5 Reasons Why Agile Software Development is Best For Your Business

As times change, technology changes with it. The same happens with Agile techniques, but they often share similar features. These features include a focus on communication, interaction and iterative development. Today, Agile software development is thriving. More and more organisations are choosing this approach to help run their businesses more smoothly. However, small businesses are moreover less forthcoming on employing Agile development, particularly where teams are situated offshore.

The reasons for this can be many, such as cultural differences, language barriers, and different time zones. This can inhibit the efficiency of Agile methodologies, but if you have the right approach and model, your team could manage these difficulties with ease.

Reasons why Agile software development is best for your business

• Increased Productivity

With Agile software development, the workload splits into small pieces and the deliverables are accomplished in tranches. Programmers can then easily categorize and correct any complications of a project more quickly.

• Enhance programmers’ morale

Agile software development has been proven to enhance the morale of programmers, as many prefer to do their work in small segments. This helps others to measure progress, which encourages them to confidently continue with the next stage of development.

•  Precise communication

Agile encourages more frequent and clear communication between all key stakeholders. Open and consistent communication creates a tighter team bond, and project clarity.

• Quality

Agile often provides a better end product, as testing is done throughout the project life cycle. This leads to a higher overall quality, and any errors have been identified early on in the process.

• Affordable

Agile software development can prove to be more cost effective, as it helps to set clear guidelines on how the project will unfold. This makes the project more transparent, and allows for a faster turnaround time.

The Agile methodology is popular around the world, as it’s helped to streamline processes and promoted open dialogue between individuals within a team.

If you’re looking for a web development company, or software app development that deploys this technique, contact Five Rivers for a quote for your project. We’ll provide a free consultation to discuss your plans, and ensure clear and consistent communication in order to bring your project to life.

Contact us today on 0203 397 7545 or visit the Five Rivers website.

The Most Effective Tips for Web Content Writing

Content writing has emerged as the most crucial part of any Digital Marketing campaign. The need of finding qualified and experienced content writers has taken on a real urgency for many businesses. Undoubtedly, for one who is less experienced in writing website content, this can be a challenging and repetitive job if not shown the tools required to be effective. Here are a few tips to consider;

• Keyword Research - Your very first port of call. It’s a hugely important aspect when writing web content. Finding the correct phrase or keyword combination that generates the most traffic is critical to a business’ online success. There are many tools available, allowing you to look for the keywords relevant to your services and products – a couple of examples are Google’s Keyword Planner, and keyword.io.

• Write Original Content - Avoid plagiarism like the plague! Word-for-word copying from another website can attract severe penalties from search engines, who will without doubt, identify plagiarism very quickly. Your website could plummet down the search results pages, making it more difficult to be found.

• “Flawless” Writing - When writing web content, ensure that it be creative (either information-rich or a kind of storytelling) and grammatically perfect. This will help to engage your audience, maintain professionalism, and engender trust. Writing should be simple and easy to understand. And remember, it’s quality not quantity that’s important.

• Be precise and clear – don’t deviate from the subject matter – stick to the point or your article theme.

• Add a Call-to -Action (CTA) – Consider the main motive of your writing – you’re looking to attract potential customers to the products and services you are writing about. If you omit a CTA within the content, you’ve lost any momentum gained that might encourage visitors to make a purchase or employ your services.

Remember, a website is the first impression of your business. If it’s equipped with well-written content, and easy to use navigation, there’s an increased likelihood it will generate more business leads or sales.

If you’re looking for help with website content writing, blogs, articles or any copywriting services, ensure to hire professional content writers. At Five Rivers, we’re content experts who can also help with customised digital marketing services, and bespoke web design & development. 

Crucial Considerations when Redesigning a Website

The internet today is a dynamic, interactive and multi-dimensional hub of knowledge sharing and communication. With high competition found in every sector, every company should have a well-designed website, adopting the latest trends in website technology, to give them a cutting edge.

Here are some different factors that need to be kept in mind when redesigning a website;

• Understand why you need an online facelift

 A website needs to reflect any changes to business strategy and direction. If a business updates its products or services; has a website that is over 4 years old and uses outdated technology; or is looking for a new and updated brand identity, these are perfectly valid reasons to consider a website redesign

•  Test the current usability of the website

 Before you plough ahead, ensure you have done some groundwork. Analyse customer feedback as well as web traffic data, to review the existing user experience. In order to understand the expectations and needs of your targeted audience further, you can organize usability tests, online surveys or face to face interviews.

• Proper planning

 A website redesign needs time, resource management and a proper budget. If you detail a plan, you can schedule resources, budget and time accordingly. To avoid aggressive timelines, it is better to set up agreed schedules. This allows designers to manage deadlines effectively.

• Revise the Content

 Revising website content is important when re-designing a website. Use the Google Keyword Planner to help identify the more popular search terms, and use those words within your website copy. The content must be SEO friendly, informative and educational.

• Implement a Content Management System

 With constant technological progress comes the changing needs of online audiences. it is therefore very useful to have a CMS (Content Management System) website. This allows you to modify and upload your own content as and when you need it, rather than asking your web designer for updates.

Whether you are seeking website designing/re-designing, at Five Rivers we can help. Our team of experienced web designers will bring your website right up to date, allowing for a more positive and engaging user experience. Call us on 0203 397 7545 and request a quote today. 

7 Key Steps to Writing a Successful Blog

Writing a good quality blog/article isn’t as simple as picking up a pen or creating a Word document with fingers poised over the keyboard. You need to consider a style and tone that is easy to read, informative engaging, and SEO friendly. Typically, you’ll be writing to encourage a reader to buy a product, subscribe to a list, take a test drive, or take some other action that will benefit your business.

Process of Preparing Blog/Article Content

Ø  Planning - Consider your intro, main body of text, and ending. Try and mention your product or service within the first paragraph, as this will help search engines to determine relevancy. Many new bloggers often ignore this important stage, which can affect the quality and the main aim of writing on any given topic.

Ø  Research - this lends gravitas to your subject matter. Even if it’s only for use as a throwaway statement, researching some background information does you no harm. After all, you can easily be caught out – if you don’t do your research, someone else might! If they choose to comment, it undermines your attempted status as an authority figure on your chosen topic.

Ø  Conduct Keyword Research - Keywords play an important role in SEO. Once you settle on a relevant topic to write about, it’s time to conduct keyword research. The keywords you choose should ideally be low in competition, but high in search volume – though it isn’t always possible. For this, you can use the Google Keyword Planner or keyword.io.

Ø  Title - After proper planning and research, it’s time to decide on a relevant title. The title is what will determine further relevancy for search engine “crawlers”, so it’s imperative to factor in your main keywords here. The title may also become part of your URL, so it’s worth giving this some thought.

Ø  Sub headings- After nailing down the headlines / title, start structuring your blog or article with subheadings. In SEO these are called H1 / H2 tags, and help search engines to more easily understand your content.

Ø  Conclusion- there are three elements to this;

·         To recap the main aspects of the post

·         To give a conclusive ending to the main content

·         Incorporate a Call to Action

Ø  Editing - After completing the article/blog post, start the editing and modifying process. This includes adding hyperlinks to other pages within your blog; adding images; and correcting grammatical errors, sentence structure and spelling errors if necessary. Don’t let poor grammar undermine your authority on your chosen subject!

At Five Rivers, we follow this strategy in every instance when creating content. Our copywriting service helps to provide a more authoritative voice to your written content. Call us on 0203 397 7545, or drop us an email to info@fiverivers.net, for a quote.

How can writing a blog benefit your business?

It’s pretty common knowledge now that blogging and article writing are an important part of any marketing campaign. No matter your business size, blogging is an effective online content marketing strategy. It help to;

• Drive traffic to your site
• Establish a better customer relationship
• Give your brand a personality
• Increase ranking in SERPS

 Fresh and quality content plays a major role in helping your business rise above competitors in search results. By using relevant keywords in your articles, you can attract potential and relevant customers who are searching for your services or products using those specific search terms.

• Drive traffic to your website

Blogs are one of the best ways to increase web traffic. Blogs can act as a platform for your chosen social media platforms to link to, such as LinkedIn, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter. Adding attractive images (ideally, ones that you have taken), help to further engage your visitors. Additionally, links to your main website can be added to the blog post, which will help to monetize your content marketing efforts.

• Establish Better Customer Relationships

Blogs can help to build a legion of followers – as long as your posts are engaging! People get to understand more about how your business works. You also get the opportunity to engage with your customers through comments made, which can further establish good customer relationships.

• Give an Identity to your brand

Well-written quality articles or blog posts can establish your business as a market leader. Share your knowledge and insight, about anything that is relevant to your industry. If people enjoy what you have to say, they’ll share the post which in turn will lead to more traffic to your blog – which of course, has links back to your website!

Whether you are looking for content marketing experts, copywriters, web designers, or software developers, at Five Rivers we can help. Our all services are carried out by professionals who take time to discuss and understand your business in order to provide a bespoke solution.

How to Implement Multilingual SEO into Your Marketing Strategy?

In today’s digital world, optimizing a website for search engines is critical in driving brand awareness. This process becomes more complex when you are managing a large website which serves many global locations and languages.

What is multilingual SEO?

This is a process of site optimization for different languages that increases a website’s visibility and reach. This method is quite complex as compared to traditional SEO, but offers real benefit to any international online business. More often than not, ecommerce websites have more need of this strategy.

Implementing multilingual SEO into your marketing strategy

•  Determine the regions you are targeting and the languages you will make available to those particular regions
• Don’t mix different languages on the page, keep them on separate web addresses
• Consider a cross-linking of each page’s language version
• Avoid automatic redirection based on the perceived language of the user, and avoid the use cookies that show the translated versions of the web page.
• Make use of robots .txt to restrict search engines from automatically crawling the translated page of the website

Every business strives hard to make itself stand out, as competition is intense in many sectors. At Five Rivers we use the latest digital marketing strategies, catering to the bespoke needs of every individual business. Get in touch with us today - call us or email us at info@fiverivers.net

How to write an article that engages customers

The debate on the ideal length of articles or blogs is not new. Some believe that a 500 word article is superior to 1000 word article, but it’s not just about length – it’s about the quality of information. It is a well-known fact that content marketing, via article submission and blog posts, is a necessary approach when looking to improve your website’s online presence. It’s an effective way to get more sales, backlinks and raise brand awareness.

An article of between 400-700 words is typically considered to be the optimal word count that encourages a higher click-through rate, social sharing, and number of views.

When users enter a search query, if they find your original, quality and relevant articles, they are more likely to click the link to your website (as long as you’ve remembered to add one!)

It’s not worth getting hung up about this too much, just remember that you are writing to be informative about a specific topic.

There are four strategies you must remember when writing an article -

• Tailor your website content to your targeted audience
• Don’t deviate from your subject matter
• Don’t be repetitive
• Add links back to relevant pages of your website
• Use Google’s Keyword Planner to find the best performing words related to your post

There’s more to article writing than meets the eye, so if writing a blog or article from an SEO perspective, you can find more useful tips here on whether the length of a blog post matters.

At Five Rivers, we provide professional copywriting services. We follow the latest trends and make sure to provide high quality content for your business. Contact us today on 0203 397 7545.