- Franklin D. Roosevelt

We were recently visited by 4 Grade 11 students from the LEAP Science and Maths School, who were required to spend time job shadowing at a company in the field of business which they are interested in.

Philisiwe Mzwana, Tina Lubambo, Nomfundiso Malgas and Nosiphiwo Rose Breakfast spent some time with our Team to gain insight into what we do, and how we do it. They were introduced to our company, the various roles and responsibilities, and how our employees came to be in their respective positions. The students were also presented with the various education paths they could pursue should they want to follow a career in IT.

Nomfundiso Malgas commented, “It was a great experience for me – I obtained the information I needed to make decisions about what I want to do, and I heard a lot about all the different fields of business. I enjoyed the day and learned a lot.”

LEAP Science and Maths Schools are based in Langa, Gugulethu (Cape Town) and Alexandra (Johannesburg), and aims to transform educationally disadvantaged communities in SA through mathematics and science focused education initiatives. The LEAP learning model is designed to support children from township communities to become South Africa’s leaders of the future.

Maths and Science are highly beneficial subjects to study at school level, not only for a potential future in Information Technology, but in most career fields. Studying Maths and Science equips scholars with essential skills that will make them highly employable. These subjects also teach scholars problem-solving skills, which is not only important in a practical or experimental career field, but is essential to employers in all fields.

I’m looking forward to the road ahead with our new partnerships. Onwards and upwards!

In short, the program is designed to enable such agencies to:

• Maximize the value they can add to their projects
• Take on larger, more technical projects
• Offer their clients high-level strategic input from a technology point of view
• Broaden their offering and sales reach

For all those who missed out on the launch, you can get the low down on the program on our website, or get in touch with us directly if you want to see the full presentation with case studies.

A similar event is planned for Johannesburg in the near future. If you are in the Jo’burg area and would like to attend, you can contact us directly.

You could bring focus groups into expensive testing labs and record your subjects actions on the site, asking them questions about the site and their interactions with it, but this takes time and money – time to find the right people that represent your target market and collate and document all the responses,  money to get them interested in helping you test your application, and more money to hire the necessary equipment to perform these tests. Not a particularly attractive concept in the current state of our economy.

But there are other options available which can give you the metrics required to establish what your potential customers are or aren’t doing on your site. There are tools which you can implement to execute the appropriate tests and gain the necessary metrics, some of which we discuss in our previous post “Helpful tools for tracking user behaviour.” But to delve deeper into establishing what works and what doesn’t work on your site, we’ll highlight a few additional tools and methods.

Split A/B Testing

It’s often difficult to decide if a particular design layout has the desired effect. In fact, with so many design options available to us, choosing a single layout can be a stressful process. An image, the placement of a text block, or an action button, can all have a significant impact on how successful your design and layout strategy is. The best option is to let your customers tell you which one works by tracking their actions around your site. Split Testing allows you to show different layout variations of certain elements to different groups of site visitors, and to track which one is the most likely to deliver the desired result.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO provides a substantial amount of data pertaining to the visibility of your site on Google and takes into consideration fundamental elements, namely keywords, links and search impressions. Google’s Webmaster Tools are useful for SEO purposes, and provide important information on various technical aspects of your site, such as broken links, HTML problems and duplicate Meta.

With constant monitoring of your site, these issues can be addressed as and when they happen. You also receive insight into page load time, an important factor of client satisfaction, and will be able to identify which keywords (on various search engines, i.e. Google, Yahoo) bring the most traffic to your site. With this knowledge, you can equip yourself  with the advice you need in order to ensure optimum results are realised.

There are numerous tools and methods available to track the performance and usability of your site and it can be difficult or even overwhelming to decide on a starting point. We recommend that you  get your SEO right first by putting Google Analytics in place, and then supplement that with user feedback surveys and forms. Once you are confident with gathering and understanding this data, you can move on to Split A/B Testing and other more advanced methods such as goal tracking and heat maps.

Metrics is about applying a layer of tracking, understanding it and then implementing the next layer. Each layer helps you refine the previous layer’s metrics and once you’ve got the correct layers carefully in place, you’ll have the tools you require to fine-tune your site and optimize it to align as closely as possible with your business goals, which is, after all, the goal of your website!

We chose to participate in this day as a company, and facilitated a collection aimed to gather 67 cans (representing the 67 years) of food for donation to Nazareth House, a local charity in Cape Town. A total 90 cans and other non-perishable food items were handed over to Sister Margaret of Nazareth House yesterday. Nazareth House was founded in 1881 by the Sisters of Nazareth, and is a haven caring for the frail aged, terminally ill adults, and abandoned, abused and orphaned children. For over 100 years, the Sisters have unwaveringly followed their mission to take care of the most vulnerable members of society, regardless of race or religion – a cause that we are proud to support.

Although they receive a small Government grant for each child they care for, this only covers 27% of their costs, therefore any donations are always received with much gratitude by the Sisters of Nazareth. Should you wish to contribute, either email info@nazhouse.co.za or telephone +27 (0)21 461-1635, alternatively, monetary donations can be made online here.

Nazareth House

Let’s assume that we have attained adequate specifications from the client and feel confident with our understanding thereof.  We then need to make an educated estimation of the amount of work the project requires, and establish the cost. The word “educated” in the above statement must be emphasized, as estimation is, by no means, an exact science when it comes to software development. It does however, become more accurate when one relates the work to similar completed projects, and this is where the ‘educated’ estimation comes in. However, even with a historical precedent, there are factors and variables that could make the estimates inaccurate, but with experience, you learn to identify these variables and take them into account.

So, how do we educate ourselves in order to provide reasonable estimates? How do we reduce the risks to both the client and ourselves, as the service provider? We track what we do with clear metrics.

At White Wall Web, we make use of SCRUM for our project work. Velocity is probably the most important metric in SCRUM, allowing us to track the number of Story Points we can complete in a specified time frame. Without going into too much detail about how SCRUM works, Story Points are a measure of the perceived complexity of a particular User Story (another name for a software feature). A well-known and often implemented story, such as “as a user, I should be able to log into the system in order to gain access to my account”, is given a value that describes how complex it is to implement. This value is then used as the basis on which all the other stories are rated.

When the project begins, the SCRUM Master tracks how long the team takes to complete the stories and calculates the number of complexity points completed in the elapsed time. At the end of the sprint, the team ends up with a single figure called the “Velocity” that indicates how many points were completed in the sprint. After a few sprints, this figure should become more and more accurate, as long as the team continues to estimate according to the agreed baseline.

Although I’ve described the process quite simplistically here, achieving an accurate final Velocity figure is not that simple. A number of barriers always present themselves during our projects, but knowing the Velocity of our teams is crucial to the successful execution and completion of our projects. It allows us to give the client a reasonably accurate idea of how much work can be completed in a Sprint, and at the same time allows the team to measure their performance against previous sprints. This has helped us minimize the risk of projects running over budget and over time, and made the software development process much more predictable for us. Ultimately this leads to happy, satisfied clients, and a healthy ongoing relationship.

There are a number of powerful free tools available on the web that will give you more than enough data to accurately gain insight into what users do when they arrive on your site. Even the slightest text tweak of a landing page, or positioning of a button can make a world of difference.

Here are our top 5 tools for getting started:

Analytics

The mainstay of any web marketer, Google Analytics allows you to gather and analyse specific data about your website, such as, where your visitors came from and how long they spent on your site, which links they clicked on and which content they favoured more. It is particularly useful when coupled with online marketing campaigns, as it can show the various sources of traffic, be it third party ads, organic search results, or pay per click campaigns.

KISSmetrics is a customer development platform that provides analytics and insights for blogs, websites & web applications. It is different from Google Analytics in that is focused on the “split screen testing” and tracking “people” as opposed to “visitors” through the journey towards a desired result or “conversion.” It is not a substitute for Google Analytics, but instead a compliment.

Heat Maps

By tracking the mouse clicks of your visitors, you can establish which parts of your site are hot or not. Similar to analytics, but a more graphic display which makes presenting to non-tech people much easier. Heat Maps shows you where your visitors clicked on your site, even if they aren’t links – which perhaps should be. Feng-gui, clickheat, clickdensity, and several WordPress plugins are some of the available free software apps, but for $8 p/month, you’ll get a more well-known and reliable service with CrazyEgg.

Online Surveys

Get your visitors to solve your problems! Send out concise and non-invasive questionnaires to your visitors. By asking well-thought out and open-ended questions to your visitors, you can attain a clearer understanding into what the needs of your visitors. Use their feedback to understand what they’re search for and what you need to do to maintain their focus whilst they’re visiting your site, improve your site, or even make additions to your product offering. SurveyMonkey is a popular online survey software and questionnaire tool that offers both a free and pro service.

Sharing is Caring

Give users the power to tell others about your site. By implementing a “tell-a-friend” system into your site, you allow visitors to easily share some information about something they like, or something they’d think their friends would like. A “share” button is the easiest and quickest way to get your word out there. TellaFriend is a free service to apply to any website, while a Sharing is Sexy bookmark can be added to any WordPress site; and at a click of a button, your visitor can Like your site via Facebook’s Like button.

Search & Alerts

With all the activity on blogs, forums, and social media networks, it’s hard to track what everyone is saying, and more importantly what they are saying about you! Google Alerts coupled with a good Reader is a great way to aggregate where your name is being featured, and who’s saying what about you, leaving you in a comfortable position to respond to any comments. Twitter Search is also useful to keep you up-to-speed with what’s happening in the Twittersphere.

Google Street View is a service linked to Google Maps and Google Earth that provides users with panoramic, photographic detail at street level. Areas in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Pretoria, Johannesburg and Durban were mapped out by stitching together millions of photographs taken by the Google Street View Trikes (vehicles), enabling users to view panoramic images of local streets in vivid detail, as if they were standing on the very street they were viewing. Users visiting www.remax.co.za can now see the ‘Street View’ of specific properties listed on the site.

A huge value-add to property consumers, this opens the doors to many ancillary benefits which are soon to be exploited, but most significantly, buyers are afforded an improved perspective on the properties in question, and sellers are better able to recoup the intrinsic value of appealing neighbourhoods, attractive houses and proximity to amenities such as educational institutions, shopping areas and police stations. Adrian Goslett, CEO of RE/MAX of Southern Africa says, “Each year an increased number of South Africans are searching online for property, so the implementation of Google Street View to our service is the natural progression.”

The benefits of Google Street View to clients are vast as they will no longer need to page through newspapers or drive around on Sundays, painstakingly searching for show houses.

Prior to the launch of Google Street View in South Africa, Google SA approached White Wall Web and RE/MAX as potential integration partners for Street View as a result of their long standing relationship building and innovating web-based technologies for the property industry. Google Street View subsequently became the ‘cherry on top’ for the newly launched www.remax.co.za website, which features address level map data as well.

Executive Director at White Wall Web, Noel Ross-Gillespie, states, “The incorporation of Google Street View into the RE/MAX of Southern Africa website is a big step in the right technological direction. While South Africa might be behind the rest of the developed world in some aspects, we’re also in a unique position in which we can take the best-of-breed technologies and fast-track our growth. We are pleased to have been able to assist RE/MAX in bringing the very latest technology to the forefront of the Real Estate industry.”

See it to believe it – visit the RE/MAX site and experience it first hand, or take a look at some of these randomly selected samples below:

http://remax.co.za/300148190/

http://remax.co.za/300176836/

http://remax.co.za/300207313/

http://remax.co.za/300229443/

http://remax.co.za/300267310/

Buildings are decorated, streets bannered, cars socked and flagged and many faces are soon to be painted, but online? That place which holds so much of our attention? Not so much.

It’s time to fix that… it’s time to Spread The Feva!

We’ve created the perfect way to fast-track the release of pent-up patriotism by introducing The Flag Tag. With very little effort, you too can proudly sport the online equivalent of mirror-socks!

With a 1-line addition to your site’s <head> tag (preferably with all your other JavaScript includes), one of a variety of flags can be added to your site. Visit www.flagtag.co.za now to show your true colours!

Right. Now that you’ve taken care of your online reputation, go out and buy some real stuff, take a deep breath and practice Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika – we’ve got a lot of excitement to prepare for!

(And just because this is interesting, we made a point of checking the correct orientation for a vertical flag. Doing our best to be on the ball!)

Without a doubt, the most noteworthy improvement to the site is the inclusion of address level data, which locates the listed properties on an actual map. This makes RE/MAX of Southern Africa the first agency within the South African Real Estate industry to provide this value-added technology. Previously, users could only view properties at a provincial level, which didn’t provide the user with sufficient knowledge of the area in which the property was situated. But with the newly implemented technology, users can see the exact street level address of the property for sale. Not only does this assist the user in accessing the property on sale, but it also allows them to view other available properties in the surrounding areas with greater ease.

Other significant enhancements include:

Improved usability and interface design

At first glance, you’ll notice that the new website interface features cleaner design aesthetics and improved search functionality (with new categorised search functions). This was done to improve the usability experience, cutting user search times down to the bare minimum.

Cleaner code

Another improvement is the reduced dependence on JavaScript, which ensures more pages will be indexed, leading to improved SEO, and ultimately, greater accessibility via search engines, as search engines significantly favour pages with faster loading times.

Social media integration

New additions include the incorporation of the RE/MAX social networking channels, such as Facebook, twitter, the RE/MAX YouTube brand channel, and blogs for both the CEO and Chairman of RE/MAX.

A few more features are also in the pipleline, some of which will be BIG news in the online property industry.

Take a look at the site at www.remax.co.za and let us know what you think.