Over the last couple of decades, hundreds of new businesses have exploded in the field of Internet and technology. These new businesses have used all of the tools at their disposal to beat back rivals and hold their place at the top. These businesses are masters of their art, and it would be almost impossible to beat them.
But, what exactly do companies like Facebook and Google do to keep their position on the top? The answer can be found throughout this post. But, it’s not quite as simple as a few tricks. A lot of work goes into what these companies do. And, they invest a lot of their resources into it. This is only the case because it’s proven to be so successful.
A businesses website is the key to its customers. With a poor or hard to navigate website, businesses will do poorly. You know how it is. When you enter a site, but the page loads badly or something else goes wrong, and you simply give up. There are other sites out there, so there’s not point in using the one that doesn’t work. Companies will invest millions in making sure that their sites are fully tested and operational. Some companies will take this to the extremes, inventing their own systems and standards.
It’s rare that you’ll see a big tech company with a boring or basic website. Their websites incorporate the newest available features. And, in some cases, entirely new features that no one has used before. Google has a good track record with this sort of behaviour. Over the last few years, you’ve probably noticed Google searching has started getting smarter. It knows where you are and can make it much easier to find the information you’re looking for. It can find information in pages and display it before you even get to the page. This sort of effort is what makes some businesses great, and others get left behind.
Along with creating new features, companies will also jump onto the newest standards that are released. HTML5 has only been in use for a couple of years, and in the mainstream, it’s even less than that. But, most tech giants have their websites steeped in beautiful HTML5. The evolution of a standard like this is hard for a small company to keep up with. But, the giants have people working on their sites as a permanent job. This means that they have the resources to perform continuous updates.
And, of course, most business websites are beautiful. If not, people will find them unpleasant to use. The key to a beautiful website is in the designer. The best web designers usually get scooped up by big companies, so that no one else has access to them. With a team of people like this, great things can be done overnight. Small businesses, however, will probably have a single web designer on their side. Some may even have to rely on a website builder that they use themselves, which makes it impossible to compete.
Social media has become a massive feature in a lot of people’s lives. Most people will spend several hours each day using some sort of social site. In fact, websites like facebook.com have millions of active users everyday. This gives big companies a way to interact with their customers on a level that everyone feels comfortable on. It also enables them to reach out to millions of potential customers, without having to pay anything. Some of the tech giants have made their fortune in social media, and some have even tried and failed.
One of the most important thing on social media is consistency. Posts have to be regular, and they have to be high-quality. If not, people won’t bother with them. But, people also expect to be treated in a certain way as well. Social media presents a lot of issues with PR. People are much happier to be very hard to deal with when you’re talking online. So, customers can be much harder to reason with. A company can’t get involved in an argument. This will make them look very bad. So, a lot of companies resort to humour to get around this. Focusing their posts and comments on making light of situations, rather than getting angry. Having staff on hand to manage something like this is very hard, though. It costs a small fortune to keep these sorts of operations running, as you need people online all the time.
The content that businesses post will affect the success of their efforts, as well. To ensure that their social media does well, companies have to post regular and interesting content. Otherwise, people won’t look at it. And, if people don’t look at it, the advertising has failed. To help people get excited about content, companies will often post teasers about upcoming products that they’re creating. Some companies will even host competitions on their social media pages. This gives them a way to force people to follow their content, without having to make it apparent.
Along with their websites, most tech giants will also have their own apps. You’ll see examples of this where apps are completely unnecessary. But, they’re still used. This is because a mobile app is often easier to use on a phone than a mobile website. This means that a lot of customers will take the option of the app. This is a clever way to get your name out there.
People seldom uninstall unused apps. This means that the logo of the company that makes it will always be in their menu. Whenever they open the menu, they see the logo. Even on a subconscious level, this will help to build brand recognition. It’s an extremely clever way to ensure that customers are always thinking of your business. But, of course, it also costs them money. Usually, this is worth it, though.
And, of course, when you have an app, you can track a lot more than you can through a site. When you install an app on your phone, you’re usually prompted to access requests to use different features of the phone. Most people will ignore these, and simply accept them. This gives companies access to loads of information about you and your device. This information is usually used for customer analysis and advertising. So, you don’t have to worry that you’re being watched. Usually, the data is handled in such a way that it isn’t tied to a single user.
These techniques all cost vast amounts of money for companies to run. But, in the end, it’s well worth it for them. The customers that they can generate using these methods has been proven to be vast. So, the money that they have to invest is worth it in the end. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t be doing it in the first place. Smaller companies can often replicate these methods if they play their cards right. But, there are usually some compromises along the way. It’s hard to create a perfect reflection of big business when your budget is small. For help, a lot of businesses will use services like wondermentapps.com to get their business up to scratch. But, it still takes time and effort.
Hopefully, this will give you an idea of the lengths that big companies go to use technology to it’s potential. Some even say that a lot of the biggest companies have technology saved up, waiting for release. This could be done because it gives them a chance to prepare for the future. Or, it could just be made up. The only truth that’s important is that these methods do work, and they help companies go from nothing to everything.