Website Tips and Tricks

After months of creating a beautiful web design, your business site still isn’t seeing the traffic you’d hoped for.

Likely, this is because you are neglecting to take into account user-friendliness. User-friendliness is just as important as having a beautiful design, yet it’s something many businesses neglect.

A website that is user friendly will help provide customers with the ultimate online experience, which can increase site traffic and potentially increase sales and revenue.

But, how do you ensure that your site is user-focused?

In this article, we’ll cover the top five user friendly design tips for business websites.

1. Well-Formatted Content

When it comes to website content, you need to remember that your users aren’t coming to your site in search of an 18th-century novel.

Users read websites differently than they read other forms of content. Instead of reading word for word, users tend to skim content for the main points. Therefore, in order to create a user friendly design, you need to make sure your content is easy to skim.

This means instead of writing huge blocks of text, you’ll need to break up your content with headings, subheadings, short paragraphs, bullets, and lists.

2. Mobile-Friendly

A mobile-friendly website is no longer an added bonus, it’s a necessity.

In fact, according to a study by the internet monitoring firm StatCounter, mobile use has officially surpassed desktop use.

To make sure your site is mobile-friendly, you’ll first want to test it by using Google’s mobile site tester. And, there are web-based mobile site builders available that can help you put together a mobile version of your site free of charge.

3. Quick Loading Times

Out of all the things that users find frustrating about websites, a slow loading time is perhaps at the top of the list.

In fact, 47% of users want a site to load in two seconds or less and 40% of users will abandon a site if it takes more than three seconds to load.

A slow site not only affects your user’s experience. It also has a direct influence on your site’s ranking and its bounce rate. There are many free tools out there to test the speed of your site so make sure to take advantage of them.

Limiting the use of third-party site plugins as well as widgets can help improve your speed.

4. Easy Navigation

Making your website easy to navigate is a huge aspect of creating a user friendly design.

If you’re looking for a navigation menu that is simple to use and appears consistently on all browsers, JavaScript and HTML menus tend to be the best.

Your navigation should also be free of clutter. Limiting the number of options in your menu can help ensure this. Only use sub-navigation menus if you have a large site with lots of information.

5. White Space

While all the information on your site is important, there are certainly some elements you want to pop out to your users more than others.

This is where white space comes in.

White space refers to the empty space on your page that helps highlight the page’s most important elements. White space allows you to get creative with the other colors you use without creating chaos.

Any industry niche can take advantage of the benefits that white space has to offer. Need an example? This parcel forwarding service site makes excellent use of this design tactic.

Wrap Up on User Friendly Design

Follow these tips for website user-friendliness, and you’ll be well on your way to increasing your site’s traffic and conversion rates.

Of course, user-friendliness is only one of the many ways to increase your site’s traffic and rank. For more ways to do so, check out our tips about how hiring a local SEO expert can help improve your rank!

People spend generously to make their big day unforgettable, so wedding e-commerce is a huge industry with fierce competition.

Global e-commerce sales are rapidly trending up, and you can’t afford to miss out!

Read on if you are serious about increasing your online sales! Here we’ll discuss the importance of web analytics for your wedding E-commerce site.

The Importance Of Web Analytics

Why Web Analytics?

Simply put, web analytics is the cornerstone of a performance-driven website. Simply wishing your wedding E-commerce be successful won’t cut it. Numbers are important as they provide you with a definitive picture of what’s going on.

The power of analytics lies in giving you a clear, objective picture of what works and what doesn’t. For example, social media likes and shares are a direct measure of a post’s popularity. This is web analytics at its most basic form.

Analytics gives you the power to measure website performance, see which products sell and what your customers really want. But this is not as straightforward as counting likes.

Web Analytics and Wedding Website Performance

With a wedding E-commerce website, you can’t just check likes and 5-star reviews to determine performance. That’s where advanced web analytics come in.

In order to rule the future of your business, you need to actively track your metrics, establish goals and monitor your key performance indicators.

Efficient analytics will enable you to track a number of parameters, including:

• Where your visitors are coming from (traffic and leads)
• How much traffic converts to leads and how many leads convert to sales
• The times when your site has most of its sales
• Keyword effectiveness in generating leads and sales
• The best time of the day to make new offerings and reach out to your potential customers

So, good web analytics will empower you to optimize your marketing budget and supercharge your sales. Especially in the wedding industry where competition is fierce and offerings are individually expensive, a small number of sales can make the whole difference between growth and stagnation.

If You Are Not Doing it…

… your competitors will.

Most small and mid-sized businesses overlook web analytics and ongoing reporting. That way, they miss out on a huge chunk of their market.

You don’t want to do that mistake for your wedding E-commerce site.

Businesses that leverage the power of statistics have a clear understanding of their visitor profile. If you know the age, sex, occupation and other crucial details about your customers, you can fine-tune your website offerings to increase your sales.

Setting Up Web Analytics

As with most business decisions, there are two ways to get your hands on web analytics. You can either hire a 3rd party company to manage all analytics and customer tracking for your website, or you can have your own IT team handle it.

Thankfully, there are many accessible analytics tools, and most modern websites come with at least some form of basic website statistic software package already installed. Some of the most popular such packages are Webalizer and AWStats, both of which are easy to use. Google also offers their own free enterprise analytics solution.

Whatever you choose for your wedding website, you will do well to remember the importance of web analytics in identifying what your customers want and where you should be spending your marketing and IT budget.

Need reliable web monitoring? Contact us now and find out how we can help!

Nothing brings a business to a halt quite like server outage.

When this happens, employee productivity wanes, sales suffer, and your bottom line is directly impacted.

The good news is there are a few easy steps you can follow now to maximize server uptime in the future, helping to ensure that both production and performance stay high.

Today, we’re discussing a few of these tips, and why they’re so important to the success of your company.

Ready to learn more? Let’s get started!

1. Restrict Server Access

One of the most common causes of server malfunction is human error. Remember Amazon’s enormous AWS outage earlier this year that caused many major Internet sites to shut down temporarily?

An employee was debugging Amazon’s billing system and in the process, accidentally disrupted a server. This started a succession of server outages as subsystems across the network began to shut down as well.

To the greatest extent possible, limit access to your server room. Put steps in place to make sure that only qualified and authorized personnel have access to these critical systems.

Whether by malintent or simply incidental, employees with unauthorized access can wreak havoc in such an environment just by pressing the wrong button. Keep the doors locked and require permission to manipulate any settings.

2. Invest in an Uninterruptable Power Supply

In the event that your business loses power, an Uninterruptable Power Supply, or UPS, can ensure server uptime for the duration of the outage.

Most UPS systems will not only restore power but will also clean it. This helps prevent any surges or power spikes from negatively impacting your systems.

Almost every industry vertical can benefit from a UPS system that helps maintain a steady stream of power.

From a kitchen design showroom using smart technology to guide shoppers and promote products to a hospital requiring access to critical medical systems and equipment, everyone can benefit from the added assurance.

3. Perform Routine Backups and Maintenance

While you rarely anticipate a server outage, it’s helpful to routinely create a backup of its data and operating system. This can help promote server uptime by getting your teams up and running quickly in the event of a hardware malfunction.

By loading the new systems with the existing data, you’ll be able to get back to work and reduce downtime.

In the same vein, you should also create and implement a preventative maintenance plan for your server upkeep. Delegate a responsible, authorized employee or team of employees to oversee these tasks.

Want to Maximize Server Uptime? Start Here!

Another way to ensure that your systems are always available when you need them is to invest in a website monitoring service. This way, you’ll be notified immediately if your site crashes or becomes unavailable, tipping you off that there may be an internal error.

Our multi-check technology helps make sure that your website is performing properly across myriad checkpoints. We have strategic monitoring locations around the world to verify specific issues and help you plan your course of corrective action.

To learn more about what we can offer, feel free to contact us today. We’ll keep you confident and connected!

As the owner of a gambling website, you know that you’re facing tons of competition. But do you know just how stiff that competition really is?

Online gambling is growing and there’s little to indicate that’s going to change. In fact, thanks to readily available sites and apps, users are turning away from brick and mortar casinos and heading for gambling websites.

So what should you do if you’re just not getting the numbers you’re after? The answer lies within the realm of digital marketing. Read on for some easy ways you can use digital marketing to boost your gambling site!

Give Your Gambling Website A Makeover

If you’re struggling to bring in the traffic you need to profit, you’ll want to start at square one: your site.

But you’re likely not a web design expert, so how can you know what looks good and what doesn’t?

Simple, just look at some examples.

For instance, we’ll take a look at one of the biggest casino websites on the net, MPLcasino. Browse the site for a moment and look at the way it’s designed. Pay particular attention to the things you’re interacting with the most.

Notice how the menus are laid out in a clear manner. You don’t have to wonder where anything is, it’s all laid out for you.

This is all part of the UX or user experience. Your UX is perhaps the most important element to your design. After all, who would want to visit a site where navigation is difficult and nothing is made clear?

When you’re remodeling your site, design it with the user in mind. The more your focus on your UX, the more accessible your site will be to a general audience.

Finally, make sure once your site is up, it stays up. Invest in a plan to keep your site available to your market at all times or risk losing out on thousands of dollars.

Don’t Forget Social Media

Your site is going to bring in tons of money with a great UX. But how can you draw users there in the first place? Sure, great content is an absolute must.

But you’ll also want to make sure your brand is easily reachable on social media platforms. With billions of people waiting to find out about your brand, social media is one of the best tools available… and it’s free!

If you’re not already on sites like Facebook and Twitter, that should change today. Not only is social media a great way to find out more about your demographic, but you can interact with customers and cross-link to your website.

Run Promotions

One of the best ways to get users to your gambling website is by offering a little something for free. It won’t cost you much and can bring in tons of additional revenue.

Consider offering a discounted purchase on chips, or give them the first slots spin for free. Never underestimate how much people love the concept of free.

Enjoy Increased Profits!

Follow these steps and you’ll have more visitors to your gambling website than ever before. But don’t forget how important it is to keep your website up.

Be sure to get in touch about how your site can be professionally monitored. You’ll have the assurance of a safe, secure site so you can focus on growing your business!

The world of online marketing is opening doors far and wide for companies and consumers to make new connections.

A user can easily get on a search engine and within seconds find an industry expert in a variety of health specialties. However, it doesn’t necessarily help a user to get results for businesses miles away, as in another city or even another country.

This is why a local SEO expert is crucial to making search results the best they can be.

For users, it ensures a search comes up with the most relevant opportunities on the web.

For businesses and entrepreneurs, local SEO offers a direct line of communication to an immediate market. It boosts the chance to create brand loyalty and conversion rates by letting companies meet users where they are, virtually and geographically.

A Traditional SEO Provider vs. A Local SEO Expert

The main distinction between traditional and local search is content vs. location.

Traditional SEO providers will look at your industry in its entirety. They will analyze big competitors like worldwide providers or established experts, no matter where their brick and mortars are. This is because content is key, and industry content drives trends.

On the other hand, a local SEO expert focuses on an immediate area. He or she works to create engaging content based on a specific market.

In this case, geography is crucial to anything from deciding keywords to analyzing the competition. It narrows the focus for an SEO strategy, and the more focused, the better the results.

The following are five ways a local SEO expert can help build your SEO strategy and improve your health site’s performance.

1. Claim Your Business Listing

Google My Business is the free tool your health site needs in order to reach local consumers.

Optimizing your profile gives you a chance to appear on Google’s three-pack. The three-pack is a list of the three most relevant search results based on location and other information.

Google My Business allows your local SEO expert to add an address, contact number, photos, and reviews to your profile.

When all the information is uploaded, the listing feels almost like a company tour to the user.

Web visitors are able to gather a quick understanding of who you are and what you do, thanks to all the resources provided at the click of a button. This listing allows your health site to showcase your establishment’s quality of care.

Data ranging from your available operating hours to recent reviews on your health services help paint a picture for potential clients.

2. Write Targeted Ad Copy

Appearing on an organic search result is one thing, but enticing consumers to choose your listing is another.

This is why targeting your ad’s copy as much as possible is crucial, especially for local SEO success.

An ad’s copy includes the title and description.

Your title needs to be as direct as possible. Your local SEO expert will help you get to the point without wasting space on unnecessary words like “Home” or “Blog” – which are often the titles of the section your link is under.

Instead, you can incorporate local terms to show how relevant your ad is.

For instance, if you are a health provider in London, mention the kind of practice you do and include “London” as well.

3. Utilize Links Better Than Before

Links are what all SEO strategies come back to.

No matter how near or far, the kind of industry or the overall goal, the only way an online consumer has access to you is through links.

Some companies make the mistake of only using internal links on their site. This helps users navigate from learning about the company to scrolling through specific services.

However, a local SEO expert knows including your link on popular blogs and industry sites can significantly improve performance.

For example, featuring your health site on a page like UKHealthAlert.com can redirect users to your site. Often times, this increases the level of trust users have from the start and gets them excited to see what you have to offer.

4. Track Competitors

One of the main ways to build your SEO strategy is to see what competitors are already doing.

This can quickly become a confusing, daunting task when looking at all the health sites out there. However, if you narrow your comparison to what the trends in your area are, the process is much more effective.

A local SEO expert can do his or her job much faster when the list of competitors goes from worldwide to area-based. They can get an in-depth look at what nearby health offices are doing and better determine what your site needs to do to catch up.

Plus, having a geographical barrier on which competitors to focus on improves the long-term planning process.

On a global scale, new companies pop up left and right. This requires a higher sense of urgency and awareness when tracking organic search performance against other health sites.

However, it is not as common for new health offices to frequently open in your region. This lowers the need to be on the lookout for competing sites, which allows for more time to focus on your site’s success.

5. Choose Keywords with Proximity in Mind

Local SEO experts understand the micro-moments happening in your area.

They know keywords go beyond what competitors are doing or what industry standards are. Keyword optimization can be as simple as adding “near me”, or ” in (insert city or region).”

Adding this small detail can have large successes.

It responds to the immediate need of consumers to know, buy, or go somewhere in the near future.

This type of SEO strategy feels as natural for the advertiser as it does for the audience. It is a direct result of what we do every day — look for immediate satisfaction and convenient options for our needs.

Local SEO and Web Monitoring: Your Perfect Match

If you are not focusing your health site’s organic search strategy in your area, you are overdue for an appointment with a local SEO expert.

Make the switch from a traditional umbrella to a targeted, in-depth approach.

This can dramatically increase brand awareness and loyalty from the consumers around you, which gets more people in the door.

Once your health site is SEO-optimized, make sure it’s always up and running. Contact us today to learn more about our website monitoring services!

Potential customers are all around. But if they don’t know you exist, they’ll never spend a dollar with you. That’s where local HVAC SEO comes into play.

Even if you’ve engaged in all the best SEO practices for your site, if you ignore local SEO you’re missing out on business.

Local SEO is the science of ranking as highly as possible in local search results.

Almost half of all Google searches are for local services and products. What does that mean to your HVAC business?

Simply stated, your local HVAC SEO better be good.

Here, we’ll take a look at 7 ways you can improve your local visibility and drive more business.

Let’s get started.

1. Boost Your HVAC SEO By Getting Listed On Google My Business (GMB)

This is where it all starts.

People searching locally are mostly looking for a location and address. This free tool enables you to list you NAP (name, address and location) and some additional information like directions and hours.

This information goes directly on Google Search and Google Maps.

Google will verify you by sending a letter or giving you a call. After you’re approved, you’ll get basic data on how customers find you and where they come from.

You can use this data to further inform your local SEO strategy moving forward.

2. Utilize Google Posts In Your GMB

Starting in June of 2017, Google introduced Google Posts for every GMB account.

This allows you to update local offerings, post about deals and announce upcoming events through your GMB account.

3. Keep Your NAP Consistent And Updated Across All Channels

Keeping up with your GMB listing isn’t enough. You need to make sure your location and contact information is consistent and updated across all your online platforms.

These include:

• Your website
• Review sites
• Social media pages
• Directory listings

If any of these contain inaccurate or inconsistent information, Google’s search algorithms won’t look favorably on it.

4. Use Schema Markup

This is a code you embed into your website’s HTML that improves the way your page is presented in search results.

It helps Google recognize elements of your page and lets them know what the content of your page means.

If you don’t have the knowledge to do this yourself, look for a freelance developer that can help.

5. Optimize Your Content, Tags and URL

Your Content, Tags, URL, headers and meta descriptions need to include your city or region and the target keyword for the page.

This lets Google know what location your page is relevant to and the content of the page. It’ll help them get your page properly indexed for searches.

Kaiser AC does a great job of this on their site.

6. Work on Local Link Building

Strong link profiles are vital to performing well in searches.

This strategy is definitely a long-term tactic. If someone tells you they can get a bunch of links fast, beware.

7. Get Your Business On Review Sites

Before people decide where to take their business, they look at reviews and testimonials of your past work. This makes getting your HVAC business on all the relevant review sites absolutely critical.

These include:

• Foursquare
• Yelp
• White Pages
• Yellow Pages
• Angie’s List
• Yahoo Local
• Google+ Local

If customers can’t find reviews of your work, chances are they won’t bring you their business.

Local HVAC SEO Is Critical To Your Success

If you’re missing the boat on your local SEO, you’re missing out on business that could push you to the next level.

But remember, even with the best SEO, if your site isn’t up when a customer lands on it, you’ll lose them.

Contact us and get the most reliable website monitoring you can find.

Having a fashion e commerce website can be an excellent business, but in order to sell your clothes and accessories, you’ve got to get people onto your website first.

A great way to boost website traffic and increase your sales is to use search engine optimization. This is a method that helps rank your website higher on search engines, which leads to views and visibility for your site.

This is important considering almost half of all e-commerce traffic comes from a Google search.

Keep reading to learn 5 SEO tips for your fashion website.

1. Website Layout

This might not seem related to SEO, but it definitely has a huge impact on both SEO as well as keeping customers on your website.

Try and keep things looking neat and ordered on your main page by putting products in distinct categories. This will make the products easy to find and also easily searchable, which will boost your SEO.

The categories and organization serve to create keywords built right into your website. If you look at NICKI brand’s official site, you can see how they’ve clearly separated the items into categories, which makes the site easy to sort through and easy to search for.

2. Fashion E Commerce Website Keyword Research

We mention keywords earlier, so let’s define them. Keywords are specific things that people often type into search engines.

Doing keyword research is a huge part of SEO; you want to include keywords people often search for within your fashion e commerce website, so that your site will show up when people search for those words.

However, you want to be careful not to use generic keywords that hundreds of other sites are using. Think about it: people might often search for “black boots”, but how many hundreds of thousands of websites use the words “black boots” as their product page names?

Stick to more unique keywords and make sure your product pages named after the product itself instead of generic, overused descriptors.

3. Unique Product Pages

A mistake many sites make is to re-use the same names and descriptions of products for multiple different product pages. By implementing unique meta for each product page, your website will stand out in search results against websites using similar meta for multiple products.

4. Remove Out of Stock Items

Have you ever tried to go to a product, have it been out of stock, and then the website re-directed you somewhere else? It is annoying, to say the least, and it can frustrate your customers, leading them away from your site.

If you’re out of an item or a product, you should remove it from your pages and update the product page to reflect the stock status. Keep the customers on your website by suggested alternate items on the page as well.

5. Fashion Blog

Having a fashion blog on your website can be tricky, but when done right, blogging can be a great way to increase your traffic and boost SEO.

Avoid creating a blog that is sales-y or that pushes your own products too much. Good content can boost brand recognition, conversion rates, and customer engagement, which brings more people to your site and increases your ranking.

Bottom Line

Your clothes can be the most trendy and stylish things out there right now, but that won’t mean anything if you can’t get people on your site. Following these strategies is a great way to increase your fashion website’s rankings and increase website traffic.

If you need any more help with SEO, check out our e-commerce marketing guide for more tips and tricks. You can also contact us with any questions.