Technology

How To Find A Software Development Company

When there are so many options available, it’s clear why business owners are constantly asking the question, “How do I find a software development company?” There are over 500,000 software development agencies in the United States today, so we know choosing the right one can feel like a daunting choice.

Luckily, there’s a simple process to discovering the best software services company in your area. Read on if you want to streamline your search process and experience the best results!

Start With The Basics

When you’re searching for a software services company, you should start with some simple research strategies to get a sense of what companies are out there.

You can conduct a simple Google search, talk to friends and colleagues, or browse through social media to get an initial impression of the software development agencies available to you.

Ask Your Friends and Colleagues

If you’re part of a bustling network of peers in your industry or field, then you already have a head start.

You could ask similar businesses for advice. That way, you’ll be pointed towards software developers that cater to businesses like yours.

If you don’t know anyone who could give you a personal recommendation, you can always check out Facebook and LinkedIn Groups for business owners. There is bound to be another business owner like you who already asked, “how do I find the best software development company for me?”

Then, you can browse the comments on the post. You’ll find tons of recommendations waiting for you!

Search on Google

Another great first step to finding the best software service provider for your business needs is by opening your laptop and pulling up a new Google search tab. Simply put “software development company near me,” into the search bar and see what pops up.

Which software developers come up at the top of the search results? These are often the most popular options in your parameters and can help you select the perfect fit.

You can make a list of the first fifteen software development agencies listed in the results of your Google search. Later, you can dig deeper into each company’s services to find software that best fits your needs. By then, it’ll be easier to narrow down the kinds of services you’re looking for and what you want in a company.

Dig Into Company Profiles

Once you’ve finished creating your list of top companies in your area from a quick Google search, you can dig a little deeper into what these companies are all about.

Visit each developer’s website and look for their “Our Work” or “Services” page to see what they can do for you.

Ask yourself, “what types of businesses do they work with?” and “what services do they provide?” If they’ve worked with businesses like yours in the past, or offer the services you’re looking for, then you’ve found a fantastic candidate!

Find Software Developers on Social Media

Looking through a software development service provider’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter profiles will help you gain an even better understanding of the services they provide, the company’s culture, and the businesses they’ve worked within the past.

You’ll have access to social media posts created by the company that displays their past work and how they’ve helped businesses thrive.

Not only that, but you’ll get a sense of the company’s mission and values. For example, if you’re looking for a software services company created by women, you’ll be able to find out by perusing their social media platforms.

What’s the Best Development Approach?

Now it’s time to consider what the best development approach is for your business. Then, you need to make sure you find a software services company that stands by it.

There are many different techniques for software development project management, and each one is optimized for separate sets of business needs. That’s why it’s so important to do your research!

For example, if your business is in need of a low-cost software solution to create a clearly defined business objective, you could find a software development service provider that follows the Rapid Application Development (RAD) methodology.

If you’re looking for a collaborative experience and incremental progress markers, with an overall focus on risk-reduction, you’ll want to find a software services company that follows the Agile Development methodology.

What’s In Their Tech Stack?

When you work with a software development service provider, you want to make sure they’re working with top-notch tools and tech.

You need to consider the tech stack a company uses to develop software. A tech stack is essentially the developer’s set of tools to build applications and software. They are essential for creating websites and mobile apps. There are two kinds of stacks: front end and back end.

Front-end tech stack like HTML and CSS, which manages how a client interacts with the application.

Back end tech stack helps the owner of the application manage the software. This is the part that users cannot see. Examples include servers, frameworks, and databases.

You will need to make sure that the software services company you work with has an impressive tech stack to help your software run smoothly, remain secure, and display stellar design.

How To Find A Software Development Company

How Are Projects Managed?

It is important to have access to an open stream of communication with your software development team.

You can contact a software development services company that fits the criteria for everything you’re looking for and ask them what project management software they use to collaborate, complete projects, and communicate.

Many companies use separate tools for each of these various purposes. This is great because that makes the project completion process much more streamlined.

You may notice some software development agencies are willing to grant you access to their project management platforms while others are not. It’s a good sign when the developers give you access to some of their management sites because it provides you with the opportunity to present your wants and needs.

Do Their Designs Impress You?

Go back to the “Our Work” page on the software development companies’ websites. Scroll through the projects they worked on for other clients.

This is an important step because different developers specialize in different design techniques and styles. Working with an outstanding software services company that checks all the boxes but doesn’t design to your business’ taste can be detrimental.

You may consider conversing with the design team at a few software development agencies before you hire them. That way, you know for sure that you are on the same page with your software design goals.

Find a Perfect Balance

Finally, you will need to ask yourself, “How do I find a software development company near me that mastered the balance between being a resourceful institution and providing me with the personalization of a small business?”

That perfect balance may seem hard to find, but there are ample expert software development agencies with this skill set.

Searching for information about the company’s relational skills can be tricky. However, one great tip is to look at their online reviews. You can often find details on a company’s collaborative skills based on the ways they worked with past clients.

After you complete this step, you probably have enough information to make a decision. Which software development services provider is best suited for you?

Express Your Interest

Now that you’ve finally made your decision, you know which software development agencies to reach out to. Thankfully, you’re prepared, because you followed all of the steps laid out above.

When you reach out to express your interest, you need to be open and honest with your expectations for your project’s scope and budget.

Let Them Know What You Need

Give the company a detailed list of your expectations for the project right from the start. Make sure they know exactly what you’re looking for. How big is the project going to be? What design features are you interested in? What is your estimated budget?

When you tell the developers precisely how you want your software to look and feel, they will get a better understanding of whether or not the project is a right fit for them. This way, there is less potential for disruptions or conflict later on in the process.

Know Your Budget Ahead of Time

You must make sure you go into your search for a software development service provider with a clear budget in mind.

A clear budget means you can figure out which companies offer services in your price range. It will also help you get a better sense of what to expect from the software you invest in.

It’s extremely important to avoid inexpensive offers. Inexpensive development often means that the firm you’re working with doesn’t have an advanced set of tools and resources at their disposal, and the final product of your software will show it.

How To Find A Software Development Company?

You can stop Googling, “how do I find a software developing company.”

Now you know what to do each step of the way. Start with some basic research, learn about the company’s resources, and communicate your needs from the very beginning.

To learn more about software development, contact us at Neural Experience today!

Technology

Is Neuromarketing Based on Actual Science?

During your marketing research, you may have come across something called “neuromarketing” and you may be wondering how it could help your company?

Neuromarketing as a science emerged in 2002, and it has changed the marketing landscape. Company management now looks at advertising in a completely different way. For example, Coca-Cola has such faith in this method that they even built an in-house lab to carry out research.

 

If marketing giants like Coca-Cola and Ford are investing in neuromarketing, it shows there is very likely a huge benefit.

Advancements in neuroscience and marketing research can transform every aspect of a business. For example, companies are able to access incredible new advancements in neuroscience and use them to build better their brand experience.

In fact, many multinational corporations already use neuromarketing in their campaigns. But is it affordable or practical for your business?

The answer is a resounding yes. In this article, you’ll learn why major brands use neuroscience. You’ll also find out how it can help any business communicate more effectively with customers.

Read on to find out all you need to know about this remarkable marketing advancement.

What Is Neuromarketing?

Neuromarketing involves examining how the brain reacts to certain stimuli. These stimuli could be colors, images, text size, sounds, and other aspects that can evoke a behavioral response. 

In order to measure brain activity, researchers can use advanced medical technologies–these include functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and eye-tracking technology, and research psychology, and research in behavior science (to name a few).

These devices can identify which parts of the brain react to specific stimuli. They can then deduce why people make decisions and which part of the brain is telling them to take that option.

The benefits of neuroscience have been clear for many years in the health and scientific fields. But now, marketing researchers are tapping into this powerful approach. 

Is Neuromarketing a Legitimate Science?

The marketing industry contains plenty of questionable information. Therefore, it is natural to ask, ‘is neuromarketing a science?’. Fortunately, there have been many research studies that confirm this is a legitimate technique. For example, this study found some unexpected results.

While people rated video segments to be more engaging than audio, this was not how their brains reacted. These findings do not mean respondents were being dishonest. Instead, it seems they experienced a different thought process to their biological response.

This is a fascinating area that could have a huge effect on marketing strategies.

In addition, this study identified that negative framing could attract more attention. But it can also make decision-making more difficult. Therefore, even though this framing type may bring more visitors to your website, it is unlikely to result in more actual sales.

Many businesses and SEO companies focus mainly on getting website visitors, but this research suggests that that can be a rather ineffective use of their advertising budget.

How Neuromarketing Is Changing Modern Marketing

The above insights are two examples that provide marketers with information they could not previously gather. In the past, the best way to gauge people’s reactions to marketing strategies was to ask customers for their responses. 

Using focus groups and questionnaires were popular methods. But, these were not scientific and had crucial flaws. For example, participants would not want to offend a marketer by saying they did not like their ideas.

By analyzing brain activity, companies can now use science to accurately pre-plan their advertising campaigns. Although the results are tested in a lab, the results can apply to the real world.

Neuromarketing: The new science of consumer decisions | Terry Wu | TEDxBlaine

Uses of Commercial Neuromarketing

There are virtually unlimited uses for neuromarketing across every industry. For example, businesses are now focusing more on online digital marketing. In this scenario, neuromarketing could help with website development. 

You may believe you can choose the colors, fonts, and designs that will appeal to a wide range of customers. You could also employ a standard marketing company to help you with this aspect. 

But, how do you really know you’ve made the right decisions? Websites cost a considerable amount of money to design and maintain, so getting it wrong could be disastrous for your bottom line.

 

How Neuromarketers Use Data

Rather than asking for subjective options, you can use neuromarketing to ensure you make the most effective choices when trying to maximize meaningful engagement with your customer. You can see how participants’ brains react to various factors and amend these elements to be more effective in helping them.

Many companies with a physical storefront often use smells to draw people into their shop. But, what if the scents you choose actually have a negative effect on a lot of customers.  They may not even be aware of this because it is in their subconscious. However, the end result is that they avoid your store and go to a competitor. 

But, with neuromarketing, you can get a deeper insight into customers’ reactions to each stimulus in your store. This data can then guide your marketing strategy so you can enjoy a better return on your advertising investment.

Some of the biggest companies in the world already know the value of neuromarketing and invest time and resources in it to grow their business.

 

How a Neuromarketing Agency Can Help

Modern marketing focuses on concepts such as search engine optimization (SEO), social media, and Google Ads. You also need to have a firm understanding of your target market.

A professional neuromarketing agency can carry out studies using advanced techniques. They can then advise on exactly what receives the most positive responses. 

They can also help you amend your current strategies to become more effective. This means you can get ahead of your competitors even when you are spending less money.

 

Contact Us (NX) to Learn More About Our Neuromarketing Strategies

We (Neural Experience) is a neuromarketing agency that integrates neuroscience into their digital marketing, branding and positioning, software development, project management, and web design services. We use scientific research and integrate similar user behavior science principals used by Silicon valley (Facebook, Instagram, Google and others) to help companies truly engage with their customer and create a more meaningful and human-oriented interaction with the actual person behind the screen. A far cry from the outmoded advertising and UX techniques that are ubiquitous today.  

To learn more about NX or get a free consultation and a free quote, contact our professional team today.

Technology Web Development

5 Ways to Make Your Website Load Faster (And How to Measure It)

 Website speed is the crème de la crème of site optimization.

Make no mistake, the visuals and content on your website also play an integral role in making your site that much more attractive to visitors, but if your website takes forever to load, those elements will have served no purpose.

However, when you think about it, those very elements may be the reason why your website is taking more than the golden 3 seconds to load. Should this be the case, you may be losing visitors and you’re certainly decreasing the experience of the visitors your website does receive.

If you recall, I wrote about the relationship between website speed and user experience at the beginning of 2018. This article will be an extension of that post, offering 5 tips for optimizing your website’s load speed.

Before I get into 5 ways to make your website load faster, let’s look at a few of the straightforward benefits of having a fast website (less than 10-second load time):

  • Better user experience (my favorite, and perhaps the most important)
  • Higher search engine ranking (equally as important)
  • Increased conversion rates (this is usually the goal of every site owner)
  • Improved website performance (this is just all-around good)
  • No penalty from Google (if Google can be for you, who can be against you?)

So, how can you make your website load faster?

Great question. Below are five website speed optimization tips.

Optimize Your Images

There are fewer things that take more of a toll on website speed than images.

Which is why having the images on your website optimized correctly will be the difference between a fast site and one that has visitors waiting 10, 20 or even 30+ seconds for it to fully load – that is, if those visitors actually stick around.

That said, you need to take the proper steps to ensure all the images on your site are optimized. In other words, you’ll need to reduce their size as much as possible without compromising quality.

Here’s three ways you can optimize your website’s images:

  • Compress your images: You’ll find that some of your images may be carrying a few more kilobytes than they need. But no worries! Using a compression and resizing tool or software will help knock off those unnecessary kilobytes, without hindering the quality of your images.
  • Size your images properly: Take the time to make sure your images aren’t bigger than what they actually need to be. Using the right size (width and height) each time will ensure that there’s no extra weight.
  • Optimize the format of your images: Believe it or not, .jpg may not be the most optimal format for your website’s images. Play around with a few other types to see what provides you with the smallest file size (while maintaining quality) and use that on your site.

Optimize Your Website’s Code

Guess what.

Your code may be a culprit in your website’s slow load time.

Admittedly, understanding the relationship between website performance and website code is not a common goal for many website owners.

However, improper or less-than-optimized code keeps your website on the slow side by resulting in things like slow-rendering design and waiting for the site to make room for images (e.g., images) that don’t have space already allotted for them.

So, what’s the solution?

Well, that’s easy: optimize your code.

By fixing and optimizing your code, you’ll be able to remedy a handful of website response and performance issues that are contributing to your site’s slow load time.

Invest in a Dedicated Server

There’s no shortage of server options out there.

What there is a shortage of, however, is the ability to achieve optimal website speed when you’re hosting your site on a cheap (excuse me, “budget-friendly”) server with shared resources.

If decreasing your website’s load time is a serious goal for you, you’ll want to consider investing in a dedicated server for your site. As you’ve probably suspected, this option is more expensive than a shared server

But, when you think about it in terms of the business you could be losing based on slow load times, then the budget-friendly shared server you’re on may be costing you a lot more money than that $2.99 per month.

Host Larger Files Elsewhere

This is the age of media, so chances are you have a video or two plugged into your website. And that’s cool.

The only thing you need to be aware of is that larger files (like videos) will put strain on your website, thereby slowing it down to some degree.

If you do have larger files on your site, consider hosting them elsewhere to ensure the content isn’t too heavy for your site, causing you to lose in the long-run because your site’s load time will be horrible.

For instance, you can put your videos on external sites like Vimeo or YouTube.

Pay Attention and Test Regularly

I know what you’re thinking: “Well, duh. This isn’t really a tip.”

…oh, but it is.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen website owners take the one-and-done approach to website speed optimization.

Meaning they take all the steps to optimize their site, then test their website up until the point where it is at the load speed they want (usually 3 seconds or less). After that, they never test their site again.

Don’t be that website owner.

Speed optimization will require you to be consistently and intentionally paying attention to your site, and part of that effort will be regular speed testing.

Performing speed audits regularly means that if an increase does occur in your website speed, you can promptly address the issue.

How to Measure Your Website’s Load Speed

Okay, so you’ve implemented all of the tips above and are now ready to test your site’s load speed…where do you go?

There are hundreds, if not thousands of website speed tests out there, all of which use certain criteria (some similar, some unique) to test the speed of your website.

But, when it comes to website speed analysis, I keep it simple and recommend the tools within Google Analytics to all of my clients.

Google Analytics will provide you with a “site speed report” that gives you all the details about what content your website visitors are seeing and interacting with, total traffic over certain increments of time, and of course, load times among other things. All of the data yielded from Google Analytics will give you what you need to optimize your site’s load time.

If you’re just starting out with decreasing your website’s load time, start with these tips. Of course, there are plenty more things you can do to get your website speed down significantly, but you’ll find these tips to be effective in your journey to speed optimization.