Red Kite Creative

mobile friendly

5 Ways to Smarten Up Your Website for 2017

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Even if you’re not ready for a brand new website, there are some things you can do for your existing site to give it a quick makeover for 2017 – both customer-facing and behind the scenes.

1. Install an SSL Certificate

This is becoming really important – Google has even made it one of its search result ranking factors. It means that your website address in the browser will show the little padlock beside it and ‘https’ instead of ‘http.’ When that padlock appears, it means whatever information goes back and forth between the user and the server (like credit card or other personal info in a form or payment page) is not just plain text that’s easy to hack, it’s encrypted.

Google will begin showing a warning on sites without SSL certificates in January 2017, so it’s time to do this now. If you need help getting this done, feel free to contact me.

2. Speed Up Your Site

Sites that take more than a couple of seconds to load are increasingly being abandoned by impatient users. Often there are a few items of ‘low-hanging fruit’ that can be improved fairly easily. If your site isn’t as fast as you’d like, check out GT Metrix and it’ll show you what the problems are.

If you’d like to have your WordPress site’s speed improved for you without lifting a finger, we’re having a special on WordPress Performance Tuneups booked by January 31. It typically results in loading time improvements of 24-50% or more. Sign up here.

3. Make it Look Great on Mobile

If you’re still holding out with a non-responsive website, it’s time to do something about it. Google is already penalizing sites in search results when they’re not mobile-friendly, and you’re also losing credibility and potential customers. Do yourself and your visitors a favor and make your site look as good in a phone as a does on a desktop. Contact me for a free consultation if you’re ready to take the plunge.

4. Improve Your Site’s Security

Are the plugins and themes on your site all up to date? Are you running the latest version of any CMS software? Have you (and your team, and your customers) changed their passwords lately? Are you using a security plugin or outside security service? Do you have fresh backups? These little things can add up, and need to be tended to. If you’re using WordPress and would like to have these things (except passwords, which you’ll need to do yourself) done for you, check out our WP Minder service.

5. Improve Your SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

It’s easier than ever to optimize your own content in your blog or web pages. Make your site stand out – and get found more easily – by spending just a few extra minutes on each blog post to optimize them correctly. Here’s a guide to some WordPress SEO tools that can simplify the process for you.

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The start of a brand new year is a great time to get your business ducks in a row – take a few minutes this week and give your website some TLC using the tips in this article.

Friday Link Wrapup – Mobile Friendly Sales, SEO Basics, Online Payments, Getting People to Sign Up

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The top website and marketing links for this week.

Still clinging to that old website that isn’t mobile-friendly? Techcrunch reports that yesterday was the biggest shopping day on Thanksgiving ever – $1.15 billion in sales by 5pm. And 54% of visits – $449 million of sales – of that was on smartphones and tablets. Do your customers and your business a favor and upgrade to a mobile-friendly site – I can help.

If you’re new to the world of SEO or thinking about how to get your website to rank higher, here’s a good introduction to SEO basics for small business owners. Hint: start with regular infusions of high-quality content.

Finally – do you use a popup on your site to encourage people to sign up for a mailing list? You might want to rethink that. Learn how you might be damaging the user’s experience as well as your credibility by pressuring users to sign up, and learn how to do it less irritatingly.

Friday Link Wrapup – Mobile yet Unfriendly, Security Threats, Marketing Stats

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The top website and marketing links for this week.

Is your website mobile-friendly (yay!) but ridiculously hard to use on a phone? If that’s the case, you need to read “How to Poison the Mobile User” to understand how your website may be impacting your customers and sales. And then contact me because I can help you.

Ever been hacked? Ever known someone who was? It’s very common, impossible to prevent, and can leave a big mess to clean up for the website owner. If it’s all Greek to you, here’s a quick primer on the 3 most common types of web security threats and what you can do to reduce your risk.

And finally – for marketers: if you’re in charge of online marketing for your business (or you are your business and the task falls to you, like everything else does), how do you know where to find marketing statisics relevant to you? Here’s a list of the 10 top free resources for marketing data for 2016.

 

 

Friday Link Wrapup – Mobile Friendly Websites, Single-tasking, Pomodoro

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The top website and marketing links for this week.

How does your website look in a phone? Is it a breeze to use, with easy to understand navigation and a clear call to action helping users do what you want them to do? Or is it embarrassing – it looks just like a miniature version of your site on a desktop, and so can’t be read without zooming way in?

It’s 2016. More than half of all web searches are done on phones and other mobile devices. If your site still isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot – and potentially missing out on more than 50% of your audience.

If you haven’t checked your site in a phone lately, take Google’s free mobile-friendly test here. It may be an eye-opening experience.

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If you’re a blogger (or are trying to be a better blogger) this post is for you – learn how to double your writing productivity by single-tasking. I used to think I was awesome at multi-tasking, but that’s not really true. I’m so much better at every work task when I cut out the distractions, ignore email, and sometimes go to a new place (like this coffee shop I’m sitting in as I write this) where I can zone in completely on writing. I’ve been doing this for about 6 weeks now, taking some time out every Thursday to write, and it’s really paying off in the number of new connections and follows on social media.

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Speaking of single-tasking… I’ve been using a Pomodoro timer for years. The Pomodoro technique is about focusing hard on a single task for 25-minute shots with 5-minute breaks – you can read more about it here, and also see a selection of timers for desktops and phones. I like Focus Booster myself. Give one of these a try, and see if it doesn’t improve the way you work.

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Finally, a broken tote bag. I have so many of these bags collected from stores and events, but this is the first one I’ve seen with a corrupted image…

 

Quick Poll: Smartphone Users’ Behavior on Sites That Aren’t Mobile-Friendly

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I’d really appreciate your answer to this one-question poll! It will help me better answer clients when they say ‘I don’t need a mobile-friendly site – do I?’ or ‘in my industry it doesn’t matter if my site works well on phones.’

EDIT: The poll is closed – the results were:

48% said they leave a non-mobile-friendly site immediately.

47% said they will zoom in to view content.

I guess I was expecting a less evenly distributed result…

Small Businesses Adapt.

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This week I heard something from a few business owners I know that surprised me.

I’d mentioned Google’s new use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor in search engine results, which is going to begin on April 21. The response was basically:

“I don’t see why I should be forced to pay to update my website just because Google says so.”

It surprised me because this isn’t about Google. It’s about customers. Google is acknowledging the rising tide of what customers have already been doing for quite some time – paying more visits to websites on smartphones or tablets than desktop computers.

When it comes down to it, it’s about choosing to make things hard or easy for your visitors to accomplish their goals on your site.

You make it hard when you serve up a website that, in a smartphone, has unreadable text and you force visitors to zoom in to see content. You make it hard when they have to scroll right and left to see what’s on your page. You make it hard when the links are so close together it’s impossible to click just one with a finger or thumb.

A lot of people don’t put up with this anymore. I know I usually don’t – I say “usually ” because if I really want to see the content on a certain site, I’ll still zoom. But most of the time, I just bounce right off that page and go look at another search result – often that turns out to be a competitor.

You make it easy when you serve up a mobile version of your site to phone users. It’s easy to read, easy to get around. It has big buttons to push and menu items that are big enough to hit one at a time. If it’s responsive, it may contain every bit of content that’s on the desktop-sized version of your website. In short, it’s a much better experience for the user all around. The website’s design doesn’t get in the visitor’s way.

Adapt, or get left behind.

The people who made the comments I mentioned above are smart business people, but they seem to be forgetting one of the superpowers of the small business: the ability to adapt quickly to a changing marketplace.

Smartphones and tablets aren’t fads. They aren’t going anywhere. Your customers and readers are going to be using them more and more. Refusing to make things as easy as possible for them to buy or use whatever you’re offering makes no sense. None at all.

You’re putting a brick wall in front of them. It’s like saying, “I don’t care about you.  It doesn’t matter to me if you take your business elsewhere.”

Making the switch to a responsive or mobile website is not that difficult. It can take as little as a few hours of work for some sites. If you’re still putting roadblocks in front of your potential customers, consider doing them a favor instead. Show them some love. Make it easier on them, and in turn, you may start seeing some of those sales or signups that had been going to your competitors coming your way again.