The ability to provide your audience with quality user experiences was once a novelty, but it is quickly becoming a necessity. With the departure of nearly every industry to largely digital spaces, the ability to connect with audiences on their preferred platforms has become a skill that drives success, but one that many businesses neglect. We are proud to help our clients better connect with their audiences, and we are excited to have received some recognition for it.
We are pleased to share that we have been featured on Clutch’s directory of the top mobile app development companies in New York. Clutch is a ratings and reviews platform for B2B service providers, serving to identify top service providers to help firms make smarter partnerships with their vendors. After being the subject of rigorous research next to more than 300 other top developers, we are featured in the top 40.
Clutch analysts evaluate the vendors on their platform by a number of criteria, such as marketing presence, company portfolios, and client reputations. But the most important factor when determining the quality of a firm is what their clients have to say about them. And as a result of several client reviews, we maintain a perfect five-star rating on Clutch, with our clients sharing things like,
“SWARM was able to undergo a technological feasibility/discovery process. They have a lot of depth in terms of tech talent, and I don’t believe that another firm would have been able to tackle many of our more technical questions.”
We are proud of our status on Clutch, but above that, we are grateful for this opportunity to receive client feedback. We cannot wait to see what else our clients have to say about us and to improve our services.
We’re thrilled to be recognized as a leader by the team over at Clutch, it’s really a testament to the work we do. We believe that our client-centric process has helped us get this far, but not without some help. Thank you to our amazing clients, we appreciate everything you have done for us, and we cannot wait to see what else you have for us.
Much talk happens today around the customer experience in product design. While there is considerable literature out there on the topic, there is also much confusion in regards to what it means and how to implement it. In short, it how the customer feels at every brand touch point, as well as after, and before engaging with you, your brand, or any of your products.
While we at SWARM have a very concise approach to our customer experience design process that we believe should be a part of all new product design and turnarounds, it doesn’t explain the result of a customer experience design implementation. It’s for this purpose that we looked at the many companies executing well in this field and decided to write this study.
A 70% return rate for first-time customers would be impressive for the most visited business near your home, let alone a theme park. Somehow, “The Most Magical Place on Earth” can attain just that. Walt Disney, the man behind making it all happen, took a more objective approach when visualizing his often sensationalized theme park “factories”:
“Think of the process as a railroad engine. If the engine does not run properly, it does not matter how friendly the conductor acts or how attractive the passenger cars look, the train will still not move, and the passengers will not pay their fares. The process is the engine of Quality Service.”
Disney prioritizes the customer experience journey, without jeopardizing the product in the meantime. This calculated equilibrium is what separates them from any other conglomerate in America. Despite leading, they refuse to adopt contentment and abandon the underdog mentality.
The journey of ‘Discover,’ ‘Configure’ and ‘Restructure’ can be seen in three quintessential examples:
Height limitations are one of the most frustrating elements for young park-goers, who are forced to wait in long lines only to be turned away at the last minute. To counteract this logistical nightmare for both the kids and the parents who have to hear about it, Disney began issuing passes that allow the child being turned away to head to the front of any ride’s line of their choosing (height permitting).
Due to the sheer amount of traffic visiting their parks daily, Disney installed an extensive tram system to accommodate their seemingly endless rows of parking lots so that visitors can comfortably and efficiently arrive at the entrance of the park in an optimal fashion. Unfortunately, the problem with parking lots as far as the eye can see to house all of their visitors is precisely that—the rows are seemingly endless.
Tram drivers are supplied with a list of rows and sections that coincide with the time that they would be picking visitors up from that section to trump the overwhelming feeling of helplessness that comes along with forgetting your car’s location in a jungle of them. Instead, end your day of a good note.
Disabled customers have long felt ostracized when continually having to remind park employees of their disabilities. With discretion generally preferred when alluding to the topic, park employees have been equipped with Special Assistance passes and have received training to create as seamless a transition into the park as possible to welcome these patrons the best they can. Less time with invasive questions, more time with enjoyment.
This culture carries over into other facets of the organization, with all employees buying in “to serve the customer best“. There’s an essential distinction between reaction and proaction, with Disney mastering the former but placing emphasis on the latter. Think how the customer does, and you’ll be ahead of the game. Brands can’t afford to be too late.
The customer experience journey is the starting point in any business’s path, whether it be in services or goods. Design, delivery, and development (or Observing, Shaping and Performing) serve as the three pillars of CX, with each stage being as crucial as the last. Knowing the customers, knowing your brand and the intersection between the two is what every business’s sights should be placed on. The moment you neglect CX is the moment your customers will neglect you.
New Venture Development incorporates all activities associated with generating new digital business opportunities within the realm of product, service design, business model curation, and brand marketing. From its inception, a business’s digital development is the foundation on which it stands.
Identifying new digital business models in an age infatuated with innovation is the defining factor of adaptation. What’s happening in the boardroom is not necessarily what’s happening on the front lines of digital innovation. Companies need to adapt and think like startups in order to define disruptive business models and deliver game-changing products. The digital world refuses to remain static, so why should your brand?
Brands tend to be disrupted because they neglect the signals of advancement, and have become complacent about the recent success that they can present to shareholders. Companies that do see the impending innovation on the horizon are often the same ones that strike first. Since many of these companies don’t find themselves directly involved in the tech industry, neglection is all too common a fate.
When New Venture Development is prioritized for a brand, their top mistake is looking solely at digital startups as the sole threats to their (possibly) antiquated business model. For every digital startup, there’s a fellow company in the same your industry successfully undergoing this digitization process. Simply, the closer your industry is related to tech, the more competition you’ll have.
To counteract this, corporations need to track not only the digital startups but study fellow competitors and observe how they’re transitioning into the digital sector. Through our digital innovations lab, we can avoid such fallacies as “bolt-on tech” to ensure that your venture into the digital world not only forms a modernized revenue stream but fully integrates with the brand model and culture that you hold closest. New acquisitions don’t always equate to gained knowledge.
Though investment into your future through digital expansion characterizes New Venture Development, we believe human experience is the differentiating factor. Companies often attempt to restructure around this expansion, while forgetting about what brought them there, to begin with. Disrupting markets without the disruption of your organizational status quo is how #wesolvedigital.
A buzzword all too commonly used throughout the world of business, it’s been loosely applied to virtually every situation that has to do with improvement within your respective industry. You’ve heard it, but what does it really mean? What are its objectives, intricacies, and lastly, ramifications—What happens when it all goes wrong? And why is it so pivotal to product success?
Companies that have the ability to create memorable customer experiences establish a competitive advantage unlike anything else. Those that recognize this understand that delivery can be just as important—if not more—than what’s delivered. After a certain threshold, an inferior product can beat out the industry leader off of presentation value alone. There’s no reason to neglect customer experience, and those that do are missing out on exponential growth. (more…)
SEO and product websites are still relevant in 2018. How can you consider metrics, downloads, engagement if users can’t find you? When it comes to SEO, finding the most relevant phrases that relate to your product is essential. Say you’re a web designer and you want to get more SEO traffic to your website, you should research those terms that are most relevant to your audience.. Start with keywords that your audience is on the lookout for. For example, Adventure, Naukluft, Swakopmund, Etosha, Safari, and so on – these keywords in conjunction with tags and the topic of your site. Keywords by themselves are not enough and you should be injecting long tail search terms into your posts.
If you write about politics, then add keywords based on Politics. If Business, then make sure to use relevant terminology. Pick a topic and stick to it, and be consistent. However, know that specific searches/ terms/keywords will generate you more capital than others. Research these. There are excellent tools to let you do this: SEM Rush, Google Adwords Tracker, Marketing Samurai.
While ideas as far as plans go are great just by themselves, they don’t help you generate revenues. What makes an online blog/enterprise value is the user engagement. Users of your site/product / what have you need to have something to do, spend time on your site and need to come back here for more. When this relates to a digital product, they should have a natural means of extending the user experience from the blog, to the app.
How do you do this? Give them something they want – first and foremost content that is relevant, well written and interesting. Second – a value proposition. In today’s marketplace there are hundreds if not thousands of competitors to your product – so the question is, what makes you stand out from the rest of them, what value do you give the user that all the other guys out there don’t. Moreover, if you’re one of the lucky ones out there to have a product that fills a niche and doesn’t have any competitors, ensure that the relevance, engagement and value proposition are still there in the event of new entrants, and more so – user retention.
What about SEO and seed traffic, and consultants, after all, there is an entire industry out there surrounding it. Yes, it is important, being on Page 1 of searches is extraordinarily talented, especially on your Google’s, Yahoo!’s MSN’s – most users will hardly ever head down to page two, and less so page three, four, and so forth.
However, again, when you come down to SEO, content is king, if you’re If you’re a travel app, publishing an article on travel in Namibia, make sure to put into the article valuable keywords that people will search for, for example, Adventure, Naukluft, Swakopmund, Etosha, Safari, and so on. These keywords will then come from within the article, within the content, and in conjunction with tags, and the topic of your site should make you shoot up the search rankings – meaning more visits to your site. It may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised.
Doesn’t matter really, it’s about the content which you’re writing about. If you write about politics, politics related keywords, business, then business, pick a topic and stick with it, be consistent. However, know that specific searches/ terms/keywords will generate you more capital than others. These can be researched.