The Benefits of a Website Built with Responsive Web Design

May 17, 2018

Responsive web design is a relatively new approach to web design that seeks to optimize the web browsing experience for multiple devices. With the rise of smartphone and tablet usage over the last decade, the importance of having a website that displays beautifully on any medium is not only an opportunity for increased revenue, but is crucial for surviving as a company over the next decade.

With responsive web design, as a screen size increases or decreases, images and text on a website scale to fit the to the user’s web browser, ensuring that the all web content is displayed in its best form. So whether you’re accessing the web via a smartphone, tablet, desktop computer and so on, responsive web design provides you with a seamless and fluid browsing experience.

Here are the top 5 advantages to having a website built with responsive web design:

CoreSolutions Devices with Responsive Web Design

1. Website and Web Application Adaptability

Responsive web design offers a browsing environment that can accommodate any mobile product, along with the traditional desktop computer. With respect to mobile devices, responsive web design provides a web browsing experience with minimal pinching and resizing, as web content almost naturally fits with the shape and size of the screen size. The bottom line is that responsive frameworks dynamically adjust to the device that is being used to access the web application.

In today’s global market, characterized by a variety of mobile options and with that varying mobile device screen sizes, having a website or web application that is mobile-friendly and provides the best overall user experience, is crucial to generating new revenue for your business. Since responsive web design functions to optimize web browsing from any browsing device, there is no need to build dedicated websites and web applications for each web browsing demographic. Rather, a solution built on responsive web design will effectively and efficiently handle both desktop and mobile web browsing.

1. Mobile Usability and a Lower Bounce Rate

With mobile web browsing set to overtake desktop web browsing in the not too distant future as the number 1 method for browsing the internet, it’s imperative that organizations upgrade their websites so that they’re mobile-friendly. Responsive web design is tailored for the mobile web browsing experience and as a result, will provide you with a lower bounce rate due to the ease-of-use navigating the internet on mobile devices. Compare this with the bounce rate for non-responsive web design based websites accessed via mobile devices and the difference is astounding. If your website is not optimized for this mobile web browsing demographic, then you risk increasing your bounce rate. By providing mobile users with a seamless and fluid browsing experience, responsive web design will keep visitors on your website for extended periods of time, thereby assisting in lowering your website bounce rate.

1. Long Term Savings on Development Costs

Although the upfront development hours and costs are greater, the long term return on investment for websites and web applications built on responsive web design is abundantly clear – you will save time and money by avoiding the cumbersome process of managing and updating a mobile version and a desktop version of the same application. With responsive web design, organizations can make updates in one location that will accommodate for both desktop and mobile web browsing experiences.

1. Maintain and Potentially Increase Google Rankings

On April 21st 2015, Google released its mobile-friendly algorithm update, also known as the “Google Mice Update” or “Mobilegeddon,”with the goal of increasing the visibility of mobile-friendly websites, while simultaneously, pushing mobile-friendly websites to the top of google search results from mobile devices. It’s abundantly clear that Google’s mandate in this update is to assist with shifting web-browsing into a mobile dominated world. With a mobile-friendly website, there’s also the opportunity to snag new mobile business from a competitor whose website is not up to mobile standards.

So what’s Google’s number one suggestion for adhering to this new mobile-friendly standard? It’s having a website built on responsive web design! Technically-speaking, on its own, complying with Google’s new mobile-friendly standard won’t directly increase your Google search rankings on mobile devices – on the contrary, it will allow you to maintain your position and you won’t be penalized – what will allow you to leap-frog the competition in mobile search results is being the first to take the jump to optimize your website or web application so that it’s mobile-friendly.

In addition, responsive web design will assist with increasing your SEO, as Google crawlers will only have to search one website for your information, as opposed to non-responsive web design web applications that force Google crawlers to search separate mobile and desktop websites to index content. This means that you can house and optimize all your metadata for SEO in one area, making life easy on Google crawlers, & as a result, organically driving traffic to your website.

1. Your Company Will Be Prepared for the Shift into the Mobile Dominated Web Browsing World

With mobile web browsing set to surpass desktop web browsing as the preferred way of surfing the internet, updating your website so that it’s mobile-friendly will not only assist your company in the present, but it will prepare you for the shift into a mobile web browsing dominated world. Responsive web design will put your company in a position where you are ready for this change in demographics.

Why Use Responsive Web Design?

In the end, it can be boiled down to one major organizational advantage: web applications and websites created using responsive web design will, if assembled correctly, save you time and money in the long run. You won’t have to maintain two separate websites for desktop and mobile, meaning that you will only be required to update one application. Your application will also be optimized for all browsing experiences and compliant with Google’s new mobile-friendly standard. And since your website will be mobile-friendly, there is the potential to increase your Google rankings on searches from mobile devices, along with the opportunity to improve your SEO.

Let CoreSolutions develop your next website or web application using responsive web design. With our extensive experience in software development, we’ll take your project from initial concept through to full implementation and beyond. Contact us today at 1-800-650-8882 to learn more about how CoreSolutions can make your next web development project a success!

Strategies to Overcoming Unconscious Bias in the Workplace

April 28, 2018

Unconscious bias is hitting the news. From Bay Street to Main Street to Starbucks the impact of unspoken bias is real and harmful to the workplace. Bias stands in the way of making correct decisions in hiring and promoting. It also has a vital impact on your staff and the workplace in general. Let’s explore how we can become aware of our own bias and stop it in the workplace?

First, let’s define it. “Unconscious bias refers to a bias that we are unaware of, and which happens outside of our control. It is a bias that happens automatically and is triggered by our brain making quick judgments and assessments of people and situations, influenced by our background, cultural environment and personal experiences.” (ECU: 2013 Unconscious bias in higher education)

We all have a bias. The question is, do we identify it and then what do we do about it? In addressing one of the most crucial training issues facing the workplace today, unconscious bias, employers can assist in creating an inclusive, civil and respectful workplace.

Research indicates that unconscious biases are prejudices we have, yet are uninformed of. They are “mental shortcuts based on social norms and stereotypes.” (Guynn, 2015). Biases can be based on skin colour, gender, age, height, weight, introversion versus extroversion, marital and parental status, disability status (for example, the use of a wheelchair or a cane), foreign accents, where someone went to college, and more (Wilkie, 2014). If you can name it, there is probably an unconscious bias for it.

Hence if we think we are unbiased, we may have unconscious adverse thoughts about people who are outside our own group. If we spend more time with people from other groups, we are less likely to feel prejudice against them.

This universal tendency toward unconscious bias exists because bias is rooted in our brain. Research shows that our brain has evolved to mentally put things together to make sense to us. The brain sorts all the information it is blasted with and labels that information with universal descriptions that it may rapidly access. When we categorize these labels as either good or bad, we tend to apply the rationale to the whole group. Many of the conclusions are taken from previous experiences and learnings.

In an article, “The Real Effects of Unconscious Bias in the Workplace”, a few of the known unconscious biases that directly impact the workplace include:

Affinity bias is the tendency to warm up to people like ourselves.
Halo effect is the tendency to think everything about a person is good because you like that person.
Perception bias which is the inclination to form stereotypes and assumptions about specific groups that make it awkward to make an objective judgement about members of those groups.
Confirmation bias is the openness for us to pursue evidence that sanctions our pre-existing beliefs or experiences.
Group think is a bias which occurs when people attempt to fit into a specific crowd by mirroring others or holding back opinions and views. This results in individuals losing part of their characteristics and causes workplaces to miss out on originality and creativity.

Horace McCormick’s research found more than 150 identified unconscious biases, making the task of rooting them out and addressing them daunting. For many organizations, however, identifying as many as possible and eliminating them has become a high priority.

You can address discrimination issues by increasing your awareness of your unconscious biases, and by developing strategies that make the most of the talents and abilities of your team members.

Unconscious behaviour is not just individual; it influences organizational culture as well. This explains why so often our best attempts at creating corporate culture change with diversity efforts seem to fall frustratingly short; to not deliver on the promise they intended.

What you can do:

Be aware consciously of your bias
Focus more on the people, on their strengths
Increase Exposure to Biases
Make small changes
Be pragmatic
Challenge stereotypes and counter-stereotypical information
Use context to explain a situation
Change your perception and relationship with out-group members
Be an active bystander
Improve processes, policies & procedures

Also, managers can play a crucial role in unearthing these hidden biases by declaring their intentions to be non-biased. They can also provide transparent performance appraisals that emphasis on the employee’s exceptional abilities and skills, and grow a stronger mindfulness of their own unconscious principles.

Leadership Development and Coaching Skills Workshops

Growing Coaching Skills

The Extraordinary Coach (1 Day Workshop)
Toronto – June 22, 2018

Leaders who coach and develop others have a huge impact on bottom-line results. In The Extraordinary Coach Workshop, you will develop the essential coaching skills that are required to be a great leader. In addition, you will learn what extraordinary coaches do well and how you can maximize your leadership impact and inspire others to perform at their peak.

Click here for full details:
The Extraordinary Coach Workshop

These are interactive, leadership learning, assessing, and planning experiences led by Jim Clemmer in:

Toronto – hosted by Workplace Safety and Prevention Services at the Centre for Health & Safety Innovation, Mississauga
- The Extraordinary Coach Workshop – June 22, 2018

See also The Extraordinary Leader (1 Day Workshop)
Toronto – June 21 2018

Discount Code: MUNIS1 for 1 day ($150) or MUNIS2 for 2 day ($250)

Leadership Development and Coaching Skills Workshops

Toronto – June 21 & 22, 2018

Building Leadership Strengths

The Extraordinary Leader (1 Day Workshop)
Toronto – June 21, 2018

The Extraordinary Leader process is being used extensively for individual leaders at all levels of an organization from senior executives to first-line supervisors. Customized in-house sessions are delivered to executive or management teams, other intact or cross-functional work teams, or to individuals gathered from different parts of an organization.

This is a uniquely powerful leadership development system using strengths-based leadership development, on a foundation of evidence-based approaches, producing a highly personalized development plan, that’s built around a best of class 360 multi-rater tool.

Ensure that your leaders are extraordinary — and drive extraordinary results. Register to attend one or more of these powerful coaching and leadership development workshops today!

Click here for full details:
The Extraordinary Leader Workshop

These are interactive, leadership learning, assessing, and planning experiences led by Jim Clemmer in:

Toronto – hosted by Workplace Safety and Prevention Services at the Centre for Health & Safety Innovation, Mississauga
- The Extraordinary Leader Workshop – June 21, 2018

See also The Extraordinary Coach (1 Day Workshop)
Toronto – June 22, 2018

Discount Code: MUNIS1 for 1 day ($150) or MUNIS2 for 2 day ($250)

Emotionally Intelligent Customer Service Training

Enhance your Customer Service with Emotional Intelligence

What keeps you going back to your local grocery store? Gas station? Clothing store? It is not all about pricing and convenience. It’s much more than that.

As an organization, you already understand that keeping loyal customers is more difficult than ever. The key to keeping your customers happy, is to make an emotional connection with them. Greet them warmly, being accessible, ask questions. Be knowledgeable, courteous and responsive when they enter your store or call you. The truth is, you only have 7-10 seconds to make a good first impression. If that individual does not feel valued, they don’t trust you or they don’t feel confident that you can help them, they may or may not make a purchase and they most likely will not be back.

In this interactive workshop, we will discuss:

What customer service means in relation to all your customers, both internal and external
How your attitude affects customer service
Identifying your customers’ needs
How to enhance the customer experience with emotional intelligence
How outstanding customer service can generate return business
Building good will through in-person customer service
Providing outstanding customer service over the phone
How to deal with difficult customers

When? Wednesday, June 27th, 2018

Location: Office Inc. – 54 Cedar Pointe Drive, Unit 1207 Barrie, Ontario L4N 5R7

Time: 9:30am – 4:30pm

Price: $97+HST >> Early Bird pricing in effect until April 30th!! After May 1st, price is $120+HST

Price includes: Workshop booklet, lunch, snacks and refreshments; free parking

Registration deadline is: Friday, June 22nd, 2018

Provided by Spark Your Vitality

Learn More and Register

Do you have more than one employee that you would like to attend this workshop? We’ve got your back! We are offering a special rate, so you can send multiple employees to attend this workshop.

Use promo code: BOGOCustServ

That’s right, register your first employee at full price, then save 35% on any additional registrations -no limit!

Candidates for Council

CANDIDATES FOR COUNCIL

Ever thought of running for public office?

An inspirational day of learning and networking for seasoned, prospective & school board trustee candidates to hear from a blend of municipal leaders and industry experts who will share their knowledge and expertise.

Join us for a unique learning opportunity to; gain valuable insight, hear top-drawer campaign strategies, and have exclusive access to useful tools and tips that will propel your 2018 municipal election campaign.

REGISTER TODAY! LIMITED SEATS

DATE: Saturday, May 5, 2018 TIME: 8am – 4:30pm

LOCATION: Riviera Events & Conference Centre, 2800 Hwy 7 Vaughan

Click Here to Download the Agenda

Free Webinar – Managing Complaints, Service Requests and Job Tracking

Digital Government for Smaller Municipalities

In this webinar we will look at digital government through the lens of complaints, service requests and job management processes by reviewing potential tools. We will define digital government by framing it around the real experiences of smaller municipalities

Digital Government does not need to start with citizen apps and a new website, the recommendation is to start from the inside: create a better process, provide tools with automation built-in to lessen the workload, ensure everyone is empowered to be a citizen service leader.

When you leave this webinar, you will have:

A better understanding of what digital government can look like for your municipality
A list of free and low-cost tools/systems that can help you as you work towards the implementation of digital government in your community
A strong understanding of the benefits of a better complaints and service request process

As part of the presentation everyone will receive a template for creating a citizen complaints policy document. The template takes about 15 minutes to fill and creates a professional, multi-page policy document to use as a reference for all staff which will also satisfy the requirements of the ombudsman’s offices at the provincial and federal levels.

Brad Pinch AccessE11 – Director of Municipal Needs

Organizer of Solutions: Digital Government for Smaller Municipalities

Visit our Website

Train in Technology – Career Expo

March 14, 2018

Technology is meshed into every industry in some shape or form and the current and future economy will only thrive if talent is well matched to local employment opportunities. Technology drives innovation and business growth, and is critical to the future of the region’s economy.

The Barrie/Simcoe County region has experienced an influx of data centres, an emergence of global technology firms, significant growth in the number of high-tech start-ups, and an expansion of our advanced manufacturing sector. Opportunities like the Train in Technology Career Expo will build the local talent pool to ensure we have the future workforce our employers need.

muniSERV is excited to be attending the Train in Technology Career Expo. We are also excited to be launching our new muniJOBS at this show!

muniJOBS is a new municipal career/job recruitment platform to help municipalities recruit tomorrow’s municipal leaders and for students/candidates to quickly and easily find municipal jobs. Drop by our Booth at the Expo to find out more about this unique new website.

We can’t wait to meet job seekers looking for municipal jobs!

This one day, not to miss, Expo is full of valuable sessions, technology industry networking and public career information. #TrainInTech Career Expo – March 27^th, 2018 from 3:00pm-7:00pm – Barrie Molson Centre. bit.ly/TrainInTech

Train in Technology

muniSERV is excited to be attending the Train in Technology Career Expo. We are also excited to be launching our new muniJOBS at this show!

We can’t wait to meet job seekers looking for municipal jobs!

This one day, not to miss, Expo is full of valuable sessions, technology industry networking and public career information. #TrainInTech Career Expo – March 27^th, 2018 from 3:00pm-7:00pm – Barrie Molson Centre. bit.ly/TrainInTech

The Cost of Not Making a Decision

February 15, 2018

There is a cost to not making a decision and here’s my story. I was once asked by a potential customer, “Who’s your biggest competitor?”

I thought to myself, was it a local consultant? Was it a specific technology? Could it be Salesforce or Access or even Excel spreadsheets? The answer I realized was none of the above.

The answer I went with was, “The company that does not make a decision and the customer who thinks the status quo is okay for now.” That’s my biggest competitor and the answer surprised the gentleman who asked the question. You see, I had been at his location over 2 years ago, chatting with this same individual about a potential project and in the end, no decision was made. Fast-forward over 730 days and we were still talking about the same project.

Think of it this way: I would not be on site having a meeting if the status quo was all right. Being in sales, you know that you are not going to win every sale. It is a strange logic that goes like this – if I am not going to win the deal, then at least tell me someone else has won the deal and let me know a decision has been made. When I hear silence or worse, the common phrase, “We have not made a decision at this time,” this tells me this company is going to try to ride it out for another year or 2 and stick with the status quo, while at the same time, crossing their fingers that the existing software workflow or hardware does not break down.

What Causes the Status Quo Customer Response?

Budget is lacking
Workflow is not defined
Timeline is too tight
Decision makers are unaware of the problem
Fear of change from user base
Influencers & stakeholders are not involved in the decision-making process

How Technology Companies Help Mitigate the Status Quo from Pushing Back Decisions With Projects

image of a laptop, an ipad and an iphone

Budget is lacking: The budget to any project needs to be defined at the first meeting. When I ask customers about a budget, it is not about trying to build a project to take up all funds. The reason we ask that question is to understand if there is enough funding for all stages of this project – ex. Does this project need to be built in phases & are we the right fit for this customer? Bottom line budget also needs to be defined and if it is not, then how serious can this customer be about fixing the issue(s)?

Workflow is not defined: In order to provide an accurate and complete estimate, a comprehensive understanding of workflow needs to be submitted to the consultant early in the estimate process. If a complete workflow is not finalized, then this can lead to either too high of an estimate due to unknowns or too low of an estimate as not all required functionality is listed.

How do we help with defining workflow? At CoreSolutions, we overcome this workflow challenge by:

Providing a template that helps capture basic workflow, reporting, & layout information in a “Project Discovery Document.”
Offering a service that helps define and build the workflow called the Business Requirements Definition (BRD). This is a billable service that comes in more than one type. For really complicated workflows, we will have a customer go through the BRD process.

Timeline is too tight: Timeline refers to when a project needs to begin or when it needs to reach final completion. The usual answer I hear is, “I need this yesterday.” Sometimes the time to define the workload or build the solution will take too long. Some companies have measurable busy cycles. Implementing a new project during the busiest time of the year will not lead to a successful implementation or adoption rate. In order to get past the timeline being the reason for not making a decision, some companies will work with the developer to determine the best time to have a new application implemented and tested.

Decision makers are unaware of the problem: Decision makers need be on the same page. This is sales 101 – the decision makers need to be in attendance at major meetings. But decision makers need to also understand the timelines involved, such as the commitment of time required by staff to build workflow and to test the different phases of applications. Successful solutions typically have decisions makers in the loop, so that they have an overall understanding of the project scope – including time, workflow and user defined needs.

Fear of change from user base: Change can be scary, especially if it is perceived that this is a change for the sake of change. Generally, to become more efficient, new systems will require different layouts, screens, reports or workflows. Fear by the user base can be overcome in a few ways:

The customer can nominate a few power users of the system who will test, deploy and have input on many of the new functions. In particular, screen layout and report creation.
Through hands-on training that can be provided for users either remotely or onsite.
By creating a User’s Guide with the customer’s guidance.

Influencers and stakeholders are not involved in the decision-making process: Inclusion of stakeholders and influencers is key to a project’s success. The bigger the project, the greater the odds that more than one department, process or manager will be involved. In medium to large scale projects, sometimes it’s only the people inputting data that have issues and want a new process in place. Their own colleagues or superiors may not know that an issue exists. One of the main reasons why defining workflow is so important is that this will determine whose departments will need input in a new application and potential new or modified process(es).

The Pitfalls of Sticking with the Status Quo

Maintaining the status quo isn’t always the best business decision. Oftentimes, it’s an emotional bias for the present set of circumstances (See – Status Quo Bias). Although you may avoid the challenge of having to retrain your staff in the present moment, the fact of the matter is that in the world of software, you’re bound to face the, “It’s time to upgrade your software,” scenario. If you don’t believe me, then you’re likely still running Windows 95 on your machine.

So what are the negative repercussions of sticking with the status quo? Well, here are a few:

You won’t be future-proofing your organization for forthcoming technological changes
Your clients & staff will view your company as a technology dinosaur – who wants their business to be viewed as lagging behind in anything?
You’ll have to add new features & additional functionality to your system as the years progress – in terms of development dollars & technical upkeep, this will cost more in the long run
Your time & your IT staff’s time spent managing the day-to-day operations of your software will skyrocket

Ready to Move Forward? Need Help Defining Your Project?

Let us assist you! At CoreSolutions, we’re determined to take you Beyond Software™ to make your next project a success! Whether you’re replacing old software or looking to purchase new software, we can help walk you through the process!

We connect municipalities and the businesses that serve them.

Tag Archives: Professionals