Once you’ve stepped into the world of web development, you’ll never leave – or so it feels like! However, in reality, the website development process is pretty straightforward, and that’s thanks to the four steps we diligently work through with each of our clients. It’s these steps which direct us on how you want your website to look, feel and function. So while it is time-consuming, the result is well worth the wait.

Today we’re going to detail the website development process to give you a heads up of each of the four stages to explain what we’re doing and why.

4 Stages of Your Website Development Process (h2)

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to plan and build a website in a day? Well, it could be done, but you’d never be satisfied with the results and nor would you clients! The best approach to custom building a website is to follow a series of steps to gather and create the right information for your site. At FutureLab, we don’t build off the shelf websites which get average results. We fully custom design and custom develop websites which exceed our client’s expectations and achieve outstanding results.

Because of this, the way we custom develop websites requires an in-depth understanding about your business, your industry and how you’d like your website to work for you. The four steps in our comprehensive website development process include:

Gathering Information – at this point we’re concerned with finding out as much information as we can about your business; it’s products or services, your competitors, your target audience and your goals for having a website developed. By creating a solid understanding of your needs, we are better positioned to create an exceptionally high functioning and custom designed website which gives you a great
Planning the Website – as well as using the information we’ve gathered, we also want to find out what you want in a website. What specific functions do you want to be included? What pages and content will it have and how will users move through your site? We’ll then create a sitemap which shows you how your site will look.
Custom Designing and Developing the Website – we’ll work with any pre-existing brand logos, colours and fonts you have, or help create you more appropriate ones. We’ll begin to create a visual plan of how your site will look for visitors, giving you the opportunity to provide feedback. The website development component of this step will see us build your site using the best content management platform to suit your specific needs. Yes, this is the technical coding stuff! If necessary, we’ll also write and add your content here too.
Launching the Website – it’s time for lift off! We’ll double and triple check everything is functioning as it should be with your site. You’ll have the opportunity to provide feedback, and we’ll make adjustments as required.

One of the great things about being a FutureLab client is that we’re here for you. Big or small, technical or not, all questions are welcome, and we’d love to hear your ideas about your ideal website. Contact our team today and let’s get your website development process underway!

We’re days away from Gutenberg being part of every single WordPress worldwide. Yes, that means over 31% of the internet. So what’s that all fuss about and should you be scared?

What is Gutenberg

Gutenberg is a new way of editing content in WordPress. The current WordPress editor that you know has been with WordPress in a different state almost since the beginning. About a year ago Matt Mullenweg has announced that WordPress community will completely rewrite the popular WYSIWYG into a completely new block experience. The new editor will be actually What You See Is What You Get (did you know that’s what WYSIWYG stands from?). You can play with a new editor on the official Gutenberg demo site.

Fast forward a year later, after thousands of iterations of development, thousands of bugs and features solved, this month Gutenberg feature changes have been officially locked and Gutenberg has been announced ready for release.

When will Gutenberg be released?

Gutenberg is now officially ready for release, which means very soon it will become part of WordPress core. As of today, the “go live” date is at the end of August 2018 and that will be WordPress 5.0 release containing new Gutenberg editor. However, in the next week or two Gutenberg will be introduced to every WordPress user in the update 4.9.8. This update will have an extra “Try Gutenberg” callout where users will be encouraged to install Gutenberg and try on their new website or install standard editor in order to switch off Gutenberg when updating to version 5.0

Will the update affect me?

If you’re a WordPress website owner, the answer is yes. After WordPress 5.0 every website will have Gutenberg built in. How will it affect you depends on how your website is built and what theme you’re using. At FutureLab we follow WordPress coding standards in order to prevent our customers from future updates like this. Nonetheless, each and one of our customer’s websites will be manually updated to version 5.0 to test whether it works with Gutenberg. Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that everything will work smoothly, that is why it’s very important to have a backup of your website and make sure you have a support team handy for any troubleshooting.

What is the future of Gutenberg and WordPress?

As much as we’re scared about the implications of WordPress 5.0 update at the end of August, we’re very excited about Gutenberg. We’ve been working with Gutenberg for over 3 months now and are due to release the first website made on blocks only next week. We’ve prepared our processes and trained our programmers to follow the new editor structure.

We feel that this is yet the biggest update to WordPress ever and it will create unlimited opportunities for content creation. It is important to understand that Gutenberg is not a page builder (and we can’t really see that it will become one day) but it’s an advanced content builder. With the right blocks, the sky is the limit for the content build. We’ve already made our own blocks with buttons, images and other elements matching the design and are very excited how easy it is to edit the design elements for the website admin. If your developer is using Gutenberg and will style each of the blocks in the right way for your design, you can change the structure of your content in any way and keep your end user excited about the progress of your website.

Dear FutureLab customer, this news is important, so please take time to read it

First of all, Happy New Year. We value your time, especially at this time of the year, and we understand that a lot of the news here will be very technical, which is why you’ll find a handy summary at the end of the newsletter.

A big bug has been discovered in every single computer

For the last couple of months, two separate teams have been investigating a potential security issue affecting every single computer, phone, tablet – every device that has a processor. They have discovered that with some technical tricks a hacker can access the information from any program that is currently processed on the machine. This means passwords, secure information, essentially anything. Most processors are affected.

FutureLab were notified by our hosting supplier Amazon Web Services (AWS) in November, with AWS scheduling a software update for the 5th January. The reason that bugs are not publicly announced is to give software companies like AWS, Microsoft, Apple etc time to work on a fix before hackers have a chance to find out and exploit the bug. We have been patiently preparing for the update to arrive; however, news of the bug was leaked to the public domain on the 3rd of January, which meant we needed to work more urgently to get a fix in place.

The team at Google that discovered the bug also prepared a website explaining both vulnerabilities.

View the website with the bug details.

What has happened since last night? Amazon has been updating underlying software for a while now and most of the servers are secure and up to date (more information).

We’ve been working hard to update all servers to the latest software, however, the distribution that we’re using has not yet released a security patch (more information).

There are two bugs, ‘Meltdown’ and ‘Spectre’. The updates we are referring to relate to the Meltdown bug. As far as we understand it, there is not yet a solution for Spectre as it is a much more complex issue to resolve. It has been estimated that the fix for the Spectre bug is going to slow down every machine by about 5%, but in some cases even up to 60%.

What does the above mean for you? Our architecture is quite complex and looks like the below

This means your website is using a lot of servers for processing. Most importantly, each of those servers are in the cloud, which means that you won’t get the same server processing your website each time – it’s an ‘on demand’ service. Since AWS have already updated their underlying software, that means that all FutureLab customers are secure from any other processings on AWS. However, because there’s no solution for Ubuntu (the Operating System we’re using on our servers) as yet, there’s still a small internal risk for FutureLab customers. We’re monitoring updates and as soon as they are ready we will get to work patching the machines.

Lastly, since last night FutureLab and AWS have both performed a lot of work to ensure that the software is updated to the most recent and most secure version. We needed to make a lot of restarts and updates on our hosting machines. Our updates were completed around 11am this morning. What this means is that your website may have been offline anytime between 11pm last night to 11am this morning.

If there are any issues with your website, please let us know.

Summary

Meltdown and Spectre are the biggest bugs we’ve seen so far and they affect every computer, laptop and phone. There is already a solution for Meltdown which FutureLab has put into place; however we’re still waiting for a patch for Spectre. There’s no reported malware for the bugs, however, we’ve already seen proof of concept for the attack
Our hosting company AWS has updated all underlying software so all FutureLab customers are safe on the AWS level.
If your website is not hosted with FutureLab please contact your hosting provider ASAP to check if they have secured your hosting
Apple has already released an update for Mac machines so please update your software on your computer/laptop as soon as possible. Microsoft has promised to release their patch next week so make sure you have your automatic updates on your Windows machine turned on
We’re monitoring the updates. You’ll hear more from us (and from the news) in the near future.

Wading into the world of AdWords advertising may be an overwhelming but necessary job for a small business owner. You don’t need a full-time marketing person (yet) but you’ve still got to bring in your customers. And these days of course, advertising online is widespread, with internet advertising revenue surpassing television revenue some years back now. So what usually happens in a small business is the boss or the receptionist rolls up their sleeves and tries to get to grips with a whole new method and style of advertising, plus learning all the best-practice rules and regulations along the way.

Clearly, neither the boss nor the receptionist is the best person for the job. While they may muddle through well enough, both already have full-time roles and skills suited to those roles, not necessarily to the world of online advertising.

To help you out, we’ve put together a small starter guide for getting your online adverts up and running. It’s really only a tiny glimpse into all the cool things you can do with online advertising, but it should help you get going. We use Google AdWords to run our online ads as they are responsible for a full 30% of all online advertising revenue, increasing to 40% when you look at mobile-only advertising revenue. (In case you didn’t know, every time you do a search on Google and see a couple of adverts at the top of your search results – those ads come from AdWords. So it’s kind of a big deal.)

There are a few new terms and phrases to familiarise yourself with too:

Campaign – the top level. You set your budget and where you want your adverts to show at this level
Ad group – different products and services will be sorted into different Ad groups. For example, we separate out ‘web design’, ‘custom web development’ and ‘SEO services’ as three distinct services. For an eCommerce store, you might choose to have ‘shoes’, ‘bags’, ‘scarfs’ as three Ad groups, or separate each out into their own campaign – this is especially helpful if you want to manage the budget for each group individually.
Ad – your advert – self-explanatory! You’ll include some catchy text, a reason to click on the ad (eg, free shipping, best value etc), and you’ll direct each advert to a page on your website. You can create several adverts for the same ad group.
Keyword – the most important part of your AdWords account! Your keywords are the words and phrases you think people will use to find your products and services. You want to include all the variations and various ways people might search for your product or service. Each Ad group can have many keywords – it’s good to start off with around 20 and add or remove keywords as time goes on.

It’s okay to ask for help! As a small business owner, you can’t juggle all the things, all the time. Getting a Google-certified AdWords specialist to look over your work can really help tidy up and streamline your results. Depending on your budget, you could set up your account yourself and then ask a professional for some advice on improvements and next steps. Or, work in conjunction with an AdWords specialist to get your adverts hitting maximum impact from the get-go.

As Google Partners and AdWords-certified specialists, we can help with advice, recommendations and management of your AdWords campaigns. If you’d like to discuss AdWords services with us, please get in touch.

Q Card Payment Gateway – Connect Directly to the Q Card API from your Online Store

The team at FutureLab have developed a custom plugin that connects to the new Q Card API from your online store. That means you can now offer your customers another way to pay online, without needing to pay merchant fees to a third party gateway.

Fast Facts about the Q Card Payment Gateway Plugin:

Add Q Card payments to your online store with our plugin
Connects directly with Q Card API so no merchant fees on transactions
Customers can also set Q Card finance options directly from your site
It’s a win/win for both merchants and customers

What is a payment gateway?

A payment gateway is a way to allow your customers to pay online for goods using their credit cards. Popular payment gateways include PayPal, DPS, Payment Express. However, as you will know if you run an online store, all those payment gateways charge the merchant transactions fees on each customer purchase. That’s because they are third party gateways/systems – PayPal, DPS and Payment Express all connect online stores to the customer’s credit cards.

So, what’s different about THIS payment gateway?

Our plugin does not process your transactions directly – it connects to the Q Card API, which is where the transactions are processed. So instead of paying a third party system to process payments, this plugin simply passes them along direct to the Q Card system. There are no transaction fees for the merchant to pay.

It’s a simplified way to allow customers to pay using their Q Cards on your online store.

Here’s a comparison of our Q Card plugin against a third party payment gateway such as the DPS plugin:

	FutureLab Q Card Plugin	DPS Payment Gateway Plugin
Allows Q Card online payments	Yes	Yes
Allows repayment options	Yes	Yes
Third Party Transaction Fees?	No	Yes
Direct Channel with Q Card API?	Yes	No

How does it work?

The plugin connects directly to the Q Card operating system. The access is granted through an API (application programming interface). Q Card have recently launched their API so this technology is very new, and only a few websites currently use it. Our plugin works differently to other plugins like DPS, which can also be used for Q Card payments. It doesn’t process the online payments within its own system like DPS does. It simply allows payments to be directly processed by Q Card, from your website. That’s why there are no associated transaction fees to pay.

Why enable Q Card payments on your site?

If you haven’t heard of Q Card, it’s essentially a credit card that also acts as a financing system for card users. If Q Card users purchase a big-ticket item, they can choose to pay off the item in interest-free instalments. Plus, repayments are delayed 3 months or longer, giving the customer ‘breathing space’ as Q Card suggests.

Enabling Q Card payments can encourage customers to purchase items from your store, since they benefit from the delayed repayment schedule and interest-free financing.

Our Q Card plugin also allows customers to set up payment of their purchase in 6 or 12 month instalments on their Q Card account. You’ll receive the purchase amount immediately, but the customer benefits from paying back their Q Card balance in instalments.

How can I get the FutureLab Q Card payment plugin for my online store?

As this API technology is so new, there are very few websites currently taking advantage of it. Contact us to discuss adding our plugin to your website and enabling a better way to pay online – for you and your customers.

We can write and configure this plugin for your Magento or WordPress online store.

One of the larger projects that FutureLab worked on last year was the website design and development for Integrated Maintenance Group, a medium-sized New Zealand engineering company.

Integrated Maintenance Group, or IMG, were established in 2003 and have gone on to produce highly customised, multi-million dollar projects for various sites around New Zealand.

Advancing Website Technology

Despite IMG’s advancements in engineering technology, their website had been in need of an update for several years.

On the right you can see the old website. It uses a border and confines the text to the central box, a common design feature from 5-10 years ago.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_single_image image=”19079″ img_size=”full” img_link_large=”yes” qode_css_animation=””][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern” css_animation=””][vc_column][vc_separator type=”transparent” up=”20″ down=”20″][vc_column_text]Here’s a few reasons why the website was in need of an update:

With the surge in smartphones and users browsing the internet using a variety of devices, having a mobile-responsive website allows companies to reach all segments of their intended audience.
Animated features. Modern websites now include plenty of animated features, such as scrolling imagery, rotating elements and interactive Google Map locations. IMG’s new website utilises modern, sophisticated web design and development.
Changes in web design trends. Web design has come a long way in the last few years, and trends have changed too. A modern website will have more white space on the page rather than overcrowding, and while designs are minimalist they still convey subtle branding.

Updating IMG’s design

IMG wanted a website that would look modern and rank them with other leading engineering companies around the world. Their website was years old and did not help IMG’s branding as a world-class engineering company. However, the company did not want to stray too far from their roots, and the website still needed to be appealing and easy to use for their target audience.

IMG had already had some designs created for their new website, but didn’t feel they were quite ‘right’. So IMG brought FutureLab on board. We came up with wireframes, using the existing designs as a base, and hit on the right look and feel for IMG’s requirements.

Once we knew we were on the right track, FutureLab produced a design mock-up for each page, working to finalise the overall look and feel of the IMG site. Signing off each page design was important so that development could get underway as soon as possible.

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Working for a tight deadline

Since IMG’s website update had been a while in the making before FutureLab came on board, IMG were keen to see the website finished and live well before Christmas.

The design and development team worked in tandem. Once each page mock-up had been signed off, it went straight to development, rather than waiting until all designs were ready. This helped us power through the numerous pages while leaving plenty of time for feedback and tweaks before the go-live date.

In total, the whole process from web design, development to going live, took just over a month.

The End Result

With only a couple of minor setbacks, the new IMG website was launched on 17 December 2015, collecting positive feedback from friends and staff.

IMG was a great project for FutureLab to showcase our design skills, plus work under pressure to a tight deadline. The end result is a website both IMG and ourselves are proud to put our name to!

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Outsourcing – the word that businesses love and customers hate. Outsourcing is the hidden reality for many industries today, but the last thing a customer wants to hear is that their call is important to you, and by the way, we’ve outsourced our call centre to Indonesia.

So while businesses need to keep costs down, clients expect to be dealing with native English speakers who understand the issues they need resolved.

What to do in this situation? We’d like to introduce our solution to this problem for Australian corporations.

Outsource to New Zealand.

Cue the sheep-shagger and “poor little neighbour” jokes.

But think about it. Cheaper than Australian going rates. Only 3 hours away from Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne if you need to conduct business in person. English-speaking. And in the IT and tech industry, this outsource system works especially well. Below, we’ve outlined 5 brilliant reasons to outsource your work to New Zealand.

1.Same timezone, same culture, same language.

Ok, make that near enough the same timezone. In fact, the time difference can often work in your favour. When you straggle into the office at 9am, clutching your morning coffee, we’ve been working for 2 hours and made it onto our third caffeinated beverage already. That mean you’ll get work completed earlier in the day with plenty of time to check back with your clients – and then pass on feedback to your NZ team ready for the next day.

…same language, same culture (come on – you know the entire Northern Hemisphere can’t even tell us apart).

Shrimp on the barbie aside, Aussies and Kiwis don’t have the cultural or linguistic issues that can sometimes make collaborating on a project so frustrating. We’ll get what you’re talking about, first time around. It’s outsourcing but more like having an extension of your team working outside the office.

2.Up to date in Tech

New Zealand tech companies are working at the same level as Australia (ie, we’re not the budget overseas service that gives outsourcing its bad name). Just because we’re at the arse-end of the world, doesn’t mean we’re not keeping up with the latest technology in our given industry. As a tech company, our job is to keep up to date with what’s going on in the digital world, and develop accordingly. New Zealand has many start-ups and young, growing companies – that’s one of the benefits of being a relatively young society. A small and agile team who know what they’re doing can often be a boon to a larger corporation which needs deadlines met urgently.

3.Bright new business hub

Not only is NZ a hub for growing, tech-savvy businesses, we’ve also premiered bright young companies with world-changing ideas in the past few years. Xero accounting software, and Vend POS software immediately spring to mind. We’ve proved that NZ brains are at the forefront of industry progress – so if you’re looking for expert help, you’ve come to the right place.

4.Just a short plane ride away

At the end of the day, when all’s said and done – it’s not that hard to meet up in person, if you really rely on good ole’ fashioned face-time to do business. As a tech company, we often rely on phone, email, Skype calls, and Team Viewer when we are working remotely. While it’s true that tech workers DO prefer to work hidden away from other human beings and direct sunlight, we also have some regulars on the team who would be more than happy to hop across the ditch to help speed along a project.

5.And lastly… it’s cheeaper!

We left this point ‘till last because it’s not, in itself, a good enough reason to outsource. But when you’re looking to get the same services, at the same level of quality, without over-complicating the process… then it’s a great reason. Without selling ourselves short, the truth is that the same expert-level services cost less to hire in New Zealand compared to Australia. That’s a fact. And it’s just because companies in NZ tend to be a) smaller b) younger c) operating in a smaller market/economy. So take advantage while this great opportunity exists.

6.Bonus point: it’s already happening!

New Zealand and Australia often do business together (including our company). We’ve already completed work for several Australian companies and agencies. The longer you wait, the more you miss out on all the advantages of outsourcing to NZ.

So dip a toe in the Tasman – check out how much your next digital project would cost if you outsourced to an expert NZ tech company. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Now this is a story all about how, we made Fond Farewells the best in town. And I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there, I’ll tell you how we got their juicy 1^st page Google share.

In Christchurch, New Zealand born and raised, in pet cremation, was where they spent all of their days. Collectin’, crematin’; art-makin’ so fly, and helping pet owners say their final goodbye.

When their website was made, it was all pretty good, but there wasn’t anybody in their neighbourhood. To help spread the word and bring in hits – Fond Farewells got us to SEO that sh*t.

We reviewed and researched day after day, and came up with a strategy play-by-play.
New titles, descriptions were all in place, and a fresh new Google+ page to take the cake

A little while later, and look what we find: Fond Farewells take first place in the line.
‘Pet cremation Christchurch’ they were finally there – number one on the throne, competition beware.

*For the non-rapped version, please keep reading below!

[vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
[vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern” css_animation=””][vc_column][vc_separator type=”small” position=”center” up=”20″ down=”20″][vc_column_text]Ok, so we got excited about our SEO results working with Fond Farewells and wanted to share them in Fresh Prince style. It’s not often you can say your strategy worked with 100% success, but in the case of Fond Farewells, we’ve optimised their site like a dream.

Fond Farewells are a pet cremation service based in Christchurch that operates throughout the South Island. The organisation has links with Gribbles Veterinary who offer the Fond Farewells service throughout their veterinary clinics in the South Island.

The Gribbles Veterinary/Fond Farewells team had requested SEO work to raise the visibility of Fond Farewells online, especially for certain keywords such as ‘pet cremation Christchurch’. Their main competitor was appearing at the top of search results for ‘pet cremation’ and similar keywords, while Fond Farewells was not visible on the first few pages of the search results at all.

We implemented SEO on the website to target particular keywords and phrases, so that online users searching for pet cremation services would start finding the website.

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1: fond farewells the top result for ‘pet cremation christchurch’ search.

Now, searching for ‘pet cremation Christchurch’ brings up Fond Farewells as the top result in Google search (see Image 1 to the left).[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern” css_animation=””][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

2. Fond farewells increased traffic – website visitors, page visits and sessions all up by over 25% in this comparison chart.

Looking at the data for Fond Farewells in Google Analytics, we can see that increased visibility has brought about a corresponding increase in visitors to the site and website traffic. We began work on the website in late Feb/early March 2015. Image 2 below encapsulates the improvement in Fond Farewells’ visibility online. Starting from April 2015, website visitors are up 25% over the last six months compared to the previous six.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator type=”transparent”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_gallery type=”nivo” interval=”0″ images=”19041″ img_size=”large”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern” css_animation=””][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_gallery type=”nivo” interval=”0″ images=”19042″ img_size=”large”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

3. Fond farewells begins appearing for ‘pet cremation christchurch’ for the first time in march 2015.

Fond Farewells was barely even appearing in results for ‘pet cremation Christchurch’ (their main targeted keyword) before we began work on the website. Image 3 marks when the website began appearing for this keyword: March 2015.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator type=”transparent”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern” css_animation=””][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

4. Data from the last 90 days (end of dec 2015 – end of mar 2016) for ‘pet cremation christchurch’ – an average search position of 1.1 now and total clicks and impressions both increased.

Lastly, a year on Image 4 marks the progress: an average position of 1.1 for the keyword in the last 90 days, and major traffic to the website on this keyword compared to nothing when we first began the project.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_gallery type=”nivo” interval=”0″ images=”19042″ img_size=”large”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern” css_animation=””][vc_column][vc_separator type=”transparent” thickness=”20″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern” css_animation=””][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Our approach to SEO

We first approach our SEO projects by doing considerable research into the industry and looking at competitor websites. Combined with keywords provided by the client, we can come up with a list of recommended keywords to target. We add to this by using AdWords and Google Trends data to find the popularity of certain search terms and check for any missed keywords to add to our research.

From this data we can begin to create meta content that best describes each page while also targeting specific keywords. It’s best to plan for each page to target slightly different keywords. That way, we can reach the widest audience while still remaining on topic on each page.

Using Google Search Console (previously Webmaster Tools) and Google Analytics, we can track traffic to the website and determine what’s working and what needs improvement. These tools are also essential to ensure the website is listed in Google and configured correctly.

By monitoring the website using these tools, over time we can perfect the SEO strategy until one day – we discovered that our client was at the top for their chosen search term. Now that’s what we call an SEO success story!

Want to hear more about what we could do to improve your website traffic? Call us on +64 9 280 3470 or email us on contact@futurelab.co.nz.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern” css_animation=””][vc_column][vc_column_text]Daren recently joined FutureLab in the newly created role of Business Development Manager. Daren is on board to help manage our business growth and provide strategic vision for the overall development of the company.

Welcome to FutureLab Daren! Can you start by telling us a bit about your previous roles and experience?

In my previous life I spent 15 years in Telecommunications with the likes of Vodafone, WXC, and Digital Island. Signed Digital Islands largest client in Armourguard NZ and stole it off both Gen-I and Vodafone at the time from a cold start. When I started text messaging was still cutting edge. Nowadays those same phone companies are now IT, Web, phone system and Application based companies.

What excites you about working in the IT industry?

Technology changes mean you never get stale. If you don’t get your head around what the changes are, you’ll have no idea how to position your services in relation to the client need.

Even in the last year, Google made changes as to how they rank websites meaning that you’ve already got something new to discuss with potential and existing clients as to how to make sure they stay relevant with the way people now consume or make their choices. Winning significant businesses is always a kick.

Why FutureLab? What, in your opinion, is the point of difference compared to other companies in the Auckland market?

The level of customisation that can be delivered in comparison to template-based approaches, at non creative agency pricing.

What do you hope to achieve at FutureLab this year?

Expanding the company! If we can grow the business to the point we start to have enough work for additional staff that would be grand. From a sales perspective, ideally I want to develop partnerships that then provide a pipeline that doesn’t leave you chasing business cold. In my experience, getting new business off the back of relationships has always worked well.

You’ve come on board at FutureLab after a year of fast growth. How do you see the company continuing to evolve?

It got to this size based on good client relationships. If we grow the amount of people we have relationships with that will grow revenue so long as we always ask ourselves “What is the compelling reason for this potential client to use us” and then communicate that well. It may be at some point in the future we expand on what we do product- or service-wise. The more products or services we can offer to clients, the more likely they are to stick with us. Plus, people are very risk adverse – especially if they think you’ve done a great job.

Finally, any predictions for the year ahead?

No. Technology is also a disruption to some businesses in that if something great is released it can sometimes impact you. Look at the way the internet has affected traditional media sales, or how Uber has affected the taxi industry, what’s next? It’s unpredictable and that’s what motivates me.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator type=”small” position=”center” up=”30″ down=”40″][vc_row_inner row_type=”row” type=”full_width” text_align=”left” css_animation=””][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”18926″ img_size=”medium” qode_css_animation=””][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Thanks Daren. Here at FutureLab we are excited by the new developments happening this year and we believe Daren is a valuable and necessary addition to our small team. If you’ve got any questions, please drop us a line at contact@futurelab.co.nz, or say hello to Daren at daren@futurelab.co.nz.

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2015 was a big year for FutureLab. We increased revenue by 60%, moved to new offices at a more spacious location, and took on more web design and digital marketing projects than ever before. Our clients started bringing us referred work, and we became the preferred providers for several large companies and brands.

As a result, we have some exciting changes planned for 2016 and hope to continue our impressive growth to become a strong contender in the Auckland B2B digital market.

The biggest shakeup is bringing Daren O’Meara on board as Business Development Manager for 2016. Daren brings a wealth of sales and account management experience from his career in telecommunications in Auckland. His role will be to look after our existing clients and manage new revenue streams, leaving the developers to get on with the technical work.

By separating out and dividing up the roles in the company in this way, we hope to provide a better, more efficient service to our clients, with experts solely dedicated to each area of the business.

Look out for a question and answer session we will be conducting with Daren later this month.

Author: futurelab