The top website and marketing links of the week.
“Optimize images” is almost always one of the recommendations when testing a slow-loading website. Optimizing means making images no larger (dimensions and resolution) that they need to be for your site to reduce loading time. It also has to do with making them findable in search engine results. Here’s a nice guide to image optimization, not too technical, that can help you get your own site loading faster.
If you run a seasonal business, marketing can be tough. Here’s a post from Constant Contact with 3 easy steps to year-round marketing for seasonal businesses that might help with ideas for email campaigns.
Ever heard of “dark patterns?” I hadn’t either until I saw this next post. Dark patterns are little user interface elements used to trick visitors into taking action, and they usually rely on you not paying attention. For example, telling you that 5 other people have the product you’re looking at in their cart already may worry you enough to buy even if you weren’t ready. Or showing you that there’s only 1 of a product left with an hourglass. It’s pressure, and it comes across as being manipulative. Here’s an overview of dark patterns and why to avoid using them. Not worth the risk IMO.
Finally… if you’re doing your own SEO (search engine optimization) monitoring for your website, there are a lot more tools out there than you may know. Here’s a review of the top 12 SEO monitoring tools for 2018.
