In today’s digital age, having a strong online presence is crucial for any business or individual.

Your website is often the first point of contact between you and your potential customers, making it an essential tool for building brand awareness, establishing credibility, and driving revenue. While there are numerous online platforms that enable you to build a website yourself, it’s always advisable to use the services of a professional website developer.

Here’s the top five reasons for using a professional website developer:

Expertise and Experience:

Professional web developers have the expertise and experience to create a high-quality website. They have the technical knowledge and skills necessary to design, develop, and maintain a website that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing. They stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends and best practices, ensuring that your website is optimized for search engines, user-friendly, and visually appealing.

Customization:

One of the significant benefits of using a professional web developer is the ability to customize your website to suit your specific needs. Unlike pre-built website templates that offer limited customization options, a professional web developer can build a website that reflects your brand identity and offers unique features and functionality tailored to your business requirements.

Time and Cost-Efficient:

While building a website yourself may seem like a cost-effective option, it can often end up being more expensive in the long run. Professional web developers can deliver a high-quality website within a reasonable timeframe, saving you time and allowing you to focus on other areas of your business. They also have the tools and resources to identify and fix any issues that may arise during the development process, ensuring that your website is optimized for performance and functionality.

Ongoing Support and Maintenance:

Your website requires ongoing support and maintenance to ensure it remains up-to-date and relevant. Professional web developers provide ongoing support and maintenance services, ensuring that your website is secure, optimized, and running smoothly. They can also make necessary updates and changes to your website to keep up with the latest trends and best practices.

Improved User Experience:

A professional website developer can design a website that offers a great user experience. They can ensure that your website is easy to navigate, loads quickly, and provides relevant and engaging content that meets the needs of your audience. A well-designed website can improve engagement, increase customer satisfaction, and drive conversions.

Using a professional website developer is a wise investment for any business or individual looking to establish a strong online presence. They provide the expertise, customization, time and cost-efficiency, ongoing support and maintenance, and improved user experience necessary to create a high-quality website that drives revenue, builds brand awareness, and establishes credibility.

Website security is an essential aspect of any online presence, whether it’s a personal blog or a large e-commerce site.

With the ever-increasing number of cyberattacks, it’s crucial to implement proper security measures to protect your website from potential threats. In this blog, we’ll discuss the basics of website security and the steps you can take to keep your website safe.

Why is website security important?

Your website is often the first point of contact between your business and potential customers. It’s also a gateway for hackers who may try to gain access to your site to steal sensitive information, inject malware, or deface your website. A security breach can damage your reputation, cause financial loss, and even result in legal issues. Therefore, it’s crucial to take website security seriously and implement the necessary measures to protect your online presence.

Common threats to website security

Hackers use various methods to exploit vulnerabilities in your website’s security. Some of the most common threats include:

1. Malware: Malware is a type of software that is designed to damage, disrupt, or control computer systems. Hackers can use malware to gain access to your website, steal data, or infect your visitors’ devices.
2. Brute-force attacks: Brute-force attacks are a common way for hackers to gain access to websites by guessing usernames and passwords.
3. Cross-site scripting (XSS): XSS attacks involve injecting malicious code into your website to steal information or take control of your visitors’ devices.
4. SQL injection: SQL injection attacks are designed to exploit vulnerabilities in your website’s database by injecting malicious code into the SQL query.
5. DDoS attacks: Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks involve flooding your website with traffic to overwhelm your server and make your website inaccessible.

How to improve website security

1. Use a secure platform: Ensure that your website is built on a secure platform that is regularly updated to address security vulnerabilities. For example, platforms like WordPress and Joomla regularly release security patches to fix known issues.
2. Use strong passwords: Use complex passwords that include a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters. Avoid using common passwords like “123456” or “password,” as they are easy to guess.
3. Use SSL: Use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to encrypt data transmitted between your website and your visitors’ devices. SSL ensures that sensitive information, such as credit card details, is transmitted securely.
4. Regularly update software: Keep your website’s software up-to-date, including any plugins or add-ons. Outdated software can have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers.
5. Back up your website: Regularly backup your website, so you can quickly restore it in case of a security breach.
6. Limit access: Limit access to your website’s admin panel and use two-factor authentication to ensure that only authorized users can make changes to your website.
7. Use a web application firewall: A web application firewall (WAF) can protect your website from attacks by filtering out malicious traffic.

Conclusion

Website security is critical to protect your online presence and your visitors’ data. By implementing the measures outlined above, you can improve your website’s security and reduce the risk of a security breach. Remember, website security is an ongoing process that requires regular monitoring and updates to stay ahead of potential threats.

Straight up, I need to be upfront with you about the topic of this week’s blog.

Nothing you do today will be immediately effective in turns of search engine response. The three tips below will undoubtedly improve the SEO performance of your website but the effects won’t be seen until the search engine minions (known as bots) crawl through your site again and react to the juicy goodness we are about to leave for them. Once they have had a taste of them, they will report back to their home base – “This site deserves more respect!”

To get that respect, it’s not overly hard to take action.

The tips below don’t require you to be a rocket scientist (or even a web developer), but they will make a difference to the “findability” of your site.

Make sure your page is loading at full speed.

Without going into too much detail, page loading speed has always been important to Google. The faster a page loads for them, the happier they are with your site. And the happier Google are with your site, the higher ranking they will give you. Can’t get any simpler than that!

From a marketing standpoint, a fast-loading page is always a good idea anyway. With advent of faster internet, people just don’t have the patience to stick around anymore. Research has shown that if the content isn’t starting to be delivered within two seconds, visitors will click that back button and go somewhere else.

Tools to help with your page speed:

• In-depth analysis of the speed of your pages can be done at GT Metrix.
• If your site is built on the WordPress framework, installing the Lite Speed Cache is a great way to increase site speed.

Make sure all your content is optimised for SEO

This is a topic that I could write about all day. There are so many elements to SEO optimisation and I continuously come back to them in these posts. But in the interest of keeping things to the point, I can’t break it down any better than this brilliant checklist from Salesforce.

Tools to help with optimising your content for SEO:

• WordPress users can’t go past All-In-One SEO or Yoast SEO.
• Not a tool as such but use a company that specialises in SEO optimisation to help get your content hitting those elements every time.

Make it easy to share your content.

If you think you are making great content and want people to share it, make sure that you make as easy as possible to do so. The geeks over at Google love their social media and it goes to reason that that a strong social media presence now correlates with good rankings in Google’s index.

Tools to help share your content through Social Media:

• The Digg Digg plug-in for WordPress places a floating bar next to your content with every social media option you could ask for.
• Hootsuite is a brilliant way to post onto and keep track of all your social media from one dashboard.

If you implement the tools and tips above but you’re still hungry for more SEO action, check out Google’s own informative site on exactly how they use their secret algorithm to rank your page. For real beginners, Blank Point also has a great site with the “ins and outs” of SEO broken down into layman’s terms.

There’s no time like the present to get in there and give that site of yours an SEO boost. Go and grab that market share that you know it deserves!

In small towns, such as those in regional North Queensland, small business owners have relied for years on local customers for their income. And this has worked just fine for the most part as these businesses have built up loyal trade and trust with good service.

But times have changed. Businesses right through to the early 90’s never had to compete against anything like the internet and the changes it has brought. Nowadays, a huge amount of business is conducted online and, as a small business owner, you are no longer just competing against other local businesses. In fact, for most professional services and especially those selling products, there is no concept of a local business anymore.

Whether you like it or not, you are a state-wide, national or even an international business. Your customers are very aware that if they don’t receive the service they expect to get along with the product they want AND at a price that they like, they are going online to get it somewhere else!

So if your business is unwilling to get online to be competitive in 2023, then you are going to lose a huge chunk of your potential market.

Here’s five good reasons why getting a website is essential to the evolution of a modern small business.

#1 – A website is available to your customers 24/7

With online trading, a customer can choose when they are going to visit you. They are no longer dependant on when you open your physical store. A website allows a business owner to keep products and services moving all day, every day. A mobile-responsive site takes this to the next level with customers accessing businesses on-the-go with tablets and smartphones.

#2 – Your website opens you up to the international marketplace.

A website means that you don’t have to just sell your products and services to locals in your immediate area. If you have a great product and it is easily found online (with search engine optimisation), you are able to sell to anyone, anywhere in the world. You are no longer geographically locked in.
If someone two thousand kilometres away wants your products – with a website, they can get them.

#3 – Window Shopping has evolved too.

Walking down the main street in your town or city is no longer the only way to go window shopping (though some may disagree). Online, your potential customers are always looking and planning where they are going to make their next purchases. They are comparing prices, checking out services and calculating delivery costs. Even if they may not be making an immediate purchase, when they do, those online businesses who have made an impact on their searches will definitely come to the forefront.

#4. Online, you can build your position as a Key Person of Influence in your industry.

Your website and your online presence have become key factors when customers are searching for a new business to deal with. A strong presence is a terrific way to demonstrate that you are a modern business with its finger on the pulse of your industry. Customers testimonials are also a great way of showing your prospects that you are capable of delivering the products and services that your offer. Social Media interaction (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) will help to build a community of loyal followers that your business can use to develop, research and sell new products. Each one of these components is essential to build your authority as a KPI (Key Person of Influence).

#5 – On the internet, size does not matter.

A website is a great leveller. Whether you’re a one-man show or a 20,000-employee corporate giant; if you offer prompt and friendly service backed up by a quality product, you can compete head-to-head with the “big guys”. On the other hand, if you don’t have a website, you’ll be losing business to other companies that do.

Despite all the reasons that are spruiked daily about the benefits of an online business, it is estimated that more than half (52%) of Australian small business owners do not have a website. This is astounding considering that 82% of small business owners get new business through referrals. If you don’t have a website, how do these referrals find out more about you?

If you want to evolve your small business and access a greater share of your industry’s market, get in touch with Tropical Coast Web Design today and we will examine an online strategy that will work for you.

If you have been following my blogs, you would have heard me say (dozens of times) that Search Engines love fresh content.

Even more importantly, so do your site visitors. Nothing entices a visitor to return to a website than the knowledge that each time they return, they will find something new to read or explore.

As a website owner, the downside of this expectation of new content is that it can be very time consuming to create that content. You do have a business to run and if you spent all your time creating “free” content to entice people to your site, then the business is obviously going to suffer. What can be done? In this blog, we will discuss how you can create the illusion of new content to keep those clients coming back until you can get new content online. Please remember that some of the solutions shown are not suitable for a long-term replacement for actual new content – so keep the hate-mail to a minimum please….

1. RSS / News Feeds

RSS feeds have been used for a number of years to allow the automatic syndication of content across many websites. You have probably seen the RSS Feed button at the bottom of news stories and blogs but have been unsure how to use it effectively.

Basically, a publisher (blog owner, news organisation, etc) will allow you to display their content for free – pretty good huh? It will be automatically attributed to its parent site however it will be displayed within the framework of your site. All you need to do is copy the provided code onto your site (or your web designer can do it for you). You can also grab a number of RSS feeds from a variety of sources.

This is a fantastic way to get quality information on a regular basis delivered automatically to your website. Make sure that the content feeds that you subscribe to are relevant to your core business. One note: a danger with automatically displaying content is that you don’t have any control over what is displayed. Make sure you keep an eye on the content to ensure the integrity that you try to convey with your business is maintained.

2. Facebook / Instagram Feed

Use a plugin to set up your website so that any updates that you make via your company’s Facebook or Instagram account are automatically displayed on the site. This will save you time. If you post information, a status update, or a link once, you shouldn’t have to repeat the process for each medium. If your site is based on WordPress, there are a multitude of plugins that will (if setup correctly by your designer) display the updates as an integrated part of the web page.

You can also grab social media feeds from other sources such as employees, suppliers, and partners.

Automatic content doesn’t get any easier.

3. Random Post Displays

This is another one that can be set up very easily with the use of WordPress plugins. Use the multitude of older blog posts that you have in the archives of your website to your advantage.

Through the use of a randomiser that selects a blog post at random, you can display a different post each time a visitor lands on your front page. Make sure that you allow the date to be omitted so that visitors don’t get confused.

Some may look upon this as a form of cheating however if you have quality posts in your blog, you might inadvertently uncover some gold for your clients without any effort at all.

4. Slideshows

For a pictorial type of “fresh” content, set up a slideshow on your site that randomly selects images from the gallery to display. You can do this either as a continuous slideshow or simply display a key image on your front page whenever a visitor arrives.

To ensure that visitors have less chance of seeing the same “random” image repeatedly, make sure that your image gallery has a wide selection of piccies to choose from.

5. Ghost Writers/Blog Guests

My final tip involves employing a “ghost” writer or guest for your blog. This tip is the only one that we are talking about today that has content created specifically for your website but comes with one inherent danger – whoever you employ to write for your site, be aware that they are not intimately connected to your business like you are. They don’t have the same passion that you have, and this may be evident in some of the pieces that they write. Be very careful about using this last tip as, if it is not monitored carefully, it could “blow up” in your face.

There you have it, five tips to get fresh content displayed on your site without creating the content yourself. Please remember that these are only stop-gap measures that you should only use when you cannot find the time to get new content out there on a regular basis. Do not, whatever you do, set up these systems as a permanent measure. Your site visitors will eventually notice.

Facebook is a powerful force in the online marketing world, easily second only to Google.

You won’t find a member of Gen Y who isn’t using it and, over the past five years, Facebook’s “mature” user base has grown considerably.

This growth is continuing with the increasing use of the platform by businesses around the world. The general attitude towards FB is becoming “if you are in business, you must be on Facebook.”

But why? If your business is only doing Facebook because “that’s what the others are doing,” then you might just be wasting your time.

And a small business owner doesn’t have any time to waste!

You should only get into Facebook if you have established a real goal for doing so. Your business’ goal for entering the world of Facebook could be to:

Humanise your business and brand in the eyes of your customer.

Genuine interactions and their associated connections are integral to any form of social media and Facebook is no different. It allows a business to put a human face to a brand that people can relate to. Through Facebook, your business can engage in one-on-one conversation with customers, share tricks and tips about your industry or display your latest wares after a customer has bought them, encouraging others to do the same. These types of “relationships” with your customers, draws them closer to you and much more likely to use your services or purchase your products.

Get people talking about your business.

The average user has, on average, 130 Facebook friends to share with. Imagine what could happen if you could get in front of those 130. If your brand is compatible with these people and engages with them, they might just LIKE you as well!

If only ten from that number decide to LIKE you, pure mathematics shows that the growth of your exposure would be exponential (10 x 10 x 10 x 10….). There is no other (free) marketing method that can match this. Facebook also has paid options that can expose your brand to even more around the globe.

Directly target your ideal demographic.

Facebook knows everything about you. In your profile, you have entered your location, age, hobbies, even your favourite brands in some cases. A user would be naive to think that Mark Zuckerberg only wanted this information to help you share with your friends. Zuckerberg wants this information so that his company can sell targeted advertising.

As a business with a little advertising cash to spend, this is a golden opportunity. With such detailed information on hand and using Facebook’s paid advertising, a business can market more directly than ever before. For example, if you wanted to target expectants mothers, aged between 20 and 25 who live on the Sunshine Coast, you can. Your business information, once you set up an advertising account with Facebook, will appear on the pages of your exact target audience.

Put your business in front of your customers every day.

Even if you don’t opt to pay for advertising on Facebook, once a (potential) customer has liked you, any posts that you make on your Facebook business page will automatically appear on their feed. Don’t abuse this by posting multiple items a day (which will lose your following) and you have a “friend” for life.

Continue to offer conversation and social interaction, build that relationship up and you have a client who won’t look elsewhere for your goods and services.  A branded Facebook page is a very powerful way to expand your audience and increase the overall awareness of your business online.

All business owners would (or should be) be aware of brand consistency – the practice by which the logos, colours and style of a company are shown in the same manner anywhere the business is seen.

McDonalds restaurants are the kings of this consistency – wherever a McDonalds in located throughout the world, there is absolutely no doubting which brand is in operation. This is done through a stringent company manifesto that steadfastly lays out the strict guidelines that must be adhered to. Even companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram – who allow others to use their logos in various applications – have these guidelines to protect their public image.

The process of consistent branding is so important to building a recognisable business.

A sense of consistency is important in many facets of business – processes, system, employment, discipline and even the layout of offices. So why do many businesses neglect consistency within their websites?

Browsing the web in the past week for inspiration, I came across sites that clearly had been updated with absolutely no thought to maintaining a consistent look throughout the pages. One business was so glaringly bad at this, its website inspired me to write this post.

It wasn’t the design of the site that was bad – it actually was quite attractive. The site was ruined by the fact that it had been handed over to the client and they had no idea about how to keep “the look” of the design flowing throughout the pages. On the front page itself, it was very clear to see where the professional designer had finished, and the website owner/administrator had taken over. It made the company look unprofessional.

The sad part is that this problem is so easy to avoid. Here’s five tips to keep your site consistent with your original “vision”:

Tip #1: Fonts

Use the same fonts throughout your site. Resist the urge to try out every new font that you discover on your website’s Content Management System. Novels and magazines don’t generally change fonts halfway through and neither should your website. This applies to both main text segments and the titling through the site.

Tip #2: Alignment

Centre Alignment has its place however it isn’t in a large portion of text. By centring text on a web page, you are forcing your viewers to re-adjust their eyes for every new line beginning. Think of other texts that you may read during your day, such as newspapers, and you will realise why left alignment is used on all of them.

Tip #3: Colour and Font Weight

As in tip #1, don’t experiment with colours and font weights throughout your pages. Sure, colour can grab attention when required however try not to make your website look like a technicolour rainbow. Font weighting should be consistent too – use BOLD text in the same place each time, for example, on the subtitles within your content.

Tip #4: Image Presentation

If you insist on using borders and shadows around your images, make sure they are used consistently. Don’t apply styles to some and neglect it on others.

Tip #5: Use a Format tool

Luckily, for those of us who use WordPress as a CMS framework for our pages, we have some great plugins that will make the above tips easy to implement.

The plugin Kadence Blocks includes many formatting options. The side panel and options bars included with this plugin can be quickly coded by your web developer to include all the styles that you need for your site. All you have to do is highlight or select the text/image for the style to be applied to and then select the style. You don’t need to search for font types, colours, weights or anything.

A word of warning to potential customers of Tropical Coast Web Design – it’s my role as your web developer to ensure that your website looks good and works well so I will ring you up and let you know if your styles are out of whack – nicely of course. I will also offer our full support to help you present your information in a consistent style. After all, it’s my job to help you look your best – a cohesive and constant appearance is vitally important to the overall success of your website.

In the ever-changing online world, one thing seems to be staying consistent and that is the ongoing development of social media.

Rather than being a fad that will go away, social media is a major growth industry and the main players have evolved to suit the changing nature of their users.

As a business, you need to be crazy not to incorporate some form of social media into your marketing strategy. But which ones are suitable for your business? You could take an all-bases attitude and have each one covered however if you are “flying solo” like me, this can take a considerable chunk of your time away from the key roles in your business.

Let’s have a look at the top four, how they are used and whether they are suitable for business use:

#1 – Facebook

The “Godfather” of social media. Great for engaging with your customers and can be used in effective ways to market your business and study your clientele. For example, Black Milk Clothing uses their Facebook page as an integral part of their strategy to gather information from their clients, what they are choosing to wear and what they want to purchase next. If your client is strictly B2B (business to business), Facebook probably won’t be of much use to you because you need social information about (or interaction with) your customers.

Suitable for: Businesses that provide personal services and required social interaction.

#2 – Instagram

Instagram allows the business owner to collate instantaneous image content for their business through the simple use of imagery and hashtags. It also can be used to great effect in establishing oneself as an expert in a field and a key person of influence. Some influencers, through the sharing of consistent, high quality images, have managed to create following of millions.

Suitable for:  Solo Operators and Businesses.

#3 – Linked In

Linked-In is generally known as the professional’s network and it allows businesses to link individuals who can come from a wide variety of fields. For example, on my Linked-In profile, I have links to a number of my clients. However, the real value comes from links to mutually beneficial professionals that support my field of business such as copywriters, printers, and business coaches. Linked-In’s usage can be a little slow to start but builds great momentum once you gain a few professionals in your network.

Suitable for: All types of businesses once the initial network has been established. It is just the thing for B2B networking.

#4 – What else is out there?

YouTube is also a type of social media. If you are unsure of its capabilities, take a read of Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Crush it!” – and you will discover a whole new power to YouTube.

In conclusion, there is just one question that you need to ask yourself before signing on for any social media for your business: What is your ideal client using? Hopefully, after you have read the above and evaluated each of the platforms, you should be able to determine the answer to this if you know your clients well.

If not, a very simple step could be to ask your clients the next time you interact with them, or alternatively, make the enquiry part of your initial research into any new customers. Social Media must not be ignored; it has too many benefits and can help you drive your business up to the next level in its marketing effectiveness.

As you may be aware, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is crucial to the success of your website.

Even if you have the most effective, well-designed, and comprehensive website in the business, it won’t amount to anything if it can’t be found on major search engines. The statistics below support that if your site isn’t on that all important first page of results, your website could be practically invisible to most internet users. 

In monopoly terms, the first page of Google is Mayfair and Park Lane, anything else is Old Kent Road.

• #1 in a Google search gets 32% of all the clicks.
• #2 in a Google search gets 17% of all the clicks.
• #3 in a Google search gets 11% of all the clicks.
• 92 out of every 100 people who search on the internet do not go past the first page of their Google search.

Statistics courtesy of Chitika – Online Advertising Network

Small business proprietors often hand over the reins of their SEO to outside agencies, some of which are expensive and over-rated. What these business owners don’t realise is that there is a lot that can be done without any outside help at all. In this post, we will look the essential items that must be attended to for successful Search Engine Optimisation.

Note #1: For the tips below, it is assumed that you have access to your site with a Content Management System. If you don’t, then you are already behind the times. Upgrade that site today!

Note#2: For WordPress owners, make sure you have Yoast SEO, or All-In-One SEO installed in your plug-in. For other CMS’, do a Google search and find out the equivalent for your system. There are dozens of options.

#1 Page Content

As has been discussed in previous blogs, you must fill your pages with useful, appropriate, and high-quality content. The whole purpose of your site is to provide a service to your clients and prospects. Don’t lose sight of that goal! To boost your SEO, you need to use a mix of inbound and outbound links and this won’t happen without content that is helpful and valuable to your visitors.

#2 – Page URL

This is the name of the page that is used in the address bar of the web browser. If possible, use a couple of keywords in the URL that globally describe the content of the page. Don’t use spaces or underscores as these can confuse the Google bots, instead use hyphens to separate words.

If you are a WordPress CMS user, check your permalinks in the Settings section of your dashboard for this item.

#3 – Title Tags

A title tag is the small snippet of information that gets displayed at the top of a web browser. For your site, use your SEO plug-in (see above) and ensure that each page (and post) that you create has a relevant title tag that includes keywords from the text on the page.

#4 – Image ALT Tags

In the “old” days, ALT tags (the text that pops up when floating a cursor over an image) were used primarily to help visually impaired users of the web. These days, in additions to this important role they still play; ALT tags can be used to boost SEO by including keywords in them once again.

Are you starting to see a theme here? KEYWORDS are everything to SEO!!

#5 Keyword Overuse!

Despite what I have “pushed” throughout this post, Google will apply penalties if the keywords you use override your content. This is to prevent the brazen old practice of loading a page to the brim with visible and non-visible keywords. Nowadays, the content relevancy has been added into the Google page ranking algorithm and keywords must only make up between 5-7% of the overall page information.

Once you take care of the above, you’ll need to wait patiently for Google to re-index your site so that you can see the benefits of your efforts. If you don’t get the results that you want, look over the list again, check your site statistics and ensure that you are using the terminology of your potential clients. The question to ask is – What are they typing into Google to find you?

The New Year is fast approaching and, as usual, will be ushered in with a flash of fireworks and cheers of excitement.

On the 1^st of January 2023, people around the world will be opening their bleary eyes with the hazy promises of New Year’s resolutions swimming in their heads. Most of these will be along the lines of losing weight, getting fit or maybe saving more money; all personally focused ideals.

So how about a couple of New Year’s resolutions for your business website?

Maybe the site hasn’t performed up to your expectations in 2022. Perhaps you didn’t get the bottom line via your site that you hoped for. Or is it sitting dormant and not doing a thing for the customers that it is supposed to attract?

There’s no time like the lead up to New Years to take a good look at your site and resolve to make it into a site that your clients really need. Here’s three tips to make it their #1 choice when searching for anything in your industry.

Tip #1: Create helpful and informative content

Look at your site content and make sure that your site offers more to its visitors than just items or services for sale. Statistics have shown that a site that provides helpful and informative content has a lower bounce rate (people who bounce in and out) and a higher conversion of visits to sales.

Your content could include a blog (just like this one), how-to videos (embedded from your YouTube account) or downloadable fact sheets. There are a multitude of ways that you can help your clients – choose something that is suitable to your industry.

Tip #2: Make it easy to find your site in Google

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is no longer the realm of the experts. Sure, they may be able to squeeze out those last couple of places but with easy-to-use plugins such as Yoast SEO and All-in-One SEO, page optimisation can be done quickly and easily. In most cases, it can be done when the new content is being created.

Just by adding a simple description of the content and a few carefully chosen keywords to every page, you increase the chances of the content being found on Google. And by improving your chances of your information being found, you are making it easier for people to find it.

And that, ultimately, is the whole purpose of SEO.

Tip #3: Get your social media happening

Here I go again – harping on about social media. I still firmly believe that the secret to success behind most websites is an integrated Social Media approach. If you can make people like your business through your Facebook posts or Twitter tweets (or whatever your poison), then the chances of them visiting your site increase tenfold.

You can use social media to help your clients find what they want with the implementation of a carefully planned approach. Whilst building a new ecommerce store recently, I came across a number of ways to use a social presence to make any site an essential visit to prospective customers.

• Integrate a Wish List system into your ecommerce store. Customers visit the site and create a wish list which they then post to their Facebook page for others to purchase for them. Very helpful for prospective mothers and brides-to-be (as a couple of examples).
• Use a Social Media login for regular customers (i.e., people can use their username and password from Facebook, Google+, etc. to login). Saves the needs to invent a new login for every site a person visits – no-one likes to do this!
• Integrate Instagram tags into with product pages so that whenever a customer displays your product on their Instagram account (using the tag), it automatically appears on that product’s page. Great for clothing sites – your clothes can be seen on everyday people just like you and me as opposed to the models that may be used on the site. Check out Black Milk Clothing for a notable example of this.

If you can get those three strategies under your belt leading into 2023, you have put yourself in good stead for the remainder of the year. As any seasoned website owner or manager will know from experience, running and maintaining a successful website is not a “cake walk,” you must constantly monitor a multitude of site components to ensure that your site is working as you want it to. Running a website is hard work.

With a New Year’s Resolution using the above tips, your website is on its way to becoming the site that your clients really need.