Mobile applications (Apps) have been a necessity amongst large business for the past few years. However, this has changed for the better, and now smaller companies are getting a chance to have their own mobile apps. Not only can these apps help promote the company, but help them profit as well. Below, are 10 reasons you should consider making an app for your business.

Helps You Market Directly
Obviously enough, mobile applications offer customers a variety of information on the business. Creating an app can offer your customers information about your locations, products, services, and staff. This can come in the form of product specifications, news feeds, prices, promotions, etc. With an app, you can help your company market more directly to your target audience, which could put you over your competitors.

Offers More Value to Your Customers
If you have a loyalty program or any customer reward-based program, you should consider making it openly available to use on a mobile app. In fact, transitioning a physical rewards card to a digital one in an app can improve the odds of your customers actually using it.
It’s no surprise that people are growing increasingly tied to their smartphones, so why not offer your customers rewards program or market products straight from the source? Plus, customers are far more interested invaluable services or products that they can view directly from their phones. After all, brick-and-mortar have been doing this tactic for years successfully. So, why can’t you? An app notification can be all your customers need to rush down to your store.

Smartphones are Used More Often Than PCs
In the United States alone, nearly every person spends two hours on their smartphone at the very least. Keeping in mind that there are billions of smartphones in the world, the odds are looking in your favor for mobile app development for your business. Plus, people actually end up spending more time on their phone than their PCs, so if you shift your marketing tactics to target smartphone users, it will pay off.
However, on your app, make sure that your logo, image, and name are all openly visible at all times. Since the average person can unlock their phones and start scrolling through news feeds in a matter of seconds, it’s important that your brand can be recognized easily. Besides that, you should also make your app easy to use, since the average smartphone user ranges from 10 to 70 years old.

Boosts Customer Engagement
It’s important to have a good point of contact for your business so a client can purchase a product or service they’re interested in investing in. If your company cannot easily be reached, you’re at risk of losing valuable customers. An app is the easiest way of forming a point of contact that can run 24/7. You can include a help area in your app where clients can post questions, complaints, comments, and place orders. Plus, if you respond quickly to requests, comments, and questions, your customer engagement will see a drastic boost.

Increase Brand Recognition
No matter if you’re looking to re-brand or improve your current brand, a mobile app is the single-handed best way to increase your company’s brand recognition. When you create a smartphone app for your business, you can attract audiences by integrating easy-to-use, likable features. However, you should always be looking for new ways for your clients to get involved on a regular basis. Generally speaking, the more your customers interact with your app, the more you can sell your product or service.
An advertising rule of thumb called effective frequency states that if your customers don’t see your brand more than 20 times, your company will be unnoticed. Keeping this in mind, make sure that you properly brand your app so your customers know exactly what company they’re buying from in order to effectively increase your brand recognition.

Surge Customer Loyalty
Ideally, you want to have return customers who purchase your products or services again and again. But, how often is that happening right now? By creating an app, you can seriously boost your customer loyalty. This is because it actively reminds your customers who you are and what you do. This is a subtle form of advertising that reaches your clients every time they look at their phone. People are inundated with advertising every day so it is hard to create a real relationship with your customers. With an app, your business is right at their fingertips at all times. This allows you to form a close connection with your customers in a genuine way.

Enhance Your Site
A lot of companies question whether or not they need an app because they have a functional mobile website. You should not think of the app as a copy of your site but rather a tool to enhance it. Websites are designed to attract new business, mobile applications are designed to increase customer loyalty. Your website is a great place to provide information to your clients and post new content. However, your app offers different advantages. It can handle a sufficient two-way communication and customer support. Plus, as mentioned above, it is always at the fingertips of your customers.

Give You a Competitive Edge
If you truly want to stand out from your competitors, your website is very important to your success.  However, you need a mobile app. Since this marketing tool is still relatively new, you can set your business apart by jumping on the trend before it blows up. By the time your competitors realize how important having an app is, you will have already established yourself. It does not matter what industry you work in, having an app will give you more credibility over your peers.

By building an app for your company, you can improve everything from your marketing, communication, customer loyalty, and customer happiness. An app puts your business, products, and services right at the push of a button for all of your customers. Plus, they are fast and easy to use. Why contact BrixTec Web Solutions or request a free quote about an app for your business or new idea?

Business owners seeking to get their business online or give their existing website a dynamic makeover, should have WordPress at the top of their to-do list. A WordPress Business Website is the ideal blend of intuitive content management and beautiful presentation. It’s no accident that WordPress is used by millions of businesses and entrepreneurs world-wide. Originally created to be a professional-looking, well-structured publishing system, it’s evolved since 2003 into a powerful, scalable, content management system (CMS) that can handle everything from a simple wedding photo site to enormous corporate ecommerce sites that can manage thousands of transactions per hour.

10 Advantages of Having a WordPress Business Website

It’s easy to use

BrixTec Web Solutions Project - a WordPress Business Website - Babevidaa WordPress business website is easy to navigate no matter the experience level of the user. Blog posts, pages, products, images, and more can all be added and edited quickly. With its intuitive user interface, all the website’s content can be made to look very professional without having knowledge of HTML or CSS.

A WordPress Bushiness website can be managed from anywhere

Since WordPress is browser-based, it can be accessed from any computer or device that has an internet connection anywhere in the world. For small businesses with team members who have several jobs, such convenience is a real bonus. The site can be easily managed while traveling, between meetings, or even on vacation.

No additional software is required to use WordPress

BrixTec Web Solutions Project - a WordPress Business Website - Bay Area AdvisorsBecause a WordPress business website is an all-in-one solution, users won’t need HTML editing software (like Adobe Dreamweaver) or FTP clients (like SmartFTP) that are often necessities for traditional website management. Users can create and edit blog posts and pages, formatting the text like a professional, using the on-board WordPress editor. One can easily upload images (and edit them), video and music files, documents, image galleries, and more because WordPress also has its own file managing system. Considering the cost of software purchases or subscriptions, a business using WordPress saves money with this convenient feature.

Website design has never been so easy

The appearance of a WordPress business website is completely customizable. WordPress offers literally thousands of themes, many of them free. If the user desires something truly unique, child themes can easily be created and installed to give them the exact site they envision. If the business wants to change the look of the entire site for a special promotion or for seasonal products and services, they can do so in minutes.

WordPress offers thousands of plugins to extend website functionality

BrixTec Web Solutions Project - a WordPress Business Website - Shimberg HomesWordPress provides its users with the ability to add practically any functionality they wish to their site without knowledge of programming. Thousands of plugins are offered free on WordPress.org and thousands more are sold at minimal cost from many reputable contributors and coders from around the world. Everything from simple social media and newsletter functions to converting a site into a powerful ecommerce store can be accomplished with WordPress plugins. Not only do businesses have the advantage of handling some web development tasks themselves, they save money. With a WordPress business website, there are plenty of functions that can be handled by a one-time plugin purchase as opposed to paying a monthly subscription to a third party for the same service.

It has the best blog on-board and ready to use

WordPress is, at heart, a blogging platform and its capabilities are built-in for easy use. Users can add RSS feeds, email subscriptions, social media sharing, and more. The blog offers users an easy way to include an archive of past posts, meta tags, latest posts and comments, along with the ability to comment if desired. In addition to being an asset to search engine optimization (SEO) if used correctly, a blog provides businesses with an easy way to keep their website fresh with a continual stream of content that has real value for its consumers.

WordPress is suitable for websites of all sizes

BrixTec Web Solutions Project - a WordPress Business Website - Cause To FundWordPress is not only powerful and feature-rich, but it’s completely scalable. In its most basic form, WordPress is the perfect venue for a recipe blog or an informational site for an art exhibit. However, WordPress can also be expanded to meet the needs of huge businesses and corporations. The ability to provide a website that can grow along with the business it serves is not only convenient but can save money for businesses that outgrow their sites and end up having to start over.

WordPress and search engines play nicely together

The code used for WordPress is simple and clean, making it incredibly easy for search engines to scan and index the site’s content. Since WordPress business websites are often updated frequently and are structured so well, their sites achieve rankings in the leading search engines, like Google, before traditional web sites do. Every page, post, and image can have meta tags, titles, descriptions, and can be optimized for specific keywords, a great benefit for those wanting to use SEO marketing strategies.

WordPress comes with its own community of experts

WordPress is supported by a talented community of designers, developers, and enthusiasts who are ready to help new users when needed. There are also countless how-to guides, tutorials, forums, and other information available on the internet to help users on most any WordPress issue. For a more personable and live experience, call BrixTec Web Solutions at 813.421.9352

WordPress offers users control over their site

Users have control over nearly every aspect of their websites and can easily make simple updates, even handle some aspects of website design and website development themselves.

For those interested in a WordPress business website site for their new business or their existing website, the team of experts at BrixTec Solutions can help. With over 14 years of experience in website development, we help clients design and develop the WordPress site their business needs to meet and exceed customer expectations and stand above the competition. We would be happy to answer any questions and offer solutions to any problems along the way. Businesses ready attain the power and convenience of WordPress can Request a FREE QUOTE, or contact BrixTec Solutions today!

We are proud to announce the launch of our new website.  We have updated our design and content to provide more information on the services we provide and to allow a more intuitive navigation of our website. While we still provide the high quality services you’ve come to expect from BrixTec Web Solutions in the areas of Web Design, Mobile applications development and ecommerce solutions, we feel the the new website conveys that message in a cleaner, more concise, and easier to read way.

Apart form the website’s redesign, you would notice that BrixTec Web Solutions is now sporting a new logo which we feel more accurately represents our company and the services we provide.

Please do take some time to explore how we can help you in the areas of ERP Customization Solutions.  While we have been providing this service since 2007, it was not adequately represented on our website before.  We look forward to helping you with your next ERP customization project.

We hope you enjoy the new website as much as we enjoyed creating it.  Please check back often as we will constantly refine the content and services details as well as post informative and interesting articles that is important you.

As always, should you have a question, or simply wish to learn more about how we can help you, please contact us.

Thank you

Rolland Lucas – Managing Partner

The decision to develop and launch a website should be as important as deciding what products or services you should offer. With so many development companies offering to create the very best website for your business, the decision can be daunting. Even more confusing are the many options available for the types of website you can create.  Whichever company or technology you finally go with, one decision you should make is to include a CMS as part of your website.

Not all web companies explain sufficiently the pros and cons of the various CMS technologies and platformsimgAnalysis available to their clients. Further, not all business owners even understand what a CMS is or why they should care.

Traditionally, websites were typically created manually as collections of static HTML pages.  These pages were uploaded, stored, and served to the public exactly as they were originally created unless manually updated or modified by the developer.  Any changes to the website would require a skilled web master or developer to make even the most minute text changes.  The solution to this type of website management is the CMS (Content Management Systems).

A Content Management System, more commonly referred to as CMS, is by definition is a computer, or web based system that allows the creation, editing, publishing, and general maintenance of your website or web application. This usually consists of a collection of processes and work flow procedures that are used in a systematic yet mainly intuitive way to get the desired end result for your web pages. In its most useful implementation, your website’s CMS should not require the involvement of a professional website developer or even someone with coding experience once it has been implemented and launched. If the user is familiar with Microsoft Word or any other standard word processor, they are more than qualified to maintain their own CMS powered website.

BWS - CMS Data StructuresIn addition to deciding on a CMS, website owners must also think about the two main options available for Content Management Systems.  These are open source vs. proprietary systems. Open source solutions are developed by the public developer community. These systems are typically free and available for use by anyone. Proprietary systems are developed by companies and are typically licensed for use.  A third option is the 100% custom developed CMS.  This is sometimes necessary because of specific requirements that neither existing open source nor proprietary CMS solutions can meet.

As far as websites are concerned, many open source options exist today that allow developers and designers to select the best one that will satisfy their client’s needs. Your development team should take security, scalability, and ease of implementation into consideration when making a decision.  The ability for developers other than the original creators of your website to continue development and improvement is also important.

The most popular open source Content Management Systems used today are:

ASP.NET Content Management systems

BWS - DotNetNuke-Logo DotNetNuke – The most popular and heavily supported .NET based CMS. This product has proven its worth and should be one of the first –if not first options when considering .NET based CMS options.
orchardlogo Orchard – Microsoft’s contribution to free open source software.  This is a rapidly growing option although many developers think it lacks some of the more common tools.
kentico-logo Kinetico – This CMS offers multiple licensing options. It focus is on content Management, E-Commerce, and social Networking making it an excellent option for websites that wishes to make full use of these options

 

PHP Content Management Systems

The PHP development community has the advantage of many more open source options. This is the platform that open source was born into, and a very active and passionate community ensures that it will be supported well into the future. The most trusted and popular of these are:

Joomla Joomla – This CMS can boast of being the most versatile and popular open source platform. With thousands of add-ons and ecommerce options, it the most popular choice for small and medium sized businesses. Companies like Ebay, Barnes & nobles, Ikea and many more trust this CMS for their flagship websites.
Wordpress WordPress – Although it begun as a primarily blog platform and remains the main blogging environment today, this CMS is fast becoming a top option for brochure websites, ecommerce, and interactive websites.
Drupal Drupal – Possibly the most powerful of the PHP open source platforms, Drupal is used to build anything from basic websites to very large and complex enterprise level applications.  As a tribute to how stable, secure and powerful this platform is, the whitehouse in 2009 redeveloped its website from the ground up with Drupal.

 

At BrixTec Web Solutions we start every project with detailed Business Analysis and requirements development.  An integral part of this planning includes the decision of which technology platform and CMS will be used to provide the very best outcome for that client and project. Whether open source, proprietary, or custom developed, we ensure that the solution is natural, flexible, and scalable.  We always encourage the more cost-effective route of starting with an established, proven CMS.  We consider our team to be experts in the development of outstanding DotNetNuke, Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress websites and web applications.

Contact Us, or call today for a  FREE QUOTE or a conversation on how we at BrixTec Web Solutions can help you create or update your company’s website with a proven Content Management System 813 421 9352.

We were very excited when we posted Joomla’s upgrade to 2.5 back in March 2012. Yet again, it is no secret that Joomla’s latest update to 3.0 back on September last year was huge for web developers and businesses needing a robust, stable, and competitive web presence.

Joomla! has shown a lot of change from the original1.0 to 1.5 to 2.5 and now 3.0. The new changes are revolutionary and the effects and benefits immediately experienced by admins and visitors alike. This is big news for Joomla users, and yet another reason for Joomla users to stick to this versatile open source CMS (content management system) platform.

This release is important for users that need access to the new features. However, most users may not want to update from their existing 2.5 versions websites to the latest 3.0, and users creating new sites can use either version 2.5 or 3.0 depending on their needs. Joomla will provide updates for 3.0.x versions until the next major update to 3.5 as with its latest 3.0.2 security update back in November of 2013.

So what does this latest installment of Joomla mean for businesses and Web Developers? End users will be interested in the following important changes and features:

MOBILE R3ADY — Joomla! takes a big leap into the mobile space with a total overhaul of both its frontend design and administrator interface. With the adoption of the Bootstrap framework, Joomla! has become the first major CMS to be mobile ready in both the visitors and administrator areas. Now every website can have mobile friendly content for visitors and mobile friendly tools for administrators.

 

US3R Friendly — Joomla administration has a brand new look and feel, built with the power of Bootstrap responsive framework, along with a touch of the awesome UI/UX work of the Joomla JUX team. Joomla comes ready to go and fully responsive for mobile devices, tablets, and normal computer screens. The entire backend of Joomla has a brand new look and feel that will improve your workflow with any type of device.

 

IMPROVED DEVELOPERS TOOLS — Spend less time coding and building interfaces with Joomla 3. The Joomla User Interface (JUI) library gives you a standardized backend & frontend interface.   This means that for businesses, developers can turn out website quicker, with more features, and meeting customer needs even easier with the improved tools and libraries.

EVEN MORE…

Other great improvements that are included with 3.0 are:

  • Extensive work on code style standardization and consistency
  • Incorporation of Twitter Bootstrap
  • A new responsive administrator template Isis and interface.
  • A new frontend template Protostar built using Bootstrap
  • PostgreSQL Driver. You will be able to run Joomla 3.0 sites using the PostgreSQL database.
  • Installation of language packages directly from the extension manager
  • Guest user group present by default
  • Saving blank articles allowed
  • New administrator statistics module
  • Update TinyMCE to version 3.5.6
  • Continued clean-up of older unused code, files and database fields and tables and improved standardization of tables.
  • Improvements to Smart Search
  • Unit testing in the CMS
  • Blank articles can be saved
  • Totally new administrator statistics module
  • Menu module consists a custom active menu item
  • Updated system tests in the CMS

Joomla! has created a whole new world with 3.0 by improving almost every aspect of this very powerful CMS. Changes, including brand new look and feel along with many features under the hood, makes this the CMS still favored by BrixTec Web Solutions.

Contact Us or call today for a  FREE QUOTE or a conversation on how we can help you create or update your company’s website

813 421 9352

Custom website design powered by Joomla has been a main specialty of BrixTec Web Solutions for many years.  Joomla! is a popular, powerful CMS (Content Management System) that allows you the customer to have a website that is highly dynamic, intuitive, and attractive.  In addition, Joomla allows your website to be  Google friendly and easily updated, by you or your webmaster without the need for further costly web development services. With all our Joomla developed websites, we offer basic training specific to what you need to know to effectively maintain and update your website.

Joomla is open source and completely secure with the right configuration and implementation carried out by experts such as your BrixTec Web Solutions development team.  There are many third party modules available to select from that will best suit your website needs; from custom data presentation to eCommerce implementations that do not break the bank and requires only a one-time setup.

One very powerful module available to Joomla powered websites is the addition of a mobile website version that allows the proper and simplified presentation of your website on multiple devices such as iPhones, iPads, Androids, and other popular mobile phones and tablets.  This is very important as the mobile market is rapidly becoming a preferred way for busy, working customers to surf the Internet and make quick decisions.

BrixTec Web Solutions have also successfully converted many dated, static, and unattractive websites to modern, dynamic, effective websites powered by Joomla!  We strongly recommend that you do not simply update your company’s website to a new design, but rather take the opportunity to make your website dynamic and prepared for easy future updates and modifications. We can create your Joomla website using a pre-developed template tweaked to match your company and style, or we can create a very custom look-and-feel for you that exactly matches and maintains the consistency of your company’s marketing efforts.

With the release of Joomla 2.5, we at BrixTec Web Solutions have been busy taking advantage of all the useful and exciting features this landmark update has to offer.  This latest update of the most popular CMS (Content Management System) for websites in the world boasts the following among other exciting new features:

  • Easy Website Updates – This simplifies website management and the management of updates for website Administrators.  this major enhancement eliminates the need to manually transfer and replace files on the server, thus converting a time-consuming, error-prone process into a seamless, effective, and time-saving experience.
  • Smart search – This new functionality offers a faster, more user-friendly search experience for your visitors.  It features natural language with auto-completion which allows your visitors to find the relevant content quickly and intuitively.Designed for versatility and speed, this native Joomla! component + plugins set gives you one-click automated indexing of all content items, categories, weblinks, contacts, newsfeeds, etc. It offers a large array of configurable options, including result description length, url length, and date filters.
  • Multi-Database Support – This is a brand new feature that makes it possible to run your Joomla! CMS on many different databases not just MySQL.  This allows different drivers to be written.  already many drivers exists that support MySQL and MS SQL databases, with postgreSQL, Oracle, SQLite, and PDO drivers almost ready for integration.

Contact Us or call today for a  FREE QUOTE on how we at BrixTec Web Solutions can help you create or update your company’s website to a Joomla Powered Website 813 421 9352.

BrixTec Web Solutions has recently streamlined its Search Engine Optimization services to offer a comprehensive suite of SEO packages.  Our offerings now include four main packages.  These are:

  • Silver Package
  • Gold Package
  • Platinum Package
  • Platinum Plus Package

In addition to the unique benefits of each package, all packages offered by our SEO team include the following basic services:

  • Onsite SEO Review and Completion, or collaboration with webmaster
  • Submission to 500 Alexa type marketing information websites
  • Submission of RSS Feed to 60 major RSS aggregator sites
  • Continuous Back-link building and Social Bookmarking

Each package offered by our SEO team can be customized for the particular website and audience based on desired results by our clients.  We encourage our clients that have completed their website development or need to get their older website some attention on search engines to give us a call and see what we con do for your website and your business.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a critical part of marketing your website online.  The main purpose of SEO is to improve the visibility of your website or a particular web page in search engines such as Google in the natural or organic search results.

As an Internet Marketing Strategy, our SEO team considers how Search Engines such as Google work, what people looking for your products or services search for, actual terms typed into the search engines, and which search engines people prefer to use.

Our optimization techniques may involve editing content and coding on our website to increase its relevance and the removal barriers that may prevent proper indexing by the search engines.  We also actively and consistently promote your website to increase the number of inbound links to your website pages.

How Important is SEO?

Once we at BrixTec Web Solutions have created your beautiful and easy to use website, you want your website to be found online.  With your competition offering the same or very similar products or services as yourself, this is no longer something that can be left up to a natural process.  It has become necessary for every business with an internet presence to actively promote their website or websites.  Only with dedicated Search Engine Optimization as (SEO), can you significantly increase your chances of being found on the web.

How Can We Help You?

Utilizing our SEO services is a decision that can maximize your Return on Investment (ROI) of both your website and the SEO process itself.   BrixTec Web Solutions offers various packages that can be customized to suit your specific website, product, and services and takes your competition into consideration to significantly help you realize this return.

Contact Us or call for a conversation or FREE QUOTE on how we at BrixTec Web Solutions can help you with our Search Engine Optimization Solutions 813 421 9352.