Category: Case Studies

By Ralf Klis, FutureLab’s owner and technical leader.
This post was originally published on LinkedIn.

 

I work in an industry bursting with various options and solutions. There are hundreds of web development companies out there, providing thousands of solutions. From customising Wix websites, building entire CMS from scratch, WordPress, Magento, Umbraco – the list goes on and on. All of that falls under the broad definition of web development.

Defining Custom Web Development

There are as many definitions of custom web development as there are companies out there specialising in providing it. But what they have in common is providing some sort of customisation for the customer. The most popular ones include:

  • Customising a closed source system for the customer’s needs
  • Creating a completely custom solution for the customer
  • Customising an Open Source theme for the customer’s branding
  • Customising an Open Source CMS for the customer’s needs

The majority of custom web development companies out there would be developing one of the above solutions. Basically, these solutions are about making the experience of the website/web app unique on the market in some way. And there’s no single “right way” to do it; often the same result can be achieved in a number of different ways.

You’re probably wondering why I’m writing about customisation if it’s all the same. Why start the discussion in the first place? Because through my own journey of building a custom creation business, I discovered that we were all wrong. That the above definition is not what custom web development really entails.

What is custom web development

Here’s a hint. To get to the heart of what “custom web development” really means, remove the “web” part and what’s left over? Custom development: it’s the entire journey of the project, from the idea through to the result, which must be customised. My sales person once asked me to create a script for the initial meeting with a new customer. It was an impossible request. Because creating a script would ruin my definition of customising the experience. Customising the creation of something new. And it cannot be fully customised or innovative or unique if we aim to repeat any of the previous solutions.

The custom journey

We create custom solutions. In order to deliver them, we customise every element of the journey. It’s not a trademarkTM and it’s not a rocket science, but we make sure that the web journey is unique for every customer.

  1. The start

    One of the most important elements of the first meeting with our customers is that we don’t do much talking. We listen. In the end, we’re not here to offer a pre-ordained solution, we’re here to find out what the customer needs and then come up with a solution to solve their problem. So once the customer tells you what they need, that’s when you can start the talking. Only then can you suggest the solution, discuss options and start the process of customising the journey.

  2. The data

    Whatever the end goal, you can’t get to a perfect solution without measuring the current state. This is assuming that we have access to some kind of data. Even if the customer’s product is brand new, there are tools like Google Keywords Planner or Google Trends to do some initial competitor research. If your customer already has a web presence, Google Analytics is invaluable for measuring data. We also use Hotjar to create a User Experience (UX) report and Google Data Studio to assess all the most important data in one place.

  1. Discovery

    Whether it’s a simple website or a web app with a complete business management system, the discovery phase is where the custom journey gets up to full speed. We divide this into visual and technical discovery.
    Visual discovery is learning about and helping to organise all the information about a customer’s brand, brand guidelines, likes and dislikes. This is sometimes reinforced by very simple design presentations to find out what the customer likes.
    Technical discovery is also called scoping. This phase gathers all the required functionality, describes it and puts it in one place (the scope document). This document also becomes your delivery goal as all the functionality described and agreed on by all stakeholders becomes an end-product checklist.

  1. Design

    The design phase should use all the above elements to create not only a unique user experience and design, but also to provide a solution to the identified problem. This is often a struggle between the data and the customer’s needs. The ideal solution is a middle ground between what the user is looking for (UX report) and what the customer wants (scope). A great example I frequently bring up relates to the contact form on the top of the homepage. When we did a UX report on one customer’s old website, it turned out that no one ever filled out the form on the home page itself. All converted users automatically clicked on the menu element “contact us” before even looking below the menu. The solution was a middle ground – remove the “contact us” tab on the menu and replace it with a button “enquire” that pops up a contact form without leaving the page.

  1. Development

    This part has been already described above. Whether it’s a fully customised CMS or customised Wix website, it’s important to focus on delivering the right solution for the customer. One customer may look for ease of editing; another prefers full automation. Whatever the needs and goals are, the majority of the web development work happens here.

  1. Training

    This might be a somewhat unique approach of my business and my philosophy, but as much as I love our customers and love keeping in touch, the last thing any of us would like to hear is “can you please fix that typo on my blog”. It’s not just important for us that the customer has full control of their content and website; it’s also very important for every business to have full control of their product. This might be a landing page, eCommerce, or the web app of a startup fully built on the web. Whatever it is, the customer needs to be in control because otherwise, they become dependent on one developer. That is why we provide training on using the custom solution, plus a manual with full documentation, on every project we do.

  1. Handover and go live

    Having worked in the Internet industry for most of my life, I know well how things can go wrong. And there are no promises or guarantees in the world that will prevent it. Just like the development process, the handover and go live process need to be customised as well. If it’s a transactional website, the go live plan needs to cause minimal disruption to the system, purchasing, ordering, booking etc. Even with a simple landing page replacement, there has to be a plan for whether the links will change, any redirects, carrying over extra tracking tags from the old website or perhaps simplifying everything by switching to Google Tag Manager. Either way, this part is very important and the customer’s input is needed to ensure it’s as smooth as possible.

  1. Support

    This often-forgotten step is an important part in customising the development experience. There is no golden rule and once your web solution is live there will always be something that goes wrong, has been forgotten, or even misspelled. A clear plan of responsibilities, action and support process is very important for every customer. That’s because their online journey hasn’t finished but just started: with constant changes in the Internet and in the industry, the solution that has been developed will constantly evolve. And there’s nothing more frustrating than not being able to deal with the problem.

 

Whoever knows me, knows that I’m a huge Open Source supporter. I’ve been co-organising WordPress meetups and WordCamps for several years. And I volunteer for one reason – to make the Internet a better place. That’s why when we provide a custom solution it’s a custom journey that we all take together. It’s a small but crucial point of difference, and at the end of the journey you can often end up somewhere completely different than you might have predicted at the beginning. That’s the beauty of a truly customised development process.

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.

 

Auckland Flowers Takapuna have been delivering gorgeous bouquets for all occasions right here in Takapuna since 1986! Lisa and her family have been running the popular florist shop right out of the same Barry’s Point Road location for all these years, but 2016 marked a big change for the company – moving to fully automated e-commerce sales through their new website.

Auckland Flowers Takapuna approached FutureLab at the end of 2015 to talk about revamping their online presence and gearing up their online sales. The company provide floral arrangements for weddings and other special occasions, wholesale flowers, plus individual custom bouquets that could be made up in-store. However, they wanted to really promote individual sales, allowing everyone to select a perfect flower bouquet online and have it delivered anywhere in Auckland.

We discussed new colour schemes, talked Auckland Flowers Takapuna through the e-commerce side of things, and in January 2016 we launched the new and improved website for Auckland Flowers Takapuna. Design-wise, the site brightened up the colour scheme for the brand and the new logo matched the signature sunflower delivery van. Now for the first time, Lisa and her team could load up products and pictures to the site, set a price and allow customers to complete the purchase and delivery instructions all online. We also made sure the website was mobile-responsive, allowing customers to find the right bouquet and press send even on the go.

E-Commerce Sales Results

Previously, Auckland Flowers Takapuna could sell online in a limited capacity via their website. Therefore, we expected that their sales would increase after the new website was launched. However, online sales rose by 300% on average, a huge achievement that Auckland Flowers Takapuna and the FutureLab were thrilled about. The upgraded website processed orders, payments and delivery options all in one go, allowing the Auckland Flowers Takapuna team to sit back and wait for orders to be emailed to them from the website.

Comparing sales for September 2015-January 2016 to sales in September 2016-January 2017 reveals a 318% increase on average across these months, with every month since we launched the new website at least doubling the sales record of the previous year.

Ecommerce Successful Sales Auckland NZ

We are ecstatic with this result as it shows the return on investment for quality web design and development – Lisa and her team have gained back many times over what they invested in their new and improved website.

If you’re looking to give your business a boost talk to us about your online results.

Recently we posted a rough guide to what kind of work goes into creating your website. It’s not all just website building – each project takes hours of planning, design, review, testing, writing, and preparation for going live.

We want to now go into more detail about how we create a high-end website. To illustrate this process we’ll use our very own website, upgraded in July-August 2016. Projects costing $20,000+ with a focus on high-level design will go through this process. Typically, this will include businesses concerned with branding, providing a high level user experience, and/or aiming at the high-quality end of the market.

We’ll discuss in detail the process we undertook to re-design and build the new FutureLab website. We hope it will serve as a guide to understand more about high-end website design and the steps involved from planning to launch of a mid to high-range website.

 

Creative – Planning

Before any work can begin, we’ll sit down and brainstorm the look, feel and purpose of the new website. We looked at the current FutureLab branding, the way that the website was set out, and what the website was designed to do.

Objectives

It’s crucial to answer a few questions about the website, your business and what you hope to achieve with building or redesigning a website:

What do you want to achieve with your website rebuild?

What are the key actions you want users to take on the site?

How do you see the website returning your investment?

Our own answers to these questions look something like this: the website needs to advertise our brand and of course will act as the opening number in our ‘portfolio’, so it needs to be sharp. We want website users to browse our site, gather any information they seek and then easily contact us. This is the main online ‘face’ of our business so is the first point of contact for nearly all of our new business.

 Tasks

Looking at the existing website, we noted the following items that needed to change:

  • The website was really wordy. We needed a design with more impact, and less chat.
  • The structure had become overly complicated. As we added important features and services to the website, the Service section had become large with too many drilldown levels.
  • The design needed to be updated. As we’d grown over the years, so our focus, target market and top services had also changed.

Outcomes

  • Align our website with our brand which has changed over the years
  • Re-organise information and improve user experience on the site
  • Make contacting us easier
  • Show we are up to date

Explanation

Any website build needs to begin with looking at the current website (if any), and what you are trying to improve upon and achieve with the build. The target audience needs to be determined, and the website designed to give each type of user the best possible experience. This doesn’t have to be a complicated procedure. For example, our target audience would be small-medium business owners, marketing executives for medium-large firms, and ad agency directors. Each type of user is looking for a slightly different set of requirements; the purpose of our website is to tell each what they need to know, and provide an easy way to contact us and continue the conversation. Most businesses should find it straightforward to work out who their customers are and the key information they would search for online.

 

Creative – Design Concepts

Once the key objectives have been identified, the first design work can begin. The design is key to the success of the website, for two reasons: it should immediately showcase your brand, and it should lead users to take a valued action on the site. Whether the purpose of your website is to sell products, raise your brand profile, show an appointment calendar, or collect application forms, the design needs to streamline this process. The valued action may therefore be to buy a product, view your contact information, book an appointment, or fill out an application form.

Objectives

  • Here are the objectives that our website design need to achieve:
  • Provide an easy, barrier-free way to contact FutureLab
  • Showcase our design and development work
  • Provide contact and location details easily on mobile
  • Promote more visual content over text content

Tasks

Using the information highlighted in the planning phase, we created a scope for the website, including requirements, purpose, objectives, and design ideas. We discussed the objectives, brand values and our services with the design team. We made clear what actions were valuable to us as a business on the website, and also discussed our target market and approach.

Outcomes

This part of the process produces the website wireframe. Website wireframes do not contain any visual design elements. They simply outline the structure of the website and the key information needed on each page. They are a basis on which to add visual and creative elements. The wireframe designs reduced the number of tabs on the main menu and added a tab ‘free consultation’ to the main menu bar. The first screen states clearly what our services are and includes examples of our work. On mobile, a click-to-call feature will be included so that website visitors can get in touch immediately.

 

Creative – Website Design

Once the wireframe has been outlined, we have a good idea of what is needed on the site. The next layer is to actually produce the visual part of the design – colouring in the basic structure and taking the concept through to a visual design.

Objectives

  • The ‘wow’ factor – immediately impress with modern, even futuristic design
  • First visual showcase of the work we can achieve for our own clients
  • Easy to view, appealing visually
  • Using our brand colours

Tasks

We provided the designer with our brand guidelines – brand colours, fonts, logo. By this point our branding and high-level approach were well-outlined already.

Outcomes

The design used our traditional colours of pink, light blue and grey/black and created dramatic geometric shapes and sharp outlines for the design. The design is technically advanced and forward-looking while retaining our branding roots. The design creates an experience for the user as they scroll through the homepage, with animated graphics, clearly delineated sections and plenty of visual elements to be inspired by. We provided feedback and refined the designs until we were satisfied and ready to start the build.

 

Development – Building

The website development is when you see all your planning and design efforts so far finally come to life online. As a client you will have already seen the homepage design and possibly other page designs as well, depending on the project. Once you have signed off on these designs, development work will begin. During the website development, we typically have 3 team members working on your website – a backend developer, a frontend developer, and a project manager, who will be your point of contact through the project. In-house, we ran regular meetings to check progress on our website and test as new features were completed. The copywriter also worked with the developer to ensure the text content was represented and animated in the correct way.

Objectives

  • Ensure that the design is accurately brought to life.
  • Respond to any development issues as they arise in a timely manner

Tasks

The tasks at this stage involve the development team thinking logically through the design and building coding to implement the design into a working model.

Outcomes

Part of the difficulty of web development can be working out how to turn designs into real, working models. What may seem simple to design can require many hours and creative thinking to implement in coding. In particular, the animated section of the homepage under ‘Ingredients for success’ took many hours to develop as there are so many custom elements here.

 

Development – Review

Throughout development on a complex project, we’ll be meeting regularly to review the work completed so far. However, we’ll also have a major review once the first stage of development is done and there is a working version of the website ready to inspect.

Objectives

  • Ensure the website functions and looks as expected

Tasks

At this stage, the designer will be able to review the website and ensure their designs have been accurately brought to life. We will also test each function of the site to ensure it works as expected. When producing websites for clients, this is when the website will be sent to the client for review and for their feedback.

Outcomes

We have a couple of review rounds, with designers or clients providing feedback and the developers making small changes to accommodate the feedback. In our case, we made adjustments to the animation on the homepage and reviewed for typos and errors in the content and design.

 

Going Live

Once all parties are happy and we are satisfied that key objectives, design concepts, website functionality and the visual design requirements have all been met, we are ready to go live. This process takes up to 1 hour. Before going live we go through a final checklist to ensure that server, emails, SEO and website settings are all correct.

 

Website Design & Development – A Summary

A website project is similar to any other construction project – an awful lot of planning and concept design goes in before the first brick is laid. Then, during the build, unforeseen complications may arise or changes of mind can happen. That’s why a solid foundation (good planning, signed-off designs, high quality code) can make all the difference.

This is especially important in higher-end projects which involve specialised development or highly creative design. The custom coding involved requires good planning and an agile response to issues as they arise. If the concepts and visual designs are completed properly and signed-off, unforeseen issues should be kept to a minimum.

The process described above took 4 months from initial ideas to going live. During this time, we were also completing projects for clients which of course took precedence. We would expect the same process for a (prepared and efficient) client to take between 10-12 weeks, or faster for urgent projects.

If you have any queries about the planning, design and development process that goes into creating a branding website, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can find our details here.

 

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.

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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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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 1st 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]