trust

Weekly Links Roundup – Slow WordPress Dashboard, Facebook Marketing, SEO Problems, Trust

July 13, 2018 by Debbie Campbell

The top website and marketing links of the week.

If you find that your WordPress admin dashboard is suddenly running a lot slower – guess what? It’s probably that plugin you installed recently. This post on 14 ways to fix a slow WordPress admin includes a list of 35 plugins known to cause dashboard slowdowns, but in case that’s not your issue, there are other things you can troubleshoot and this post will help you do just that.

If you’re using Facebook to connect to your audience, here’s a big post detailing 22 Facebook marketing tips for budget-minded small businesses. Top tip: content calendars are great for blogging, and they also seem to be a good idea for busy Facebook marketers.

This is for the SEO do-it-yourselfers. Ever had one of those really weird problems with your site rankings and no clue how to begin fixing it? This post might help. It’s an 8-point checklist for addressing strange problems with your technical SEO.

And finally… this is a really important one. Does your website inspire trust? Take a good look at it while you read this post on why and how to gain users’ trust. Does it make you look like a pro? Or an amateur? Would people want to buy from you or hire you, based on the quality of your site’s design? Are there spelling and grammatical errors that you could easily fix? Trust is critical and easily lost, but harder to gain. Food for thought.

Weekly Links Roundup – Engagement, One-page Sites, WooCommerce, Trust

February 9, 2018 by Debbie Campbell

The top website and marketing links of the week.

If you’re using social media to help promote your business, you probably have found that a lack of engagement from your followers is a very frustrating thing. Here are 10 tips on improving engagement in social media marketing.

Considering a redesign of your business site as a one-page website? Learn about the pros and cons of this popular trend. One important thing to also consider is SEO. If you’re depending on Google Search to gain new customers, a multi-page site will offer many more opportunities to be found. Learn about single-page sites and SEO.

If you’re thinking about starting up an online store and selling products (real or digital), WordPress might be a great platform to build on – it often is for startup sellers. And if you’re thinking WordPress, you should also be thinking WooCommerce. I read last night that over 40% of all online stores are now powered by WooCommerce; that’s an astounding number, but one of the reason is that WooCommerce really is easy to use for new businesses. It’s true it can become complex especially if you have custom functionality or many addons plugins, but the basics are easy. Here’s a tutorial in getting started with WooCommerce.

Finally… Always a concern, but especially if you’re selling online, is the matter of trust. Does your website inspire trust? Is it clean, professional, and using HTTPS for the safety of your buyers? Or is it cluttered, full of spelling and grammar errors, and compromising safety with HTTP? Here are 11 reasons why users won’t trust your site, and may do business elsewhere. Fix them ASAP.

Weekly Links Roundup – Creating Trust, Hosting Multiple Sites, Instagram, SSL

December 29, 2017 by Debbie Campbell

The top website and marketing links of the week.

Not just for websites… learn how attentive UX design can help you create trust for your brand across the board (but note how important good website design is!).

How many business websites do you have? If you’re like one of my clients, you might have 6 – and hopefully they’re not using the same hosting account like his sites are! If you do this, you put all your sites at risk. If one gets hacked, all of them can easily be compromised. The best situation is one site per hosting account – learn more about why this is so. And yes, this does cost more, but there are still a very small number of decent shared hosts out there with reasonable prices if this is a big concern. It’s better to pay more than to risk all your business sites going down at once, isn’t it?

If you’re using Instagram for business (or even for fun) and are trying to actively grow your audience, check out these 10 tips to organically grow your Instagram exposure.

Finally… I’ve written a lot recently about the increasing need to move HTTP sites to HTTPS. Here’s yet another article on how and why it’s more important than ever to secure your website.

Weekly Links Roundup – UX, Google and Trust, Scene Generators

September 8, 2017 by Debbie Campbell

The top website and marketing links of the week.

Does your website delight your users? Or does it leave them with a less-than-satisfied feeling? Read this article about UX (user experience) and find out how poorly designed websites are a lot like having a cranky receptionist with a bad attitude.

Did you know that Google gets around 30 billion search queries every month? That’s staggering! And I’m sure you’ve heard the recent talk about potential biases in the major search and online news providers. Here’s an interesting recent post about how much trust people put into Google search results.

And finally… Do you use stock photos on your website? If you do, you’re certainly not alone. But did you know there are stock images that can help you show off your products? These are called (I didn’t know this) ‘scene generators.’ They can help you display your clothing, print designs, food and drink offerings, apps, identity and more. I’m actually using one on the home page of this site… View a collection of scene generator examples and see if they can benefit you, too.