Having a website for your business is a good investment. While a physical location may restrict your business, a virtual presence can widen your audience and extend your reach. For e-commerce, that can mean opening up your products to a national and international audience.  For more localized businesses, like those selling a service, a virtual presence still increases your reach. Your virtual presence can help garner interest outside of word of mouth or your regular neighborhoods. People may also be more apt to give your business a chance since they can find information about your business online.  Your product or…

Blogs are a place where you can share ideas, opinions, and general information about a topic. Even if blogging is not the main goal of your site, there are a number of reasons why you might want to include a blog. Some common reasons include:  SEO benefits Establishing your expertise Sharing your ideas Generating passive income We’ll be walking you through how to create your own blog page in this article. However, keep in mind that this guide is for the main blog page where people go to see the latest blog posts, not the individual blog content pages.  What’s…

What are SSL Certificates? SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates secure the connection between your websites and the customer. This ensures that any data that is communicated between the two (login credentials, payment details, etc), is encrypted.  Having an SSL certificate installed on your site tells your visitors that your site is trustworthy. You can tell if a website has an SSL certificate or not by checking the browser URL bar. When you visit a site, websites that possess an SSL certificate will have a lock symbol next to their URL. Myth: SSL Certificates Are Only Necessary on E-Commerce Sites While…

Planning Your Homepage: Why It’s Important When building a website, it’s tempting to dive directly into the building phase. However, there’s an important step before you start building: the page planning phase. This phase helps you develop goals and strategies to help visitors interact with your site, which can help boost your site’s user experience and marketing stats.  The homepage is an important page to a site. It’s one of the main pages and will likely receive the most visits from new and returning visitors.So if you want to give your website its best chance at success, you should invest…

The Case for Page Planning While page planning isn’t an absolutely necessary step in the page-building process, it can give your website an edge. Instead of jumping straight into the building phase, the planning phase gives you a moment to contemplate best practices, your page’s goals, and more.  If you’re looking for an easy way to build your pages, check out our Weebly Site Builder or WordPress.   Without the planning step, web pages run the risk of confusing site design and muddling goals. With clear goals in mind, you can create the best page for your website.  But what goals…

The Importance of the Site Refresh Refreshing your site with a new design is necessary every once in a while. If you don’t update, the fast-paced world of technology will leave your site looking outdated in a few years. To stay relevant, it’s necessary to fine-tune your site’s design periodically. The general rule of thumb is to redesign every few years, but there are a lot of signals that could be indicating you need a site refresh sooner rather than later.  We go into more detail about the site refresh in this article: How Often Should You Refresh Your Site’s…

Why It’s Important to Plan Your Pages Constructing a website without a plan is like assembling furniture without the instructions. You could get it right, but it’s more likely you’ll reach the end and wonder how you ended up with three extra screws.  Creating a site without a clear plan can lead to a weak user interface and message. People could land on your site and not be able to tell what you’re about or what they should do next. Many problems can pop up in a poorly planned site and not all of them will be immediately apparent.  So…

When running a website, it’s natural to go through a few redesigns over the years. But how do you know when is the right time to refresh your site?  The general rule of thumb is to refresh your website every two to three years. However, sometimes other factors indicate it’s time to switch things up. We’ll be going over those indicators below. If any of them apply to your website, it may be time to start thinking about refreshing your site’s look and feel.  When Your Site is Underperforming Underwhelming performance is one glaring indicator that your website is ready…