Deversus is excited to announce that we are working with mediAm digital distribution inc. on an innovative web app for the distribution of digital motion picture media. We look forward to a long and mutually-beneficial relationship with mediAm in pursuing their vision.

Developed in partnership with Zygoat Creative Tech., BoozeHound was designed to be simple, effective, and efficient. Built on our innovative “Find Closest” platform, we’re confident that BoozeHound is second to none in its ability to find the nearest liquor stores with ease. The platform boasts some impressive location-aware capabilities, such as realtime connectivity to a geo-spatially indexed database via web service, intelligent map browsing and caching, and inaccurate location reporting. Users of the app will appreciate the quality and quantity of the liquor store data, which includes phone numbers and store hours for most provinces.

The app makes its debut on the Canadian app store on December 1st for $1.99. For more information about the app itself, check out the BoozeHound website.

BoozeHound: iPhone Liquor Store Finder App

A few months ago, Rogers/Fido updated their websites to provide customers with the ability to view their wireless usage in almost real-time. The information was updated every four hours and gave users a great tool to track wireless usage.

To expand on that functionality and to set themselves apart from the other two Canadian iPhone carriers, Rogers and Fido have released new apps called “My Account”. The apps require no inputting of account credentials and simply pull everything from your iPhone network connection and SIM card.

Both Rogers and Fido each have their own version of the app and both apps provide customers with their wireless usage. Like the website, users can see minutes, messages and data usage right from their iPhone, which updates every 20 minutes instead of four hours as on the Rogers/Fido websites. The apps also allow customers to view their current balance and make a payment via credit card.

Read the full article here.

Our Attempt to Upgrade Our Hosting Package with 1and1

The issue, in a nutshell, was that we were misinformed about what server package we were being upgraded to. Being a customer with 1&1 Internet for about 6 years (transferring the account from my old web development business to Deversus in between), we’ve grown to the point where we require a dedicated web server to meet our needs. I used 1and1’s Switch Package feature via their control panel to process the upgrade. The Switch Package experience was awful, at best. It gave a terse listing of the available servers and their associated costs, with no description or links to indicate what the server package contained. After Googleing the package of interest (the 1&1 Dedicated Server Dual-Core M Website), we decided to go with that (as a caveat, the Dual-Core M package description we read was from the 1and1 UK website and is no longer on the US website).

Three days later, the upgrade was complete — sort of. It was at this point that we realized we had been upgraded to 1and1’s “dedicated managed server” and not a “dedicated root server” like we were expecting. We hadn’t a clue that there was even such an option. While one could blame us for not doing our due diligence to make sure of what we were getting, the general lack of information throughout the process was simply unacceptable.

Our Attempt to Resolve the Issue with 1and1’s Customer Support

I first e-mailed 1and1’s support@1and1.com address to inquire about the issue and attempt to have the managed server changed to a root server. After being told that there is no way to stop the upgrade process or change to a root server, and that I would need to purchase a separate server and migrate the files myself, I decided to call their customer support team.

It was downhill from there. I was transferred a total of 7 times, back and forth between departments, and placed on hold for 45 minutes. After trying to escalate the issue, I was told I would have to call their Germany office (which conveniently, was closed for business). The primary conflict was surrounding the fact that their Dual-Core M Website package was apparently no longer available. I was told that I would need to switch to a lesser package, in which case the server paled in comparison to the Dual-Core M, albeit for $10 less per month. Or, switch to the Dual-Core M package — a similarly spec’ed server — for nearly twice the price. Long story short, the best they could do was offer one month free for the Dual-Core L package, which I decided was petty. After an awkwardly long silence, I let them know that we would be pursuing a different hosting provider.

The Moral of the Story

As I so politely asked the 1and1 CSR, “what would you do in this scenario if you were the CEO of 1and1?”, there exists a big picture mentality that most customer service teams are simply not trained in. While perhaps insignificant to the overall profitability to their company, our $59/month over the next five years translates into $3540. This assumes, of course, that we don’t upgrade or add more servers to our account. Not to mention, being a custom software development company who deals with numerous other large companies with extensive server requirements, we are able to bring a lot of potential new business to a company like 1and1. Or what about the fact that I had such a bad experience that I felt compelled to write a blog article about the importance of customer service and the consequences a bad experience can have?

While I don’t hold any one of the individual CSRs I spoke with at 1and1 accountable for the inability to resolve our issue, I am in disbelief that it is possible for a behemoth of a company like 1and1 to instill such shortsightedness into their employee training.

I know that at Deversus, we value our client relationships because they are our lifeblood. We go out of our way to make sure our clients are happy with the work we do for them and if there is an issue, we do anything within reasonable means to resolve it.

It’s been a month (okay – a bit more than a month, we’ve been busy!) since our first post, Is the Yahoo! Directory worth the money? and as promised, time for the first follow-up article on the results.

As expected, the results thus far have been rather insignificant. We have not seen a dramatic increase in traffic or PageRank. That said, however, it does seem like we’ve seen a slight improvement in our position ranking for some of our targeted keywords such as “custom software development” or “web application development company”. As a caveat, though, these observations have not been accurately measured and are based on a general feeling of incoming keyword traffic based on what we see in Google Analytics.

Read our first post to view the traffic statistics prior to being accepted into the Yahoo! Directory.

Site Statistics One Month after Being Added to the Yahoo! Directory

Current Statistics for www.deversus.com (as measured by Google Analytics)

Yahoo Organic Search Results for the period of October 4, 2009 - November 3, 2009: 27 unique visits
Referral Traffic from the Yahoo! Directory Listing for the period of October 4, 2009 - November 3, 2009: 4 unique visits
Google Page Rank: PR4

Current Statistics for www.futurequest.biz (as measured by Google Analytics)

Yahoo Organic Search Results for the period of October 4, 2009 - November 3, 2009: 39 unique visits
Referral Traffic from the Yahoo! Directory Listing for the period of October 4, 2009 - November 3, 2009: 2 unique visits
Google Page Rank: PR2

We submitted our website, as well as our client, Future Quest Wireless’ website (http://www.futurequest.biz) to the Yahoo! Directory on September 24, 2009. We received an e-mail from Yahoo stating that they’ve accepted both websites into the directory on October 1, 2009, although as of yet, neither website is showing up in the Yahoo! Directory search results.

We will report the amount of organic search traffic seen from Yahoo, any changes in Google PageRank, and referral traffic from the directory listings themselves for both websites over the next three months. To try and limit the number of variables and control for specific results seen from the listing in the Yahoo! Directory, we will refrain from performing any additional SEO or quests for inbound links for the duration of this study.

Why Consider Adding Your Website to the Yahoo! Directory?

What many don’t realize, is that a website’s displayed position in Google can vary significantly depending on certain conditions at the time of the search. These include whether you have Google WebHistory enabled, which geographic version of Google’s website you’re searching, or where you’re searching from. For example, on google.ca, a search for “custom software development” shows our website as the second result (at the time of this writing). However, on google.com, we’re not even in the top 100 results. Google’s search is location-aware too, so if you’re from Vancouver and search for “custom software development” on google.ca, the results shown are likely to be tailored based on your location (thus our number two spot here). A good way to check this for your own site is to visit google.com through a proxy (for example, www.proxify.com), which will hide your IP, and furthermore, your location.

To ensure your website is ranked highly for your targeted search terms across all geographic regions (and highly ranked in general), it is critical to have a high Google PageRank. There are, of course, other factors that affect your position in Google, but PR is known to be one of, if not the most important of them.

In order for us to rank well for the highly competitive search terms we target (i.e. custom software development, web application development), we felt a boost in our Google PageRank definitely wouldn’t hurt. Cheap, or free link directories (or “link farms”) are unlikely to help your Google PR and may even hinder it; obtaining high PR links to your website from pages that are relevant to the material on your site are difficult to come by and usually, expensive. Because Google’s algorithm is so heavily weighted on quality, relevant inbound links, we decided the PR 8 link alone is worth the $299/year (We’re listed at http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/Computers/Software/Consulting/Custom_Programming/).

What We’re Expecting

We expect that the effects of a single inbound link are unlikely to be significant, but we will monitor incoming traffic from Yahoo! Search and Yahoo! Directory, as well as our Google PR, in aim of measuring the effects our listing in the Yahoo! Directory has. We will post the results to our blog each month for the next three months.

It should also be noted that different website owners are likely to experience varying results depending on the industry, popularity of the website’s material itself (i.e. the number of searches for the targeted keywords), number of competitors, and Google PR of those competitors. A good tool for gaining some insight on keyword popularity and competition is the Google Keyword Tool.

Site Statistics Before Being Added to the Yahoo! Directory

Current Statistics for www.deversus.com (as measured by Google Analytics)

Yahoo Organic Search Results for the period of September 3, 2009 - October 3, 2009: 22 unique visits
Average Monthly Yahoo Organic Search Results since September 3, 2008: 4.75 unique visits
Google Page Rank: PR4

Current Statistics for www.futurequest.biz (as measured by Google Analytics)

Yahoo Organic Search Results for the period of September 3, 2009 - October 3, 2009: 43 unique visits
Average Monthly Yahoo Organic Search Results since September 3, 2008: 143 unique visits
Google Page Rank: PR2

So is the Yahoo! Directory worth the money? Hopefully our findings over the next three months will help answer this question to make the decision whether to add your own website to the directory easier. We will report the above results, as well as the number of referral visits from the Yahoo! Directory next month. If there are other metrics you would like to see measured and compared over the next three months, post them in the comments below.

Have you had experience with the Yahoo! Directory? What sort of results did your website see? Furthermore, are there any other directories out there, aside from the Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ that you consider pivotal for achieving a high Google PR?

Update: Read our follow-up post: Is the Yahoo! Directory Worth the Money? Part 2 (One Month Later)

Deversus will be assisting OLT with the redevelopment of their current website and integration of our Content Management System with their existing back-end web application.