Earlier this month, Applied Innovations attended two major conferences in South Florida – the South Florida .NET Code Camp and the 2013 Internet Retailer Web Design and Usability Conference (IRWD). This year, over 900 developers met at the South Florida Code Camp, and IRWD remained true to its smaller, more engaged crowd.
At the Code Camp, we were excited to have the opportunity to connect, learn and share the latest Microsoft-related trends with other enthusiastic developers and programmers.We also got to chat with some current clients and partners in the industry. The consensus of the attendees was that this round of sessions was the best they’d seen, so the event was a success!
IRWD speakers also delivered, covering hot industry topics like designing a website that attracts your target audience, how to quickly engage visitors, how to increase organic search rankings with SEO and more. Another favorite, unique feature of IRWD are consultations – online retailers have the ability to have one-on-one discussions with industry-leading experts in eCommerce, providing an informative and engaging experience for attendees.
Each year, these conferences help us fine-tune our knowledge of the latest industry trends in order to increase key metrics with online revenue for our clients. Some overall highlights and impressions include:
- Metrics and reporting are key components to online success and enabling marketing/development teams to make informed decisions.
- More businesses are opting to outsource web development and marketing functions to third-party solution providers.
- The need for instant accessibility has grown drastically with the rise of social media and customers’ expectations of immediate response, which has given way to more robust mobile applications for things like your eCommerce platform solution.
- The hosted eCommerce solution provider options or SaaS based ecommerce options have increased greatly in numbers. However, we found a general dissatisfaction among clients using these services because hosted eCommerce solutions lock you into their hosting options which can be limited and tough to scale. With Applied Innovations, you are able to use several different eCommerce platforms. We also partner with Hotcakes, a new eCommerce platform being launched for the leading open source ASP.NET content management system, DotNetNuke. Combined with Hotcakes, Applied Innovations offers clients the unique advantage of portability between hosting providers while still being intimately knowledgeable about the eCommerce platform. Our partnership has afforded each of us an in-depth knowledge of the other’s service, allowing us to provide the same benefits as a hosted eCommerce solution.
Overall, Applied Innovations enjoyed two successful and informative experiences at both conferences. Here’s some of the fun we had:
