetik IT has been offering Phoenix businesses web and I.T. solutions, including mobile sites, that will enhance profitability for years to come. To learn more about services and products, visit www.Kinetik-IT.com or follow Kinetik on Facebook, LinkedInor Twitter.

Launching a new e-commerce website can be a bit daunting. There’s so much that can go into the planning and execution, and getting it wrong at launch could spell disaster for the entire enterprise. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to get it right, but the key lies in proper planning. Here are the three things you have to consider during those planning stages of your site.

1. Think About the Boring Stuff: Sure, designing the storefront and how customers will interact with it is easily the best part of building an e-commerce store, but there’s so much more to it than that. You have to consider lots of other factors, particularly those that aren’t quite as much fun. There are big financial concerns behind an e-commerce site as well as security and legal matters that must be considered. Simple stuff like ensuring your merchant accounts are updated and ready to handle electronic transactions as well as more complex factors like PCI compliance and sales tax all have to factor into the planning phase at some point.

2. The Shopping Cart Matters: There are lots of free shopping carts online these days, but they’re very basic. You’re only going to get an “Add to Cart” function and a total. You have to be able to have the functions customers are looking for like shipping cost estimates, product recommendations, and more, so look at your options carefully. Customers expect more thanks to big retailers like Amazon and Target, and if you can’t offer it, they’ll find someone who can.

3. Think About Structure: Your design team will likely call this Information Architecture, and the more products you offer, the bigger concern this has to be. You need a good way for customers to find what they’re looking for, so feel free to browse competitor sites to see how they do it.

      E-commerce site planning can get a little complex, but we can help. The IT consulting firm Phoenix trusts most, we’re here to help every step of the way. To learn more, and to stay up to date contact us at www.kinetik-it.com or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

Most companies have a web site in this day and age.  Therefore it is important to create a web site that has a positive impact, when someone initially visits your web site.  How would one accomplish this? First of all, create impressive graphics for your web site. No one can deny the importance of a great engaging, interactive design for a website. But knowing that you need these “wow” factors incorporated in the design, and implementing them, are two different elements. Planning is vital before you can even start to design your website. Using a professional graphic designer is fundamental. Many companies will skip the process of hiring of a professional graphic designer because they underestimate the importance of graphic design for a website. Many entrepreneurs feel that their product will sell itself to the client. Oh no! In most cases the product will draw potential clients to the website, but to grab and hold the prospect’s attention you must have the appropriate graphic design to accomplish this, which only a professional can help you accomplish.  Graphic design Phoenix can help.

There are many advantages associated with hiring a professional graphic designer. Some of these are listed below:

·         One of the biggest advantages of hiring a graphic designer is… time savings. This is huge. Having a professional who understands graphic design, can create and implement a very nice design for you faster than a novice designer, saving you time and money.  I can’t tell you, how many people believe they can design their own web site, not realizing that this will have an impact on their bottom line.  As I said before, to achieve the most positive impact on your target audience, your web site must have a professional look and feel to it, which can only be achieved by someone trained in graphic design. Your time is valuable and can and should be spent on your area of expertise, leaving your web site in the trained hands of a graphic design professional.  It is not hard to find one; just look for graphic design scottsdale to find a professional who can help.

·         Another big “no-no” is that many companies feel their web site is the one area where they can save money.  Please, this should really not be the case. Web site design should be one of the most important parts of your company’s budget. If your web site doesn`t have a good look or feel then your brand won’t inspire positive feedback and repeat visitors will be non-existent. You must be able to deliver your message to your potential clients in the proper and most engaging way to create a perceived value.  If you can’t find any great designers in Scottsdale, then look for graphic design phoenix.

·         Another aspect that must also be addressed is that there may be certain legal issues to consider concerning your trade. When you hire a graphic design professional from graphic design Phoenix, they will point out the issues they may be aware of.

·         The last thing to be aware of when you hire a professional graphic designer phoenix is that you will be able to create a perceived value in the mind of your potential customers. If you are not able to create a perceived value, you will not able to succeed, no matter how good your product is, or how well you excel in providing your services.  

The World Wide Web - How it all started…

The Internet has become a huge part of an individual’s everyday life. Millions of web sites are viewed and used every day. In this day and age, it is impossible to imagine a website without colorful backgrounds, various style sets of typography, animated graphics, and of course music. How did the phenomenon of the internet get started? In 1989, while Tim Berners-Lee was working at CERN, he had an idea to create an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing which would have global appeal to it, and thus become known as 3W’s i.e., the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web has come a long way since then, and over time many software tools have been developed for creating web sites and web applications. Nowadays, Phoenix web designers use different types of tools depending on what portion of the design production they get to be involved in. Although these software tools are constantly being updated, by introducing a new set of standards, keep in mind the basic principle behind creating websites remains the same.

User Experience is Key

The technologies used for creating web sites include standardized mark-up languages. These programming languages may be “hand written” or “auto” generated by software.  How “good” or “bad” a user’s web site experience, will depend on how well structured the layout, labeling and instructions are on a website. How effortlessly the user understands it all or how the user can interact on a site depends on the level of interactive design of the site. Therefore when designing and implementing a web site, a Phoenix web designer will develop graphical and technical specifications (web design phoenix documentation) which specifies i.e. exactly how the website will work, as well as how it will appear to the user.  The key is that the Phoenix web designer needs to know upfront what type of a website they are designing. For example, a business-to-business web design will hugely differ from any other consumer oriented website like retail, sports or entertainment websites. 

What Makes a Great Web Designer?

Web designers have a responsibility to create the site’s visual aspect, overall layout, and typography of the web pages. A great Phoenix web designer should have the technical knowledge of internet specific languages such as CSS, HTML, PHP, JavaScript and Flash to create a site, not only a degree in web design, web development, web content management and multimedia design. A web designer who has both the technical knowledge of internet specific languages, and a degree in web design or web development, as well as practical experience with some, if not all of the basic techniques like Java, JavaScript, XML, Microsoft SQL Server, IIS, Windows Server environments etc. would also be a great Phoenix web developer.

 So, What Makes a Great Web Developer?

So what is the difference between a great Phoenix web design professional and a great Phoenix web developer? A great Phoenix web design professional needs an aptitude for imagination and creativity, while a great Phoenix web developer needs to have strong skills in software design and programming.  Both need to have the ability to pick up on new web design and development techniques in regards to the international web standards and protocols. And both need to have good interpersonal, communication skills, can multi-task and be effective team members.