Your ecommerce site has to make a great first impression. Otherwise, shoppers won’t stick around to see what you’re selling.

Without some vital features, shoppers tend to get disappointed and move on to the competition. Luckily, a few tweaks to your website is all it takes to give consumers what they expect and more.

While having wonderful and useful products does help, your website determines whether anyone sees those products.

1. Simple Shopping Cart

No one likes a complex checkout process. Imagine if you had to fill out multiple pages of long forms before you could pay for your items in a brick and mortar store. You’d likely leave instead of dealing with the hassle. The average shopping cart abandonment rate is over 69%. While part of that is because shoppers just aren’t ready to buy yet, 37% abandon because they don’t want to create an account and 28% believe the checkout process is too complicated.

Keep things simple and offer a guest checkout option. Those two things will boost conversions.

2. Fast Loading Pages

Online shoppers aren’t the most patient. After all, they shop online because it’s faster and more convenient. If your ecommerce site takes too long to load, they’ll move on. This includes product pages that are full of images. According to Google, two seconds or less is the optimal page loading speed. The faster your pages load, the happier consumers will be.

3. SSL

No one wants to enter their personal details on a site that doesn’t make security a priority. If your ecommerce site isn’t using SSL, shoppers will look elsewhere. They just don’t want to risk compromising their identity. SSL certificates are an easy way to encrypt data on your website and keep shoppers safer.

4. Easy To Use Navigation

Navigation is a crucial element for any website. With ecommerce sites, it’s important for helping consumers find exactly what they’re looking for. This includes having an obvious search function. If your menu is buried or has too many sub-menus, it could be too difficult to use. The idea is to make it easy and enjoyable for shoppers to find products. The easier it is, the more likely they are to buy.

5. Noticeable CTAs

Far too many ecommerce sites have a beautiful product page that goes into infinite detail on features and benefits. However, that page is missing something – a noticeable call to action. The “buy” button might be tucked off to the side or blend in with the background.

If there isn’t an obvious way to add something to an online cart, shoppers aren’t going to stay on your site. They want it to be obvious at first glance on how to buy the product(s) they’re viewing.

6. Clear Product Images/Videos

A single product image isn’t always enough. Ecommerce shoppers want the digital version of a brick and mortar shopping experience. This means they want to see products from every angle. Add multiple, clear images of every product and allow shoppers to zoom in to see details clearly.

You could even add videos that show products in action. This helps consumers see if the product is right for them. Just be sure that videos and images are compressed for the web to avoid long page loading times.

7. Responsive Design

Your shoppers aren’t just coming from desktops and laptops anymore. The majority may be shopping from their phones and tablets. Is your ecommerce site ready for that? If your site isn’t ready to support a mobile audience, you could be losing customers. Many WordPress themes are designed to be mobile-friendly. Use this to your advantage to create a site that works on any device.

8. Personalisation

One of Amazon’s best features is personalisation. It’s also how they keep consumers coming back. If possible and relevant to your site, incorporate personalisation to recommend related products. If shoppers are logged in, add a welcome message to the header and recommend products based on past purchases. It’s a simple feature, but highly effective.

9. Simple Design

Intricate designs might sound good on paper, but in reality, they’re difficult to use. Complex designs often create cluttered pages and make it impossible to see navigational elements, product images, and shopping carts. It’s better to use a simple design with ample white space to ensure consumers are able to interact easily.

10. Engaging Product Pages

Finally, shoppers expect engaging product pages from your ecommerce site. This means uncluttered pages filled with product images, videos and details. Place the most important details and images near the top. After all, an infinite product page is just annoying.

Are you ready to give your customers everything they expect from your site? Contact me today to learn more about my website development services.

Image: rawpixel.com

It’s a satisfying feeling to finally get your WordPress site up and running. You’re feeling so confident that you’re ready to take on the world, or a least, your own WordPress maintenance.

After all, the hard part’s over, right? Before you get too excited, you might want to think about hiring a WordPress service provider.

Regular maintenance and site tweaks are more difficult than you might believe. If you’re already trying to do it on your own, you can reduce your stress and save your sanity by considering the following three tips.

Stay Within Your Budget

Saving money is always a good thing. It’s also why managing your site yourself seems like a great idea. Instead of a monthly fee, you save money by doing it yourself. However, you may not be saving as much as you think.

First of all, maintenance tasks take time. This is time you’re spending away from your business. Add up all the extra hours and hiring an expert service provider suddenly seems more cost effective. Another thing to consider is experience.

How much do you know about WordPress? Is it enough to reduce the risk of a hack? In 2016, data gathered by Sucuri showed that WordPress is still the most hacked CMS, accounting for 74% of all hacked CMS platforms in 2016. A hacked site could ruin your business. If user data is leaked or data destroyed (that’s not backed up), it could easily cost you thousands or more to handle everything.

A professional WordPress service provider knows WordPress inside and out. You’ll save money and headaches simply by letting an expert take control.

Gain More Time

WordPress compares WordPress maintenance to getting regular work done on your car. In most cases, it’s usually quicker to let professionals handle the maintenance than try to do it yourself. The same holds true with managing your site.

You’ll not only save your sanity, but gain more time for managing your business. WordPress has created a monthly maintenance calendar. A quick look is enough to show you that it’s not something you can do in a few minutes each month. Plus, you also have to consider the learning curve.

Trying to find the right settings and plugins, without corrupting your site, takes valuable time. Figuring out how to tweak your site for optimal performance isn’t a skill you learn overnight. Experts have spent years studying WordPress, which allows them to take care of your site far faster than you could do it on your own.

Get The Highest Quality

Your WordPress site deserves the best service and your visitors deserve the best website. Managing your site on your own means your site may have problems you don’t even notice, such as:

• Slow page loading speeds
• Broken links
• Major security flaws
• Outdated software (themes, plugins, WordPress core)
• Bad or no backups
• Site glitches

WordPress service providers know what to look for to prevent common problems. This means you get a smooth running website that offers the best experience for your visitors. You’ll also know that backups are available should the worst happen to your site. You’ve already invested in the site’s development. To maintain a quality website, you have to invest in its future as well.

Save Your Sanity Starting Today

It usually only takes two to three months to start feeling like you’re going crazy as you try to balance site maintenance, uploading new content and managing your business. Save time and money, while keeping your site at its best. Go ahead, save your sanity and hire an expert instead.

Does your WordPress site have issues? Find out today by contacting me about WordPress support.

Image: Carl Heyerdahl

After your website’s up and running, the job still isn’t completely done. You need support for your site.

Every WordPress site needs WordPress support to continue to look great and function smoothly. In many cases, support could just save your business.

Imagine a home without any maintenance. After a while, it’d fall apart. Without support for your WordPress website, it could fall apart too, taking your business with it.

1. Keep Your Site More Secure

Security is an issue with any website, but due to WordPress’s popularity, hackers love to target the platform. Outdated software, themes and plugins could leave your site vulnerable to threats. Depending on the severity of the hack, your business may not be able to recover.

Not only do security issues take your site offline, they also affect your rankings and destroy customer trust. Even the smallest businesses are vulnerable, as Rokenbok Education found out the hard way. Breaches happen all the time and the results can be catastrophic unless you have support to help prevent problems and fix issues after they happen.

2. Save Valuable Time

Think about how much time you spend writing a blog post. It’s a time consuming process and it’s why many businesses outsource the writing. The same is true with WordPress support. If you only have a small team or if you’re managing everything on your own, you may not have time to handle the support on your own. Ignoring it could lead to a hacked site and 45% of hacked sites see at least some loss of traffic as a result.

Instead of having to take risks with your business or ignoring other important business tasks, get professional WordPress support when you need it.

3. Add In New Features

Web design isn’t a static object. Think about how websites looked in the 90s and now compare them with today’s websites. There’s a significant difference. Today’s sites load faster, look cleaner and lay out information in a better way. If your business’s WordPress site looks like it hasn’t been touched for years, it will drive people away.

With the right support, you can stay on top of the latest WordPress trends, such as these 2017 trends. The last thing you want is to lose business to a competitor that just has a better performing website.

4. Optimise For Better Rankings

Using cleaner code, updating to a responsive site, adding in an SEO plugin and other types of optimisations are all great ways to boost rankings. Without WordPress support, you may watch your business’s site slide further down the list.

Your site needs to be optimised regularly to meet Google’s standards. While you can handle some things, such as keywords, other things require involve in-depth knowledge of the WordPress platform.

5. Install And Configure Themes And Plugins

Themes and plugins are what makes WordPress so popular and easy to customise. The problem is, if they’re not installed correctly or kept up to date, they could cause your website to crash, be vulnerable to security threats and/or function improperly. What happens if you install a new theme and suddenly, nothing works right? Rolling back might not work.

This is where WordPress support can help. Instead of just hoping all your current plugins are compatible with a new theme and vice versa, a professional can check for compatibility and ensure all settings are correct before you go live with the changes. This keeps your site online and prevents nasty security vulnerabilities from incorrect installations and sketchy themes and plugins.

6. Tweak Settings For Better Performance

Website performance is vital for providing a great visitor experience, leading to organic traffic from social sharing and online word-of-mouth referrals. The problem is poor WordPress support could leave your site sluggish and glitchy after a while. Poor performance, such as slow loading speeds and large images, could have a massive impact on conversions and overall traffic.

It’s hard to know what to do to boost performance on your own. Getting support means you have someone who knows what to look for, what tests to run and what changes to make to get and keep your site where it needs to be.

Get The WordPress Support You Need

WordPress support isn’t something you can put off. Your business needs it to keep running smoothly. Whether your site is brand new or has been around for years, start 2017 off right by getting it support to run at its best at all times.

Looking for ways to optimise and support your site? Contact Darren today to get started.

Image: unsplash

You think you’re saving money by keeping your old WordPress website just the way it is, but the opposite could be true.

Your older site could be driving away possible clients. After all, your site is often the first thing perspective clients see and something that looks like it hasn’t been changed in years isn’t going to make a great first impression.

The longer you wait to do a few upgrades to your WordPress site, the more clients that could be choosing the competition. Investing in your site today is like investing in a digital makeover for your business.

Site Style Ages Your Site

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the age of a website, unless the content itself is old. For other sites, it’s easy to see when they were last changed. Old table-based design and text heavy sites along with Flash animations throughout all show the age of your site. Web design trends have drastically changed from the 90s through today.

An old WordPress website makes clients think you’re neglecting the site, which makes them wonder about the quality of your service and products. All you get is a few seconds to make a good first impression and an outdated site isn’t the impression you want to make.

Older Features May Not Work

Many older features that were trending five years ago might not even be relevant now. For instance, Flash has been slowly fading away for years due to security problems. Plus, it’s not compatible with most mobile browsers. As browsers change, your old WordPress website might not even load properly. Instead of seeing a professional website, your clients see a disorganised mess. This just drives them away.

It’s Time To Go Mobile

Mobile devices are everywhere. This means a large part of your audience is likely searching for your on a mobile device. Odds are, your older WordPress site isn’t exactly mobile friendly. No one enjoys having to zoom in to view text or endlessly scrolling to read a single paragraph. Newer responsive themes not only help your site look good on all devices, but it may help with your search engine rank too. In fact, Google even has a tool to ensure your site meets the new mobile ranking changes Google applied in 2015.

Security Is Questionable

As you probably know, hackers are some of the hardest working people on the planet. It’s one of the reasons why WordPress rolls out updates regularly to make the core platform more secure. According to Sucuri, out of over 11,000 infected websites, 75% were WordPress sites. Old WordPress websites make visitors second guess the security of the site. To protect themselves, they leave. A newer site with the latest WordPress version is one way to keep visitors on your site.

It’s Hard To Find

If your WordPress site is old, it’s probably harder for potential clients to even find. Older sites often utilise outdated SEO practices, such as keyword stuffing. While that helped years ago, it could get your website listed as spam now. Older WordPress sites and themes might also use different coding techniques and features that hurts the rank as well. If clients can’t even find your website, it’s not going to help you.

Slow But Steady Doesn’t Help

Do you remember a time when the computers in the image above were the latest and greatest? Based on the technology when they were developed, they were fast and cutting edge. Now, they’re slow and can’t even begin to handle the needs of most programs and apps. The same holds true for an old WordPress website.

At most, visitors expect to only have to wait eight seconds for a site to load. After that point, you’re losing visitors. While some will wait, many see it as no different than the site being complete down. Outdated themes, plugins and WordPress versions means a slower site that drives visitors away before they even see your content.

Time For An Upgrade

Take a quick look at your site versus the competition. Does your site seem to be years behind? Your website works for you 24/7, but it could also work against your 24/7 if it’s too old. You’re constantly investing in your business to improve it. Your website is a crucial part of your business and your old WordPress website needs to be upgraded from time to time to look and function better, leading to more new clients.

Are you ready to try a newer site? Contact Darren today to discuss how to bring your site from the past to the present.

Image: Nicholas

It’s hard to deny that the Internet is a visual place, but how does that apply to conversion rates?

Using images within product descriptions, blog posts, calls-to-action and banners are all ways to improve views and website conversions. The key is learning to use images the right way.

The wrong image could cause your conversions to plummet. Before you add another image to your site, find out both the good and the bad to using images on your site.

Aids In Telling A Story

People are 80% more likely to read your content if it includes a colourful image. This is because the visual helps tell your story. It appeals to emotions, grabs attention and gives a quick glimpse into what the content might be about. If more people stick around to read your content or view product images, they’re more likely to see your CTAs and follow through.

The Downside To Bad Images

Not all images lead to better website conversions. Using completely irrelevant, phony looking stock photos or low quality images may drive visitors away. These images don’t add value to your site. Instead of helping, they simply send many of your visitors to competing sites.

Guides The Eye To Your CTA

When people see an image of someone else looking at something, their eyes are naturally drawn to whatever that person is looking at. For instance, if you want people to notice your CTA and convert, add an image of someone looking at the CTA. Using arrows works well too, but it’s not as personable.

Interactive Boosts Conversions More

Who doesn’t love interactive images? Adding features, such as zoomable product images, helps boost website conversions because it allows viewers to see the product more clearly. For the website Golfsmith, adding a rotating image to product descriptions boosted conversions by up to 40%.

Small Images Hurt Conversions

Some sites take images too far and add numerous small images everywhere. While you get more images, it also makes the page look more cluttered. Of course, it also makes images harder to see, even if you only have one or two on the page. Skinner Auctions saw a 329% increase in visitors filling out bid forms just by using a larger product image.

It’s also important to note that the file size of images can hurt conversions too. If your image takes too long to load, visitors may never see it. They may decide to move on. Keep image file sizes smaller to improve conversions.

Friendly Faces Encourage Click

Generic images are pretty to look at, but they don’t have much personality. When visitors are uncertain about performing a converting action, such as signing up for a newsletter or buying a product, a friendly face makes all the difference. For Medalia Art, replacing images of paintings with images of the artists (smiling, of course), website conversions increased by 95%.

Images Need Descriptions

No matter how perfect your image is, it’s not helping your site as much as you’d like if Google or other search engines can’t find it. Images help with SEO, leading more organic traffic to your site, but only if they have proper descriptions and names. Name your photos with a keyword or descriptive phrase. This helps Google find the image easily.

Stock Photos – To Use Or Not To Use

Stock photos are a highly debated topic. Most experts say they’re a bad idea. For instance, one site changed from a stock photo of a woman smiling to the actual company founder and saw conversions increase by 34%. The reasons they hurt conversions is because so many sites use the exact same images. They’re generic, too perfect and don’t provide anything original about your site.

On the other hand, stock photos are often free or cheap. This makes them appealing and easy to use, especially if you have small budget. The key is to make sure the photos you use are unique. A few ways to make stock photos help with conversions is by:

• Cropping
• Adding filters
• Inserting text, such as quotes or content titles
• Ensuring they match the content

While professional photography is still preferred by many, it’s also expensive. Testing custom stock photography first might be the better option for limited budgets.

Investing In Stock Photos

Investing in stock photos is an easy way to get high quality images to help boost website conversions. Free sites work well, but only if the photos are relevant and/or you customise them at least a little. If you’re customising, make sure the photo is listed as royalty free, meaning you’re free to edit it. With premium sites, the photos are higher quality and are used less often, but you will pay a fee per photo or per group of photos.

Does your website need a redesign before adding images? Contact Darren today to help boost website conversion with a better site to go with your quality images.

Image: Dai KE

If you want to boost your mobile conversions, you have to help your customers shop easier.

Everyone wants their online shopping experience to be straight-forward, quick and of course, easy. The more difficult and time consuming it is, the less likely a customer is to go through with a purchase.

Making a few changes to your WordPress website turns an awkward shopping experience into an incredible one. And remember, if your customers are happy, they’ll spread the word, leading to more new customers.

1. Use A Responsive Design

It should go without saying that you WordPress site should be responsive by now. A mobile friendly design is the first and most important step to help your customer shop easier on mobile devices. Imagine being a customer for a moment. Would you want to zoom in and out to see product details? What about scrolling side to side just to see the entire page? It’s frustrating.

A responsive design optimises your site to the screen size. You never know if someone’s using a tablet, phone or desktop. With this design, you’re always ready.

2. Improve Page Loading Times

Page loading times aren’t just important on desktops. Customers don’t have long attention spans and 57% of shoppers abandon sites if they don’t load within three seconds. With mobile now surpassing desktop, you can’t afford to let your slow loading mobile site send visitors to your competition. Reduce image sizes, clean up code, limit plugins and do anything else you can to speed up your site.

3. Include All Important Elements

If you really want to help your customers shop, include all the most important elements on your mobile site. It might sound obvious, but 21% of customers reported having to still go to the full site to shop, ask questions and complete transactions. Think about everything required to view products, contact support, view FAQs and make a purchase. Are all of these available easily on the mobile version of your site?

4. Think About UX

The user experience is critical on mobile. You want the design to be as easy to use as possible. When surveyed, 33% of customers said they had to zoom in just to read text and click in the right places. Even if text and images are large enough, what about your forms and navigation? Getting from product to checkout on mobile should be as easy as it is on desktop.

Another UX problem is entering information, such as contact details and payment information. Using WordPress plugins to ensure forms are easy to use and the right type of keyboard appears, such as numeric versus qwerty, drastically improves the overall experience.

5. Offer One-Click Call Support

Calls to businesses are expect to reach 73 billion by 2018 and that’s just from search alone. Customer support is key if you want to help your customers shop online. What if they have a question during the process? Filling out a contact form is cumbersome. Adding a one-click call button or link gives customers direct access to the support they need immediately.

6. Provide Mobile Payment Options

An overwhelming 56% of customers abandon their mobile shopping carts. While some of that is just a change of mind, part of it is difficult or security concerns during the checkout process. First, make the checkout process simple. The fewer steps, the better. Second, offer alternate payment options that don’t require the user to enter a credit card, especially as they may be shopping in public. Making it more convenient leads to more conversions.

7. Integrate More Images And Video

Mobile means limited real estate, so videos and images make it easier to explain products and services than pages of text. With 98% of millennials watching videos daily on their mobile devices, it’s easy to see that video on mobile is popular. Integrate it as part of your mobile site to make the most of the limited screen space. Quick videos also work well with the average customer’s limited attention span.

Bonus: Consider A Mobile App

Apps are becoming increasingly popular. If you want to give your customers an even easier way to shop on mobile, consider a mobile app. With an app, you could even offer location based discounts or use push notifications to encourage transactions.

Help Your Customers Shop From Anywhere

Mobile shopping continues to rise with the popularity of mobile devices. It’s easy and convenient. Help your customers shop wherever they are by ensuring your site is even easier to use than the desktop version. Optimise your site for mobile and it’ll work to drive conversions 24/7.

Does your WordPress site need a mobile makeover? Contact Darren today to ensure customers fall in love with your mobile website.

Image: Cristian Baron

Predictions of mobile overtaking desktop for search started the moment mobile search hit the mainstream.

Today, those predictions are a reality and getting your website mobile friendly is more important than ever. In the past, mobile friendly was more of a suggestion to be cutting edge, but today, it’s a requirement to stay competitive.

If you’re still on the fence about making the switch to a mobile or responsive design, consider all the benefits and what your audience prefers. You’ll easily see why making the change is the best decision for your website.

Improve Search Rank

If you haven’t already heard about Google’s mobile algorithm, Google added in a mobile component to its search algorithms in April 2015 to rank mobile friendly sites higher when users search on a mobile device. While some sites didn’t see much of a change, others saw their traffic either rise or drop, depending on how many of their users preferred mobile.

Google’s updating the mobile aspect again in May 2016. Google promises websites that are already mobile friendly won’t be affected, but others could see a negative impact following the update. Why take the chance? Google’s going mobile and just getting your website mobile friendly could boost your rank.

Reduce Bounce Rate

A high bounce rate doesn’t help your site rank well. It’s also an indication that your site isn’t impressing visitors, either with the design and/or your content. There are nearly 2 billion mobile users and over 1.7 billion desktop users. As you can see, mobile has overtaken desktop. With more users preferring mobile, especially for comparison shopping in stores or browsing while on the go, it’s vital to make sure your site provides an optimal experience.

No one wants to have to zoom in and out just to see the text on their screen. In fact, many users leave sites if they’re not mobile friendly. As your bounce rate rises, not only does your search rank start to fall, but you’re missing out on important conversions.

Improve Conversion Rate

Whether you’re selling products, building newsletter signups or trying to get customers to contact you about services, a high conversion rate is always the goal. A mobile optimised site sees as much as 160% increase in conversions. One study even shows UK retailers are missing out on £6.6 billion by not getting their websites mobile friendly.

If you’re targeting millennials, mobile is even more important. A poor mobile experience could leave at least 48% of your UK millennial audience dissatisfied with your business and that number jumps to 54% globally. A better experience leads to a higher conversion rate and skipping out on mobile could send customers straight to your mobile friendly competition.

Reach Your Audience Everywhere

Your audience is on a mixture of different screen sizes. You never know when someone may visit from a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. The top two devices used to search online are desktops/laptops at 91% and smartphones at 80%. If your website isn’t optimised for these screen sizes, you’re missing out on a large portion of your audience.

UK users spend two hours daily on average using their smartphones, which is twice as long as other devices. The reason for the increase is the ability to showroom shop, browse sites no matter where they are and quickly make purchases with a few taps of their finger.

Even if you have a brick and mortar store, a mobile optimised site allows visitors to check out products or the store itself before visiting and 43% of UK users have used their phones for just this purpose. If you want to reach your audience everywhere they are, getting your website mobile friendly is a must.

Mobile’s The Present And Future

The days of thinking mobile is just a passing fad are long over. Mobile is here to stay and now is the time to adapt. A responsive design gives you the best of both worlds – a mobile friendly site and a desktop friendly site. You can ensure your visitors are receiving an optimised version of your site, no matter what their screen size.

Ready to make the change to a mobile friendly site and reap the benefits? Contact Darren at StuartMedia today to get started.

Image: Josh Felise

Developing a website is far more complex than online site builders make it seem.

When it comes time to customise your site, add in new features, incorporate scripts or even troubleshoot problems, you realise the importance of a professional developer. It’s why the best sites rely on a web developer to build and maintain their sites.

You have your hands full creating new content, marketing your business and driving traffic to your site. Let your developer handle all the back-end work for your site so it functions and performs even better.

1. Complex Code

Many of the customisations to make your site truly unique happen within the code. Despite the number of plug-ins and themes available, there are still some changes that can’t happen with knowing how to code. Diving into page after page of code to figure out where to add a new line is daunting to say the least. Even a single mistake could leave your site offline until it’s fixed.

Your web developer not only knows how to tweak code to get the right result, but they know what search engines expect too. The right code helps your rank, but a single line could drastically affect your SEO ranking.

2. Adding In Scripts

Scripts add extra functionality to your website, but added in the wrong place can cause loading issues, security problems and issues with the script itself. If you want custom scripts, you’ll also need to know how to code. Both are reasons to rely on your web developer to help you out.

They’ll create custom scripts to handle your site’s unique needs. They’ll also add them in the right places to ensure optimal performance without security risks.

3. Troubleshooting Problems

Are pages loading slowly? Is a new WordPress update wreaking havoc on your theme? Websites encounter technical problems and the faster they’re fixed, the less impact there is for your visitors and your site’s reputation. Hubspot even created a Website Grader tool to show you a few of your trouble areas, such as page loading speed, security issues and more.

The last thing you want to do is make a problem worse by trying to troubleshoot it yourself. A web developer has experienced most, if not all, common website issues. Rely on a web developer to pinpoint and fix your site’s issues.

4. Integrating 3rd Party Software

It might seem like a simple enough tasks to install your own plug-ins, themes and other third party software, but do you always know exactly what you’re adding? Sometimes the code behind the software is malicious, especially with non-verified software. Plus, if it’s not installed correctly, you could crash the entire website, leaving it offline until you can fix the problem.

Every time you add in new third party software, you have to ensure it’s compatible with everything else on your site. For instance, if you’re using WordPress, you must make sure the software’s compatible with your current WordPress version. Not only do developers know what to check for, but they also know the best software to use for your site.

5. Creating New Features

Your site’s development isn’t done after the initial release. You’ll want to add new features as time goes by to keep your site performing well while giving visitors the latest features. For instance, if you don’t have a mobile friendly design, you might want to upgrade your site to a responsive design, which Google now prefers. With only 18.7% of the top 10,000 sites having this feature, adding this helps you be more competitive.

Conclusion

When you rely on a web developer to build your site, you’re giving your site the best chance at success. From the initial coding to adding in new features over time, your developer takes care of numerous tasks to optimise performance and help provide visitors with a better experience.

Ready to start your own site or add new features? Contact StuartMedia today to get started with an experienced web developer.

Image: India7 Network

You carefully planned your website and you’re pleased with the new traffic it’s bringing to your business.

You keep your blog updated and market your site, but you’re forgetting one key step – website maintenance. Maintaining a site is more than just updating content or installing WordPress updates.

Website maintenance is crucial to keeping your site online, providing optimal performance and keeping visitors safer. Whether you do it yourself or hire someone else, make sure these key tasks are covered.

Software Updates

Updating your core software, such as WordPress, along with plugins and themes is one of the most important tasks, but it’s still often overlooked. Updates don’t just deliver new features. They also provide performance and security updates. All you have to do is look at WordPress’s list of version releases to see how vital each one is. For instance, an update in late 2015 took care of a dangerous cross-scripting vulnerability.

Many site owners avoid doing updates because of potential compatibility issues. This is why it’s a good idea to hire a company to do it. If something doesn’t go right, they’ll know how to fix the problem quickly while still keeping you updated.

Site Backups

Updates are important, but what happens if something goes wrong? If you’re backing your site up regularly, you can at least roll back to a recent update, avoiding as much downtime as possible. Ideally, your database should be backed up daily and your files at least weekly. Backups are the quickest and easiest way to recover after a hacked site, bad theme installation or any other major site issue.

Website Optimisation

Don’t assume your site’s fully optimised just because the pages load. Website maintenance involves checking how quickly pages load and determining which elements might be causing poor performance. As Walmart.com discovered, even a single second improvement resulted in a 2% conversion increase. With 57% of visitors leaving sites that take three seconds or longer to load, it’s vital to look at performance and consistently work to optimise your site.

Elements, such as large images and messy coding, often increase loading times. Sometimes it takes a professional to dig deep to uncover what issues your site might have.

Uptime Monitoring

Slow loading pages are one thing, but no one will wait around if your site goes down completely. Uptime monitoring involves seeing how long your site stays up along with total periods of downtime. A site going down is a red flag that something’s wrong, with the exception of planned downtime during low traffic periods. It could mean the site’s been hacked or has a virus. It could indicate a problem with your host or server.

You want your site available at all times. Keeping track of uptime helps you keep your site online as much as possible while catching potential problems early.

Security Scanning

According to WhiteHat Security, 86% of their tested websites had at least one security flaw with 56% having more than one. Hackers don’t care how big or small your site is, they just want access. For instance, getting full access to your site could allow them to send out legitimate looking emails to your email list, infecting each user who opens the message. Unsafe sites are often blocked by Google, leaving visitors seeing the warning message from above.

Security scanning searches for security flaws and viruses on your site and server. While you might not be able to prevent everything, the sooner you do find a problem, the quicker you can resolve it, keeping your site and visitors safe.

Site Tweaks And Updates

Website maintenance is more than security, backups and uptime monitoring. It’s also about making regular tweaks and site updates. For instance, you might want to change your site’s layout or add a new contact form. It’s usually a good idea to make a list of improvements or changes you want to make and take care of a few each month.

Obviously, if you run into bugs or glitches on your site, this goes under the tweaks and updates category. Many site owners rely on a professional company to handle these issues. Some regular maintenance plans include bug fixes and support calls.

Conclusion

Owning a website means having to deal with website maintenance. The two go hand-in-hand. It is a time consuming process, but crucial to your site’s health and performance. You have two main options – do it all yourself or hire someone else. Most site owners opt for the latter to save time and money. Besides, having a professional do it means you know it’s being done right.

Know you need site maintenance, but don’t have time to do it yourself? Don’t worry. Let WP Get Support handle all your site maintenance needs.

Image: Brian Kelly

SEO is a key part of ensuring search engines find and rank a website.

Optimising your site yourself is often time consuming and confusing. WordPress has many built-in features along with add-ons such as different themes and plugins to better manage your website’s SEO.

WordPress has set itself apart as one of the best content management platforms for SEO. Simply using the CMS could help boost your site’s ranking.

Customised Permalinks

WordPress allows the user to change the permalink structure of post and page URLs. Search engines love links that contain the keywords or phrases you want to target. Instead of having a link with seemingly random numbers and letters, your permalink structure could contain part or all of your post’s title. This helps boosts your rank and allows visitors to find your site easier.

Takeaway: Take the time to edit the default permalink structure to show your post titles. A developer can set this up for you if you’re not sure how or want them highly customised.

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds and other feed types are built-in to WordPress. These feeds allow a site’s content to be picked up by feed readers easily. The feeds could be used by visitors to keep updated on a site’s latest content or the feed may be posted on another site with links back to the original site. Site owners can submit their feed to numerous feed services to increase traffic. The SEO benefit is a site builds traffic and loyal followers, both of which Google factors in when ranking a site.

Takeaway: Take advantage of the built-in feeds to submit to feed services. They’re an easy way to market your site and improve your rank without dealing with extra code yourself.

Clean Code

By default, WordPress uses clean code that makes it easier for search engines to read a site. This code also makes it easier for search engines to determine if any malicious code is present. Adding customised themes and plugins can complicate things, but with the right developer, the code is still clean and optimised for search engines.

Takeaway: Consider hiring a developer if you want to add in customised themes and plugins. A developer will be able to clean up the code to make the most of WordPress’s SEO benefits.

Optimised Themes

While WordPress already boosts a website’s SEO, some themes are designed to further optimise a site. These themes may focus on more optimised layouts, better metadata, proper headers, built-in plugins and more. Many themes are also responsive. Mobile friendly sites rank higher when users search on a mobile device. Using a responsive design helps a site comply with Google’s new mobile ranking guidelines. Thousands of themes are available and developers can create a custom theme with even more SEO benefits built-in.

Takeaway: Combining an optimised theme with WordPress makes SEO even easier. Developers can ensure you have the right theme to make your site more SEO friendly.

SEO Plugins

SEO plugins are one of WordPress’s most powerful features for optimising a site. Hundreds of free and premium plugins are available to further optimise SEO on posts and pages. For instance, the popular WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin gives you an SEO section to fill out with a keyword, SEO title and meta description. It also shows you if you’ve used the keyword in all the right places. Think of these plugins as a guided SEO tool to ensure your posts are as optimised as possible.

Takeaway: Choose an SEO plugin to use for your website. The built-in SEO features are great, but a focused plugin helps even more. Ask your developer to install or develop an SEO plugin for you.

Add Content Easily

Regular content is an easy way to optimise a site. Many platforms make it difficult to add and format content properly for search engines. For instance, using H2 header tags in your content is better for SEO. The WordPress post editor has that feature built-in without the user having to add in any code. Plus, the ease of using the editor and posting content makes it easier for users to add content regularly and keep their site fresh in the eyes of search engines.

Takeaway: WordPress is a popular CMS because it’s so easy to manage content. Add content on a regular schedule to further improve your ranking.

Conclusion

WordPress is an SEO rich platform. The right developer can ensure the code is clean and all settings are in place to make the most of these features. Unlike many other platforms, you don’t have to be an SEO expert to optimise every post and page.

Stop making SEO so difficult. Contact StuartMedia today to find out how WordPress will do the hard work for you.

Image: Harsh Agrawal