Category: Technology News

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.

Having an active SSL certificate on your website is essential in today’s online world. An encryption technology developed in the 1990’s, SSL is an acronym for Secure Sockets Layer. It allows data to securely travel between your web server and your visitor’s web browser by creating an encrypted connection. The recent increase in SSL usage is due to many web browsers now displaying a warning message for visitors on websites which do not have a valid certificate. In particular, the Chrome and Firefox web browsers are displaying a “not secure” message within a website’s address bar if a valid SSL certificate is not installed. This has led to most reputable hosting companies, including ourselves, providing our customers with SSL certificates for their websites. Today we’re going to discuss further what an SSL certificate is, how it works and the reasons why it’s vital your website has one.

What is SSL and How Does It Work?

An easy way to understand what an SSL certificate is to think of it as a passport. Information about your domain name, server name, company name and location are all bound together with unique cryptographic keys. When installed on your website’s server, it will encrypt all information sent to and from it, allowing only the two parties on each end to be able to read it. If intercepted, it cannot be deciphered. The application protocol HTTP will change to HTTPS, and either a green browser bar or green padlock will be seen depending on the type of certificate used.

Why Do I Need an SSL Certificate?

When a visitor uses your website, information is passed between your website and their web browser. Information can include passwords, credit card details, addresses and other personal information. Before the introduction of SSL, it was possible for hackers to steal this information. An SSL or digital certificate, however, creates a secure link from your website to your visitor’s browser, allowing safe passage for all information.

It’s a common misconception that SSL is only necessary for eCommerce websites. The reality is, SSL provides security, peace of mind and data integrity for both parties on any website. The data encryption does prevent others from seeing credit card and personal details but also stops malware and other meddling occurring too.

Therefore, the main reasons your website needs SSL are to:

  • Encrypt all information sent between your website and your visitor’s web browser
  • Provide authentication for your visitors, as they know that they are sending their information to the right website, not an imposter
  • Improved SEO rankings, as Google will rank sites with valid certificates slightly higher than those without
  • Gain your customer’s trust, as they know you are doing everything you can to protect their personal information
  • Avoid your visitors seeing a message in your web address bar saying your website is “not secure” if they are using the Chrome or Firefox web browser

 

At FutureLab, we take your security seriously. Using only secure cloud hosting, we provide our customers with a compartmentalised server system which promotes fast websites but also protects you from hackers and spammers. We also offer SSL certificates with all our hosting plans too. Arrange a time with us to chat about how we can improve the security of your website by switching to one of our managed monthly hosting plans and website development services.

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.

WordPress old WYSIWYG
WordPress old WYSIWYG

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.

WordPress new Gutenberg editor
WordPress new Gutenberg editor

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.

 

No plans for Friday evening? If you’re keen to learn more about design and brand identity, plus network with other professionals over FREE PIZZA, we have the event for you!

If you didn’t already know, each month FutureLab helps organise and sponsor informal WordPress meetups for the Auckland community. We get together to listen to other professionals and amateur enthusiasts talk about their experiences and knowledge of WordPress and meet others in the Auckland network.

This month, we are privileged to have our own creative director Dan Matthews speak about brand identity for websites. Dan has decades of NZ and UK experience working on big brands and projects. In NZ, he’s been involved with the My Food Bag launch, plus large-scale brand and design projects for Auckland Airport and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.

With Dan’s talent for bringing a brand to life in the digital world, this talk, called ‘Make My Logo Bigger’, is not to be missed.

WHEN: This Friday 30th June 6:30pm

WHERE: GRIDAKL, 101 Pakenham Street West, Auckland Central

BRING: Yourself and a friend if you’re feeling shy, business cards, an appetite

PARKING: You know what Auckland parking is like! There are parks around Westhaven or rideshare with a friend

AFTERPARTY: We head down to Jack Tar bar in Wynyard Quarter after the talk wraps up around 8:30pm.

 

We really encourage you to come down and listen to Dan’s talk. Some of you may have already encountered Dan in your work with FutureLab, for others this will be a great introduction. Please RSVP back to us or on the Meetup event itself.

Hope to see you there!

 

FutureLab are excited to announce that WordCamp Auckland 2017 is happening this weekend!

The 2-day conference (costing just $50 in total thanks to some amazing sponsors!) will cover a variety of WordPress topics and discussions, with some great speakers from New Zealand and overseas. Whether you’re a WordPress developer, designer, or someone who uses WordPress for business or blogging – there are talks designed for all levels of expertise.

There’s also a social on the Saturday night and a hangi for lunch!

Ralf, lead developer and owner at FutureLab, is co-organiser of the conference and has spent months carefully organising (and tearing his hair out, on occasion!) behind the scenes. Organising an event this big has been a huge task but already so rewarding in seeing the guest speaker slots filled, tickets sold, and great companies come and sponsor this community event.

WordCamp Auckland is the biggest WordPress gathering in NZ for years! Come along and be part of the action – whether you’re looking to network, hear from a particular guest speaker or just find out more about WordPress in general.

Go to the WordCamp website to see the speakers, sponsors and buy tickets.

Otherwise, we look forward to welcoming you to WordCamp Auckland 2017 this weekend!

With Christmas just around the corner, we wanted to extend our warmest wishes to you for the holiday season, and say a big thank you for choosing us as your digital partners. We can keep doing what we love because of your continued support.

 

It’s been a big year (again) with a few changes and innovations, so please take some time to catch up with FutureLab’s news below:

 

Moving to cloud-based hosting

Over the last few months we’ve been slowly moving our hosting into the cloud with AWS. Cloud hosting is secure and allows for faster load speeds and more uptime. We had a couple of hiccoughs during the process but all is working smoothly now – thank you all for your patience! Read more about what cloud hosting means for you.

 

New support channel

We have launched a new dedicated support channel for you to log issues, request help and so on. So far we’ve had a positive response to the channel and many of you are already making use of this facility. A reminder that we have website support packages available that can help give you peace of mind for content support, small changes and a faster support time.

 

Brand refresh for FutureLab

We’ve been so busy helping get other New Zealand & Aussie companies online that our own online presence was languishing a bit. So in July and August we underwent a re-branding process with help from our creative director. Our brand new look on the website is the result. We are fast becoming NZ’s specialist WordPress and custom web developers and we think our new website look reflects that. Read more about our rebranding.

 

2017 NZ WordCamp

The WordPress community is a global phenomenon, and we wouldn’t be able to operate without it! This year we’ve dived headfirst into the New Zealand WordPress community, sponsoring & organising Auckland WordPress Meetups. Plus, we’re busy organising the 2017 NZ WordCamp, which we hope to make an annual event.

 

Christmas Opening Hours

We are closing at 4pm on the 23rd December, reopening 4th January. During the holiday, please call 09 280 3470 for urgent web issues – ie, your website is down! For non-urgent issues, please log them on our support channel and we’ll be in touch when we’re back on deck.

 

Once again, thank you for partnering with FutureLab, Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year.

A year on from ‘Mobilegeddon’ we look at how Google mobile search is continuing to evolve

 

You may remember reading about a big Google mobile search update back in April 2015 – dubbed ‘Mobilegeddon’ by the SEO community. We wrote about the update here at FutureLab and also had a look at the first results of Mobilegeddon and how some clients had come to us as a direct result of the mobile changes.

The ‘Mobilegeddon’ update last year was about prioritising mobile-responsive websites in mobile search results. So, from that point onward, if your website wasn’t mobile-responsive, you were going to lose rankings on mobile to a competitor who did have a mobile-ready website.

 

Mobile-first Design

At FutureLab, mobile-responsive design has been a priority for the last four years. We don’t charge extra for mobile-optimisation like some web companies – we simply don’t design a website these days unless it is responsive. When we meet with prospective clients, we’re sure to let them know that mobile-optimisation is really important. Sometimes we meet with mixed reactions – companies that aren’t bothered about mobile optimisation. A year ago when we told our clients and prospective ones about the update, we had companies saying they weren’t that fussed about optimising for mobile.

 

Mobile = important!

A year on from the update and it’s clear that mobile search is only gaining in importance, to Google and users alike. As Yoast’s Joost de Valk succinctly put it, “Whether mobile search is important, hugely important or incredibly important for your business depends on the market you’re in.” There’s no case for ignoring mobile traffic anymore, no matter if you’re a small company, based away from the big city, or rely on your business connections to bring in revenue.

 

Big change for Google search

The latest news from Google HQ is that desktop search and mobile search are going to become completely separated out from each other. The change will take place ‘within months’, according to Gary Illyes, a Google webmaster trends analyst. The mobile search will be rapidly updated, while the desktop search will be a secondary search which may not be as up to date as mobile search results.

Any business case for not investing in a mobile-responsive website is getting harder and harder to justify. The writing on the wall is quite clear – focus on optimising your website for mobile or pay the price of lower search rankings, less traffic and less visibility online.

Last month Google quietly released a big update to their search engine Local algorithm, dubbed the ‘Possum’ update by the SEO community.

The update helps show web users local results when they are searching for goods and services near their location.

 

Possum Update: The Overview

Have you ever searched online for ‘cafes near me’ or ‘closest grocery store’? Often, these sort of searches happen when users are on the go and looking for the closest food/drink/shopping/dentist and so on near to them. Searches that involve some reference to your location, AKA ‘near me’ searches, have been growing wildly in popularity. Well, Google has been paying attention.

In general, local results being prioritised over others is nothing new. That’s why you’ll usually see .co.nz results rather than .com or .co.uk when you search online from NZ. Likewise, businesses with an Auckland location aren’t going to do as well in Christchurch search results and vice versa.

However, this new update deals specifically with Local results – using all of the data they can find, Google will work out your location and help show your website or Google Maps listing when it is most relevant to a nearby user.

Since the update, the Local search results also seem to differ more from the regular organic results. This means that searching ‘website design services near me’ or ‘website design services Takapuna’ will show different results compared to searching ‘website design services’. On the whole, this is good news – it means small businesses will have a chance to show up in search results to users close by, rather than being overshadowed by the big players of their industry with a bigger web presence.

On the flip side, since Local results will now vary even more depending on your location, remember that you won’t be able to check your search rankings accurately unless you’re in the location you want to check up on. Or, we can help you with SEO tools to help check your local rankings in multiple towns and cities.

 

What Do I Need to Do?

You may be asking at this point – how does this update affect my business? As we said, this is good news for small businesses who service a particular location – but you’ll need to ensure your website has the right signals on it for Google to help prioritise your website in Local search results.

 

Add NAP Details to your website – Name, Address, Phone Number

This is an easy one which all businesses should have online. Put your contact details across every platform you use, including your website, Google My Business/Google Maps, and social media profiles. Ensure your details are the same and are accurate across all platforms. In addition, add your opening hours to your Google My Business page.

 

Add Schema.org details to your website

Schema markup is a worldwide-recognised way of labelling various content on your website for Google and other search engines to use. Have you ever searched a big company and had their logo, name and company blurb turn up on the right hand side of your search results page? A fair bit of that data comes from schema markup.

 

Get the above sorted and you should experience a lift in search engine rankings for Local results. For further reading about the Possum update, Search Engine Land have a detailed report (Google haven’t released anything official about this update, so the report is based on expert SEOs watching search engine results very carefully).

 

possum-update
Another gratuitous possum pic

 

If you’d like some help setting up your Google My Business page or adding schema.org markup to your website, get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.

Good news! Your website hosting with FutureLab is upgrading

 

As part of our ongoing commitment to provide New Zealanders with the finest web development and hosting services, we have been reviewing our hosting platform and server arrangements.

Previously our websites have been hosted on New Zealand servers which have been running out of space (thanks to our clients’ growing web traffic!). We have been investigating and testing different hosting options over the last few months and we have found a better hosting solution that will improve up-time and website speeds.

The new hosting solution is Amazon Web Services, a cloud hosting platform that has servers worldwide. There are multiple benefits to our new cloud set-up:

  • Website speed is faster, both for New Zealand and worldwide website visitors. Those who have content-heavy websites (lots of images, products or videos for example) will have noticeably faster loading times after the change.
  • Using cloud hosting means that if one server is busy, another one takes on the load. If one server dies, another can take over. This reduces the likelihood of website down-time.
  • Instead of one server for everything on your website, we have customised Database, Web, Cache, and File servers which streamline and speed up your website.
  • Improved server security, with fully compartmentalised space for each website we host. In the event of a security breach on another website, your own website would be protected.

What you need to do: Nothing!

No action is required from you and our web hosting services will be continuing as usual. We just wanted to let you know about the coming upgrade and explain why we’re switching.

As we switch you over, we may get in touch to ask you to change the IP on your domain to point to a new server (only if we do not already have access to your domain).

For those concerned about SEO, cloud hosting compared to NZ servers has no effect on your ranking in NZ search results. You can read more about this here.

We’re happy to answer any questions you may have about this change. Just send us an email and we’ll gladly help explain the new hosting solution and what it means for your website.

 

Exciting news at FutureLab – we recently became certified Google Partners, specialising in Search Ads.

Being a Google Partner is a mark from Google that FutureLab is qualified to create and manage search advertising campaigns on behalf of clients. This is a good benchmark signal to look for when searching for a company to help with digital advertising.

We have been managing our own and clients’ campaigns for a while now, but only recently decided to solidify that experience by going through the steps to become an official Google Partner.

We felt that this step was important to show our credentials as a full-service digital agency – offering web development, digital marketing, AdWords and graphic design services to NZ businesses.

You can read more about the Google Partner program here, or see our profile on the Google Partner page here.