It’s not uncommon if the first thing you do in the morning is grope around the bedside table for your phone. Who can get out of bed without checking the stocks, checking email, checking Facebook. Or even before going to bed at night, the last thing many of us do is check Instagram, fire off a final tweet, or confirm what time boxing class is the next day. What is it about these apps that have inherently integrated them into our daily lives? There was a time before mobile applications when people didn’t NEED to check mobile apps, but that time occurred simply because they didn’t exist. Now that they do, it can be nearly impossible to imagine what life was like pre-app. How did the most addicting apps become so...addicting? Yet even more importantly, how can your app become one that users can’t get through the day without? Plug Into the Routine The apps that are used the most have everything to do with what their user does in day-to-day life. Think about the ones you use...apps that track exercise and eating, apps that help manage schedules, apps that provide music to help you hum through the day. These are the winners in most people’s lives because they are with the users as they go about their day, and even make it easier for them to do the activities they like. If you can fulfill a need that fits into a user’s daily routine, it’ll be addictive. Integrate with Other Services Some standalone apps have good reason to be just the way they are. However the golden handcuffs are fastened when your app can integrate with apps and services your users already love. For example, PayPal is a well known money transfer service, allowing businesses to accept funds and allows friends to send money to each other. All that is needed is an account holder’s email or phone number and poof, money is sent. However the hassle arrives when the payer must look up the phone number or email address of the person they wish to pay. This can be just as much of a hassle as getting up to get and enter the credit card, which can inhibit the transaction from occurring altogether. Then came along Venmo, a money sending mobile application integrated directly with Facebook. Upon sign up, a user immediately connects to Facebook and accesses the Facebook user’s profile and friends. Once bank account information is initially entered, the user can easily send funds to anyone on their friends list who has also activated the Venmo app. This integration makes it much easier to send money to friends, and removes the barrier of looking up any sort of account information. Because of this Venmo quickly became a go-to app for savvy spenders, and eventually were acquired by PayPal.  Talk to Your User Send timely notifications to let your user know you’re there. You’re competing with a heavy amount of noise both from the users app filled phone and with the busy world around. In order to become an app worthy of daily use, your user should be regularly aware of its existence. For example, if they haven’t logged in for a day or two, send a gentle reminder via push notification to remind them to check in. Perhaps you can gain the user’s email address. If so, send updates on what’s going on with your app to keep the user informed - and your app top of mind. Get Personal Have your user enter personal information, if it makes sense in the context of your app. From there, personalize their experience. When they log in, greet them with a, “Hello Brent!” or even ask them how their day is going. If you know their time zone you could go even further and say, “Good evening, Brent!” The sweetest sound to any person’s ear is their own name - so use that Psych 101 tidbit to your advantage to get your user hooked on your application.  Make it Fun Regardless of if your app is for business or play, most of the time you can still have fun with your user. Gamification is as addicting as sugar, so get your audience engaged in ways that make your app feel more like a game.* Perhaps you can add a host character who guides the user about the app, making it fun and friendly. Or encourage more activity by unlocking new features with continued use. Awarding points or prizes in some way is a great way to make your user feel rewarded - and keep them coming back for more. *If your app is a game, well, make sure it’s a really fun game.  Keep an Eye on User Activity Monitor where your users spend their time. What portions of your app are they using? Which are hardly opened? If you can determine usage you can gain valuable insight into what is working for your app, and build upon the features that intrigue and engage your audience. There are some great tools available that can help you with this, such as Google Mobile Analytics or Flurry Analytics. Just remember that what is taking up valuable data space could possibly better be used otherwise, which can make your app the attractive solution to getting the user through their day. Connect with Friends Similar to our point about integrating with other services, if you can connect your app to the user’s community, all the more reason for them to stay engaged with your app. While we know that we talked about dating applications recently, we can’t help but hammer on the issue of how genius it is to connect daters with people who aren’t entirely strangers. In our particular article we talked about Pear Friends, yet there are other dating applications that utilize user’s friends to get better results when providing matches. One such app is called Hinge, the app that helps users meet new people through friends by connecting daters only with people within the parameters of that user’s social circle. It does this by plugging in directly, again, with Facebook. From there the app searches through friends of friends to determine what kind of people may be a good fit. Using this strategy makes it much more addicting for daters, as infused with it is the excitement of learning who friends are friends with, and the added security that matches are not complete strangers. The success of your app depends on having users. Giving your users a reason to use your app daily gives them reason to talk about it with their friends, thus widening your user base and making you more successful. If you’re ready to get started making that app dream a reality, let us know how we can help you get started.  

So, your website is up and running, people come to your site and get value from it... but are you really maximizing the opportunities you have? A wise person once said, “Excellence is not a destination; it is a continuous journey that never ends.” And while this quote was in relation to someone's personal life why can’t it also pertain to your company’s web presence? Taking this philosophy and applying it to your company is what will put it in the top tier.  Just because you have a functioning website does not mean that it’s the best possible website you could be giving to your visitors. Re-design will allow you to improve the way you present your information and change how visitors use and engage with your site. Below we have detailed  a few of the reasons it might be time for you to redesign your website. You aren’t getting the results you want. If you’re not getting the results you want it may be time to improve your website. A new design can allow you to create new calls to action that will allow you to better optimize your site for lead generation. Because at the end of the day that’s the end goal, right? So it's definitely beneficial to do what you can to improve your conversion rates. A few important things to take into consideration is the copy of your website:  is it too text heavy or does it not give enough details? Does it match your company's voice? What about the look- does it go with a general theme or just seem sporadic? While these all might seem like minescule factors about your website it's important to remember that all combined together they are your company's voice and online impression. Make it count. Your website doesn’t work across all platforms. If you’re anything like me you like to do majority of things from your phone and then later will check it again from your computer. We expect things to be easy across all channels and to be able to seamlessly  transition between any platform. Providing a smooth experience for your visitors is a key factor. By having a responsive design it allows your website to be easily adaptable from any screen on any device. Another key thing to take notice of is the functionality of your website. How easy is your site to use? Are your call to actions visible and easy to access? These are highly important factors that can make or break your website! The purpose of your site has changed. It's important to stay on top of your website's purpose; if it has changed then your website should reflect this change. Perhaps your marketing strategy has changed or you have decided to feature different aspects of the company altogether. Perhaps you want people to read your blog more or use your request a quote box more often. Whichever it is- keeping up to date with your site’s purpose is highly important. Another instance to be mindful of is if your company has added new services or features. If so, then your website should reflect this change otherwise your visitors will take their business elsewhere! Your third-party tools are outdated. A very important factor to pay attention is to how your third party tools are functioning. Ask yourself the questions: are these tools up to date ? Are they functioning at the highest level they could? If you answered no to either of these questions then perhaps it's time for an upgrade. Making the moves to more modern third party tools will not only appeal to your visitors but also turn them into leads. By ensuring that you are up to date with current technology you will not have to worry about your website lacking in loading times or meeting your guests with error pages! Your Sites Loading Time is …. Slow! As we’ve entered 2018 its important to note that loading speed is now a MAJOR factor. Even if we don't like to admit it, we’re impatient people who have grown accustomed to pages loading instantaneously. “People will visit a Web site less often if it is slower than a close competitor by more than 250 milliseconds (a millisecond is a thousandth of a second)” (Ny Times, 2018). Website speed and mobile speed should be  a top priority. If your website is loading slowly then it's definitely time for an upgrade.  Some of the Features or Content Don’t Display Properly Ensuring that your content displays properly is another major factor to be mindful of. As I said previously it's important to have seamless transitions between your web and mobile and the same goes for the way the content displays. You should also be mindful of the many different mobile devices your visitors may be using- there are lots of options out there! Whether they are looking from an iPhone or an Android Tablet the navigation and display should be easy to use and look the same across all channels. Compare to Competitors Another important reason to consider redesigning your website is seeing how it stacks up against the competition. By keeping up with the competition you are able to set your prices competitively, create marketing strategies, and accurately respond to rival marketing campaigns. If your top competitor is having far more success generating traffic to their site  then perhaps it's time to take a look at their site and see what they are doing differently. Now you don’t need to redesign your website every time you see your competitors making changes but staying relevant and up to date will be beneficial in the long run. I hope that you’ve found the above reasons as useful insight on whether or not to redesign your website. It’s easy to remain content with a website that’s working but as we said above: are you maximizing on the opportunities you have? If you’re not, or you felt like any of the above reasons directly related to your website, it's time to redesign! This will be an exciting time because you will be able to take a close look at your website, analyze the strategies that have worked, and improve! Remember “excellence is a continuous journey, not a destination.” Now, we are aware that redesigning your website can seem like a daunting or overwhelming task, but that's where we come in! Barefoot Solutions is more than happy to work with you to help redesign your website. Use the contact button located below and let's get redesigning!  

This article by Hunter Jensen, CEO of Barefoot Solutions, was originally published in the July 2008 edition of PHP Architect, a print magazine for PHP Professionals. It is the fourth article in a five part series on some of the different legal issues surrounding the web development industry. Modern day patents originated from a specific form of Letters Patent. These were decrees handed down by a monarchy granting exclusive monopoly rights to the recipient for a specific and often broad range of business activities. Patent laws have come a long way since then, but the basic premise is the same. A government provides monopolistic rights to the creator of an invention for a limited time. The justification here is to provide an incentive structure that is conducive to promoting progress and innovation. But why, as professionals working with PHP, do we need to care about patents? Most small software development shops and startups will run their entire course without ever securing a patent. We should care because most small software development shops will infringe upon a software patent during the ordinary course of business. Patent infringement lawsuits, regardless if you win or lose, are expensive propositions. Further, we should care because they are threatening the software development industry as a whole. They are stifling innovation and creating massive barriers to entry. Major changes need to be made to fix the current system in the U.S. and across the world. First, a little background on intellectual property laws and patents. The U.S. system will be discussed here because it has one of the broadest covering patent systems in the world, and is the basis for many of the software patent issues that are affecting the industry globally. The United States Constitution states that: “Congress Shall Have Power To […] promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries”. This one sentence contains the entire justification for the U.S. copyright and patent system. Patents are not the right to use your invention, but rather the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing patented goods and services. Inventors must apply for patents which are then reviewed by government officials and awarded or denied based on their merit. In the United States, this is handled by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (U.S.P.T.O). They base their judgments on three main criteria. In order to be awarded a patent, the idea presented must be novel (new), useful, and nonobvious. A patent will not be considered new if: The invention was publicly known before it was supposedly “invented” by the patent applicant The invention was explained or described in any publication more than one year prior to the date that the application is filed The invention was used or offered for sale in a public manner more than one year prior to the filing date. The actual rules are more detailed than this, but are fairly clear in their application. The Useful requirement for patents is generally used only to throw out frivolous applications and is most often very easily met for software patent applications. The Nonobvious requirement is by far the most difficult to predict and judge properly. The rules state that not only must the invention be different from any prior art (novel), but it must also be a nonobvious extension or improvement on any prior art. This is judged by determining whether a person “of ordinary skill in the art” would consider something obvious. For example, as a person of excruciatingly ordinary skill in the art of computer programming, it seems obvious to me that, in an online shopping system, the less clicks required to checkout the better. Therefore, given prior art of a two-click checkout process, a one-click process seems to be an obvious extension. Unfortunately, as we will see, the judgments of the USPTO do not always follow my intuition. A common misconception is that you have to actually copy another person’s invention in order to infringe on a patent. While this is true for copyright, it is possible to infringe on a patent while being completely unaware of its existence. Lack of knowledge is considered irrelevant in a patent infringement case. Another area of confusion is where exactly patents are enforceable. While it is true that patents are only enforceable in the country in which they were issued, international trade agreements make it very reasonable to obtain similar patents in many other countries, thereby making them internationally enforceable. Software patents are only one specific form of patents. Surprisingly, they are available in most countries with a mature set of intellectual property laws; Even those countries that specifically do not allow them. This is achieved by working around the letter of the law and ignoring the spirit entirely. For example, in the United States software patents were not valid in the 1980s because they were regarded as “printed matter”. The federal government ruled that they were simply written instructions on how to perform a task and therefore outside the scope of the patent office. Further, the USPTO has always held that scientific truths or algorithms expressing those truths cannot be patented. No corporation can own e=mc2. In the mid-90s the “Beauregard Claim” was developed and shown to be lawful, and it changed the landscape of software development for the worse. While it was still unlawful to patent a set of written instructions, the Beauregard claim sought patent protection for a computer readable storage device (hard drive, floppy disk, CD-ROM) which contains the specific written instructions. This patent was awarded, creating a precedent that was further litigated, and now nearly all software patents contain some form of the Beauregard claim. Armed with some general knowledge on software patents, we can now examine where the problems lie. As I said above, the purpose of patents in the United States is to promote progress. Most generally, the problem is that software patents do not achieve their purpose. In fact, the argument can be made that they actually stifle innovation, having the opposite of the intended effect. They are stifling innovation because the USPTO awards patents for very standard software development methodologies. Techniques that any PHP programmer uses in their day-to-day coding can quite often be patented. This makes creating web applications an intellectual property minefield where one misstep could lead to a patent infringement lawsuit. The most highly publicized case that illustrates this issue is the notorious Amazon one-click patent. The invention they claimed was the concept of storing a user’s personal and payment data so that, in one click, they could complete a checkout. They considered this idea so innovative that they applied for a patent. The scary part is that it was awarded. No prior art could be found, and it was considered nonobvious by a patent reviewer. Later, Amazon sued Barnes and Noble for patent infringement for providing similar functionality on their application. The lawsuit ultimately ended in a settlement requiring Barnes and Noble to remove this feature from their website. It now takes at minimum two clicks of the mouse to checkout on barnesandnoble.com. Anyone can imagine the millions of online stores which could benefit from this feature, but the Amazon patent prevents this from happening. As developers, an example that might hit closer to home would be the lawsuit filed by Eolas against Microsoft Corporation. The lawsuit claimed that Michael Doyle, the president of Eolas, successfully developed a manner to seamlessly embed content into a Web page. We know these as the <embed>, <object>, and <applet> tags. Because of the victorious lawsuit and Microsoft’s failure on appeal, Microsoft was forced to change the functionality in Internet Explorer 6 surrounding how they activated ActiveX controls. Microsoft released the patch in 2006, and many websites stopped functioning correctly. Microsoft’s solution was to require the user to click any ActiveX control first to activate it, and then they could interact with it. My company, Barefoot Solutions, was managing several projects at the time that were affected. Most notably, embedded video players now had to be clicked twice in order to be played – once to activate, and again to play. This was infuriating. Fortunately for developers and users, someone developed a workaround in which Javascript was used to output the embed tags, and Microsoft never plugged that hole. But as Tim Berners-Lee pointed out in a letter to the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 2003, the problem was severe considering the millions of websites with historical significance that are no longer being managed. These were affected and never updated. Regardless, we see how much damage one patent can have on the Web. These are only two examples of software patents with major implications in which ultimately the common internet user is the loser. Netcraft estimates that as of January 2007, 155,583,825 websites are violating at least one software patent. When these magnitudes of people are violating the law, it is natural to suspect that the law itself might be the problem. Another major issue with software patents is that avoiding liability is impossible. Not just difficult, but literally impossible. First, there are millions of patents. The idea of reviewing all patents to ensure that your new invention does not infringe on one is just not feasible. The tools for patent research are still very ineffective. More importantly, in the United States, patent applications are not publicized. Even if it were feasible to research every patent to ensure that your invention did not infringe upon one, it would still be possible for a patent to finally be awarded – the application review can take several years – in which case your invention would then be infringing on a valid patent. This is a major flaw in the logic of the U.S. system and is unfair to any inventors, including software developers. Finally, software patents are causing a huge drain on resources that otherwise could be used on innovation. The End Software Patents project estimates that 15% of all new patents are software patents. Their report shows that approximately $11.2 billion is spent annually on software patent litigation. This number refers only to those lawsuits which actually make it to litigation. Legal fees in the many lawsuits or licensing agreements that are reached before ever getting to litigation are not included, so the actual expense is much higher. One significant cause for this drain on resources is the existence of so-called patent trolls. These firms buy up patents and seek out infringement cases as their primary means of revenue. Bruce Perens, a leader in the Free Software and Open Source community, dubs these firms patent parasites. Yet we cannot place the blame with these firms, but rather the system that incentivizes this behavior and makes it lawful. These parasites force patent holders to spend their resources on legal fees, as opposed to research and development, thus stifling innovation on a large scale. Many would say however that we need software patents in order to protect inventors and provide incentives for major investments in innovation. There is evidence however that innovation will occur without the existence of software patents. Through the 1980s, software patents did not exist in the United States. Some of the most important concepts that we rely on today were created during this time, showing that we do not need a software patent system to allow for progress. These concepts include: the word processor, spreadsheet, database, email, the World Wide Web, audio-video compression/decompression, the basic elements of the graphical user interface and the fundamentals of all modern operating systems. Why then do we continue to support a system that stifles innovation and is unnecessary? As Bill Gates wrote, “If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.” This paints a dismal picture for the future of the web development industry. So as developers, what can we do to protect our business? Unfortunately, the answer is not very promising. First, many lawyers will advise you to not read up on software patents. This seems counterintuitive, but is often the safest play. The reason is that willful infringement of a patent can involve much larger damages awarded in an infringement lawsuit. Further, U.S. law states that only patent attorneys can judge whether or not your concept infringes on a certain patent. Laymen are unable to properly determine the scope of a claim in any patent. So, if you were to read a patent and decide that your concept does not infringe, the federal court would not agree that you were able to make this judgment, and you could then be sued for willful infringement. Thus, in nearly all cases, the risks greatly outweigh any benefits, and it is best to not educate yourself on the current patents in software development. Another recommendation is to be sure to place the liability for patent infringement in the hands of the owners of the intellectual property. In an earlier article I suggested that for a freelance PHP programmer, your development agreement should include a ‘Work for Hire’ clause that provides all intellectual property rights to the client. It is also important to include an Indemnity clause stating that the client will pay any legal fees or damages awarded due to a lawsuit for copyright or patent infringement. This will help shield you from some of the liability in the case that you unknowingly infringed upon a patent. Another method of shielding yourself or your company is to purchase patent infringement insurance. These policies will pay for legal fees and/or any damages that are incurred as a result of an infringement lawsuit. Unfortunately, the premiums for this kind of policy are often very high, and as such this is not very feasible for freelance developers and small businesses. In reality though, there is not much you can do to fully protect yourself from liability. In medicine, malpractice lawsuits are just part of the risk of being a doctor. In software development, patent infringement lawsuits are currently part of the risk as well. Ultimately what we must do is get involved to fix our broken system. Supporting organizations like End Software Patents (ESP) and the Free Software Foundation that fight software patents is a good start. Our very livelihood is in danger, and it is our responsibility to protect ourselves, our business, and the Web.