Author: development

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How does Salesforce’s acquisition of ExactTarget affect marketers?

posted by Development

I found it quite fitting that I found out the news about Salesforce acquiring ExactTarget through a mass email message sent to my inbox via ExactTarget’s Scott Dorsey.

thunder::tech has been a partner with ExactTarget for quite some time, now and we have seen a lot of movement by ExactTarget since it filed its IPO last year. I attended ExactTarget’s Connections conference last year, and it was amazing to see the acquisitions and partnerships occurring around that time as well.

Last year, there were purchases of Pardot and iGoDigital which brought even more CMS, automation and analytics to ExactTarget’s offerings. All of the moves made sense and had some ripple to them in terms of value in solutions we could then configure and extend to our clients.

This is a tidal wave.
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Welcome to the thunder::tech Mobile Testing Lab

posted by Development

If you've been to our office recently, you’ve probably seen our Mobile Testing Lab. We tell everyone about it; clients, partners, students, interviewees, journalists. We really like to talk about it. And we should, it’s really amazing.

We like to show it off
But that's not why we built it. I mean, that’s partially why we built it; we wanted to be able to talk about it. We said it would help show people that we are committed to this whole mobile thing. We said when we pitch a new responsive website or an amazing new mobile app that it would show clients that we knew what we were talking about. We said that it would get people talking. We never thought people would actually use is as much as they do.

It really wasn't that hard
Building a mobile testing lab really sounds like a lot of work.

• You have to come up with a plan. Sketches help.
• You have to convince a lot of people.
• You have to build it.
• You have to run electrical lines. This is dangerous stuff.

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SXSW Quick Takes :: Justin

posted by Development

Members of the thunder::tech team attended the South by Southwest (SXSW) interactive conference in Austin, Texas last week! The five-day festival included panel discussions by some of tech’s best minds, incredible networking, big-brand parties, music and general shenanigans. We had to find a way to bring our experiences back with us, so we challenged each team member who got the chance to go to Austin to give us a quick take and grab some pics.

Catch up if you missed our introductory post and Andrea's Quick Take. Now here's Quick Take #2 from our manager of user experience development, Justin Smith.

Justin’s SXSW Quick Takes:

• We preordered a Leap Motion! Can't wait to start working with an entirely new form of interactivity. Look, no hands!

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Is Responsive Design Bad for SEO?: Part 2

posted by Development

During the past couple days, an article has been circling around the thunder::tech office. This article, When Responsive Web Design is Bad for SEO by Bryson Meunier, has also caused a lot of discussion in the Web community. Here is the second installment of our response to the author’s final three points as to why people should favor optimization practices over responsive design. Read the first installment here.

3.) "When Responsive Layout Increases Load Time Significantly," stop everything and re-examine the entire site.

You'll find that the wrong stakeholders are making the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons. The amount of code to add responsive capabilities to a site is nominal at worst, but more often miniscule. A well-made responsive site can be a tiny fraction of the size of a somewhat-well-made mobile-only or desktop-only site with the same features.
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Is Responsive Design Bad for SEO?: Part 1

posted by Development

During the past couple days, an article has been circling around the thunder::tech office. This article, When Responsive Web Design is Bad for SEO by Bryson Meunier, has also caused a lot of discussion in the Web community. We at thunder::tech have been strong proponents for responsive Web design and found issue with some of Meunier’s points. Our User Experience team decided to respond to each of the five factors the author says to choose optimization practices over responsive design. This first installment includes the first two points:

1.) "When Desktop Website Does Not Contain Categories Mobile Searchers Are Looking For," the content is at fault.

The following quote from Adam Audette and George Michie is the underlying assumption here: "Mobile websites: Responsive design helps, but smartphone users have fundamentally different needs and only a site designed to meet those unique needs will produce the best outcome for the user and for the business," This assumption isn't always going to be wrong, but it's still jumping to a conclusion that's likely to disrupt the user experience rather than support it. The needs of desktop users can be time-and-location-specific and the needs of mobile users can be neither; they're just less likely to be so.

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