Welcome back for another installment of 504 Media Mondays. Today, we will briefly cover a topic that could be covered in a week long course: Testing. Settle in and enjoy the read. Here we go.

As a web designer, I offer several subscription service packages (see 504 Media Subscription Services) to help a client host their site, update the content of their site, optimize their site for search engines as well as maintain the security of their site(s). The site security package (which i covered in detail in last week’s installment) includes software updates for your website theme, any plugins that are used as well as core software updates for your website. In the case of a WordPress website, each developer of those individual software plugins usually test their plugin against the latest WordPress software and regression tests against previous WordPress versions to ensure compatibility of their plugin with your site. Their responsibility usually stops right there. This is where your web designer comes in. Developer testing is only one piece of the puzzle.

As your web designer, if I’m contracted to maintain the security of your site, it is my responsibility to test that plugin on your site, where you also have other plugins installed. Due to the wide variety of coding methods used by plugin developers, there are often conflicts and compatibility issues that arise when you install certain combinations of plugins. Therefore, in best practice, we have to thoroughly test that new plugin version to ensure that it doesn’t break your site. We can achieve this in a multi step process.

1. Create a Staging Site – A staging site starts as an exact replica of your live site and is the “environment” where you install new plugins or new plugin versions in order to test them. Because the staging site is a replica of your live site, you can ensure that if the new plugin or plugin version does not break anything on the staging site, it should be safe to install on your live site as well.
2. Take a Backup Of Your Live Site – Prior to installing any new software or new version of existing software, it is best to take a backup of that environment. This will allow you to hit the “undo” button by restoring the previous state of that site before you installed the new plugin. It is best to keep these backups separately from the server your site resides on for disaster recovery purposes.
3. Report Any Issues You Encounter To The Developer – once you discover an issue, report it to the developer of the plugin so that they can investigate. Some basic troubleshooting can tell them whether it is specific to your site and your combination of plugins or if there is a larger issue going on that indicates that their new version is the root cause.
4. What To Do If You Run Into An Issue – If the developer isn’t able to help you right away, deactivate all plugins except the new version of the plugin you just installed. Does the issue persist? If so, then the issue may be related to the plugin in question and the version of WordPress you are currently running on your site. If the issue does not persist with all plugins deactivated, then start activating each of your other plugins one by one until your site breaks again. This will point you to the combination of plugins that is causing your issue.
5. Never Skip These Steps – The worst thing you can do as a trusted service provider is skip a step out of assumption that it will be ok. Usually, the way it works out is the second you do that will be the second you encounter an issue. In that situation, not having a backup or not having tested will cost your client downtime. If their site happens to be revenue generating, you are causing an even bigger impact.

I hope this brief topic was helpful and helped to better understand best practices when it comes to maintaining your site. If you have a web designer currently doing this type of work for you, this quick post should provide you with the basic questions to ask to ensure these basic steps are being done.

Leave us a comment and let us know what you think. Have a great week. We will see you right back here next Monday!

Welcome to 504 Media Mondays, your weekly blog covering all things business and technology. Today, we talk about a topic that’s not covered a whole lot in mainstream conversations. I mean we just assume it happens right? If you haven’t figured it out yet, we are talking about website security.

Assuming security just happens isn’t that far off of an expectation considering the fact that no business owner wants their site compromised, their company in the news, their customer data compromised, their site that 100% drives their business to be unavailable or to be lost altogether. So how much is site security worth to you and how diligent should you be in seeking to safeguard your digital assets?

Let’s start with a basic overview of site security and what all it covers. This is by far not an exhaustive list, but some of the more common methods for safeguarding your site.

Anti-Spam

When it comes to spam, we typically think about emails and our junk folder, but spam can impact your website as well. The most common ways you see spam on your websites are within any pages that allow user interaction, such as contact forms and blog posting that have comments enabled. There are tools that your hosting provider may provide or your web designer can usually provide those services for you.

Software/Code Updates

No matter which platform your site is developed on, there are periodic updates of software and code that the developer releases to keep their product up to date and offer new functionality. Usually intertwined into that is plugins that are used to extend functionality that isn’t available natively on that platform. The developer of those plugins also release periodic software updates. As you can probably figure out, there are several moving parts here and someone has to manage all of those updates to ensure they happen and that they don’t break your site in the process. Testing is a must as you update these pieces of software to maintain the up-time and reliability of your website. Which brings us to…

Backups/Disaster Recovery

Best practices suggest that as you are working to update each piece of software within your site that you take a backup before hand so that in the event something goes wrong, you can roll back to the previous state and get your site back up and running. This practice should be performed to ensure you have a copy of your site somewhere other than with your hosting provider. The backup then serves two purposes. You have a restoration point should you need to roll back to that version of your site. The bigger piece here is disaster recovery. It may not happen often, but in the event your hosting provider goes completely down, loses all of their infrastructure or your hosting expires, as an example, it is advisable to have a copy of your site in a remote location. you could theoretically then stand your site up with a different hosting provider and be back up and running within a few hours.

Summary

In summary, no matter if your site is purely informational only or your site 100% drives your business and you depend on it as your revenue source, security should be taken seriously. Visit us at www.504mediasolutions.com/services to learn more about our site security service as well as all of our web/graphic development offerings. Let us know in the comments what you thought about this week’s topic and as always let us know how we can be of service!

Welcome to 504 Media Mondays. This week’s installation is all about decoding what the big fuss is about websites, why you need one and the impact to your business if you choose to go without it. If you are a large corporation, chances are you already have a website and it is an integral part of your business marketing plan and operations. If your bottom line isn’t in the 6 or 7 figure range, you may wonder what’s the big deal if you don’t have a website? I’ll list a few good reasons why any business should strongly consider having a website if they do not have one already.

Marketing, Marketing, Marketing!
Even 10-15 years ago, it was advantageous if you had a website, but with the advancement of web based technologies, the web offers a business tons of opportunities to market your business. A few of those examples are:

1. Search Engines
   By simply having a web presence, you have the opportunity to have potential customers stumble upon your company when they are searching for products or services. You can set up your site with certain keywords and verbiage to hook into search engine results when people search for those particular words that are tightly aligned with your business.
2. Personal Social Media Sites
   Social media site advertisement almost always require you to funnel potential customers back to a sales lead funnel of some sort via a “call to action” button so that you can then further engage with them to potentially convert them into true customers.
3. Magazine/Newspaper Online Advertisements
   Again, you are advertising on some sort of platform that you feel has sufficient visibility to get your company some publicity. If they want to know more about you, most consumers wish to do so via the web as to avoid the old school sales pressure tactics that can be off putting.
4. Professional Networking Sites and B2B Organization Networks
   Professional Networking Sites such as LinkedIn offer you the unique ability to reach individual consumers but also to engage in business to business networking. Depending on what your business entails, it may lend itself to dealing more directly with consumers or it may lend itself to dealing more with other businesses as your primary clientele. Proffesional networking sites give you the flexibility to market to both.

Marketing your business without a web presence severely limits your ability to reach your intended target audience without a substantial boots on the ground, more localized effort.

Customer Confidence
A few weeks ago, one of our first 504 Media Mondays posts made mention of customers losing confidence in businesses that utilize personal email services as their primary email. Without a website in place, many businesses meet the same skepticism among potential customers as most prefer to utilize a business’s website as their primary source of information before they decide to engage further about their products or services. In addition, remember that merely having a website does not get you in the clear on its own. The quality of the website is also of importance as a poor quality website will also steer customers away from your business and give them a sometimes unfair perception of your business and its integrity. Perception is reality. Hiring a professional design firm, such as 504 Media Solutions is always a good idea. There are many options out there to build your site on your own. However, there are so many nuances to web design and what is considered effective design, that it is very worthwhile to work with a design professional with the experience to take your business to the next level.

Telling Your Story
When it comes to engaging your customers, you want to be in control over how you come in contact with them. You also want to be in control of what information they receive on your business on any platform where you control the information source. Here are 3 ways you can tell your story via your website.

1. The Why Behind Your Business
   The why behind your business matters to some. Therefore, your “About Us” page really does serve to truly connect with some customers and cause them to want to support you because of what you are all about. You can utilize that “About Us” verbiage on your website and other marketing platforms, such as social media, newpaper ads and articles, interviews, etc, but you want your story to be consistent and the information that’s on your website is ground zero.
2. What is it That Your Business Does?
   The home page of your website is your 30 second elevator pitch. That’s about how long you have to engage your potential customers before they hit the back button and search elsewhere. Therefore, if you have a means to tell them what it is you do and what products or services you offer, then they are more likely to stick around and purchase something and/or reach out to you.
3. Incentives to Do Business With You
   You can also promote incentives, discounts and special offers to help convert potential customers into true paying customers. If your website is your primary sales channel, then linking to that website from other marketing platforms with “call to action” buttons works wonders.

Hopefully you have a better idea behind why your business is best suited to have a website. Let us know how we can help and as always 504 Media Solutions is here to meet any of your website, graphics and logo needs. Please comment below and provide feedback on today’s post.

Have you ever wondered what’s the hold up on your web designer’s timeline and what could possibly take them so long to deliver the site of your dreams? As usual, there are a number of reasons why this may be the case and this article serves to provide the common bottlenecks as well as things you can do as the consumer to speed the process up. Win – Win for all involved right? Let’s dive in.

1. Initial Discovery To Gather Project Requirements
   Just as in any type of project planning, you must start with some initial discovery. This can be just an informal call, some back and forth email or even in the form of a questionnaire. The goal of this step is to ensure the web designer fully understands exactly what you need up front as there are several decisions that must be made based upon the information gathered during Discovery. The type of website you need can greatly influence what type of solution you propose to your customer and therefore, this step is vital to any project. Often times, this can be one of the more lengthy steps just getting the project off the ground as this often requires discussion of bill rates and other projected costs.
   What Can The Customer Do? 
   1. The customer should be able to provide the designer some very basic information about what the company or organization does. This can influence the style of the site or recommended color schemes.
   2. The customer should have a basic idea of what type of content they wish to deliver on their website, such as an image gallery, music, service offerings, sale listings, etc.
   3. The customer should know if they have any special requirements of the site that may require additional technology, such as an online store, message board, customer logins, etc.
   4. The customer should come prepared with a budget in mind. Based upon all of the information gathered during discovery, the web designer and customer can determine what they can and cannot achieve within the existing budget. This can help to plan out future phases to expand the site at a later date if needed.
2. Basic Technology Needs In Order to Start a Project
   Unless you have worked in technology, have technology as one of your hobbies or have set up a website before, you may not be completely familiar with all that is required technically before you can even upload your first website.
   What Can The Customer Do? Generally, the following is required in order to proceed. Familiarize yourself with these different components prior to discovery session.
   1. A Domain Name: The URL that visitors will type in to access your site. We can begin development without it, but it will be required before final product can be considered delivered.
   2. A Hosting Account: You will need server space somewhere, whether that is on a personal server or with a hosting firm like GoDaddy or HostGator. This will be where we upload all of your site files, images and other content to deliver your website.
   3. Other Subscriptions: You may need some other subscriptions, such as a eCommerce solution or SSL (secure transaction) certificate to keep your customer information safe if needed.
3. Basic Site Structure
   What pages do you wish to have? Home Page, Services Page, About Us Page, Contact Page?
   What Can The Customer Do? Once you understand what type of content you deliver, you can begin to build out a diagram of how your site will be structured. This is the first step of building out your site. If you are prepared with this information, we can move quickly into the lengthiest part of the website design process which is…..
4. Design Vision and Content, Content, Content
   What do you want your site to look like? What do you want it to say?
   What Can The Customer Do? 
   1. Come prepared with examples of other sites in your industry that you like. This can include site layout as well as color scheme (Research what color scheme can say about your business here). This will help establish the vision of what you are looking for from a design perspective.
   2. Coming prepared with your company slogan, company history verbiage, etc will greatly reduce the time it takes to bring your website live. No one can tell your story like you can! Web Design firms definitely can interject with best practices and other suggestions, but having a starting point on the content takes a lot of time off of the timeline.

Hopefully you were able to pick up some tips on how you can help to speed up your design project and this article gave you a good idea of how to avoid common bottlenecks in the process. The sooner your site is up, the sooner you can get back to managing your business and utilizing your brand new tool to help promote and grow it!

We hope you enjoyed this article and feel free to leave us a comment below with feedback. Until next time. Have a great week!

We just wrapped up our 5 part mini series titled “Top 5 Mistakes Businesses Make in the Digital Age” where we covered topics such as social media marketing, proper email usage, service level agreements, website domain names and marketing plan development. If you didn’t catch it visit our blog to check it out.

Two weeks ago, we started a 3 part series about best practices for your websites landing page (and other common pages). Your home page is like the “30 second elevator pitch” of your website. Statistics show that if a user cannot find what they are looking for easily and intuitively they will abandon the site and head back for the search engine or other sources. You may never get that visitor back to your site to get a good idea of what it is your company excels at.

Today we will look part 3 of what you can do to ensure your website visitors are not leaving your site prematurely.

Tip: Have a Plan to Engage Your Customers on Each Page

If your home page is designed well with all of your most important content clearly presented, and the structure of the website is set up in a well thought out way, then congratulations; you have avoided 2 of the top pitfalls that increase the likelihood for visitors to abandon your site. So now what?

If a customer visits your page, likes what they see and read and wants to take the next step, what do you want that process to look like on your site? If a user gets multiple clicks into your website, you can have multiple entry points to your site that each has an opportunity to be converted into a lead. You can do this in one of 2 ways (There are others but I wanted to highlight these 2 as the most effective):

1. Sign up form subscribes the customer into a content specific newsletter based upon where they signed up on the site
   Signing up for a content specific newsletter should be very specific to where on the site they were when they signed up. For instance, if you had a fitness business, the sign up form on the page related to muscle gain should enroll them in muscle gain related content, not fat loss or vegan diet info. This type of methodology is good for setting your business up as a subject matter expert and a valued source of information from the customer’s perspective.
2. Sign up form is more of a traditional “contact us” page and generates an email to you as the business contact to follow up
   Signing up for a more traditional “contact us” page would simply generate an email to the business owner with the contents of the form that the user filled out. It would then be the typical process that the business contact follow up with the user to get more information about why they contacted you and then enable whatever process you have to turn that lead into a customer.

All of these methods are useful, but you have to have a plan in place before your ever roll out your website. Each visitor that strolls through your page without these customer engagement points in place, are potentially lost customers forever.

Let us know what you thought about the final part of this new 3 part series and be sure to leave a comment below. As always thanks for visiting us at 504 Media Solutions!

We just wrapped up our 5 part mini series titled “Top 5 Mistakes Businesses Make in the Digital Age” where we covered topics such as social media marketing, proper email usage, service level agreements, website domain names and marketing plan development. If you didn’t catch it visit our blog to check it out.

Last week, we started a 3 part series about best practices for your websites landing page (and other common pages). Your home page is like the “30 second elevator pitch” of your website. Statistics show that if a user cannot find what they are looking for easily and intuitively they will abandon the site and head back for the search engine or other sources. You may never get that visitor back to your site to get a good idea of what it is your company excels at.

Today we will look at part 2 of what you can do to ensure your website visitors are not leaving your site prematurely.

Tip: Do Not Make It Difficult To Find Content On Your Page

If your home page highlights the most important content, then the rest of the content has to not be a cliff where the user falls off forever. The easiest thing you can do is to plan out your site structure before you start. You want to organize your content into categories and create your menu structure based upon that.

For instance, if you provide services, ensure your services are categorized into what makes sense for your industry. Make sure you include proper descriptions of those services and include pricing (if you wish to publish it on your site). If you sell products, imagine a potential customer looking for a product on your site and all products are in one section with no way to filter or categorize them? They would surely leave your site due to difficulty in finding what they are looking for.

If it makes sense, you can include a search function for a portion of your website as well, but those should be used sparingly as it can get messy if not implemented correctly. All of these examples help your user to find your content in a helpful way. If they are able to get more details on your highlighted home page content and find it easily, this will lengthen their stay on their site.

Let us know what you thought about Part 2 of this new 3 part series and be sure to leave a comment below. Next week, we will touch on customer engagement through your website.

We just wrapped up our 5 part mini series titled “Top 5 Mistakes Businesses Make in the Digital Age” where we covered topics such as social media marketing, proper email usage, service level agreements, website domain names and marketing plan development. If you didn’t catch it visit our blog to check it out.

This week, we will start a 3 part series about best practices for your websites landing page (and other common pages). Your home page is like the “30 second elevator pitch” of your website. Statistics show that if a user cannot find what they are looking for easily and intuitively they will abandon the site and head back for the search engine or other sources. You may never get that visitor back to your site to get a good idea of what it is your company excels at. We will look at 3 things you can do to ensure you minimize the likelihood of visitors abandoning your site without consuming the content you intended for them to consume as a business owner.

1) Make It Clear What Your Business Does
The landing page of your website should be extremely clear in describing what it is your company is about. If the visitor cannot ascertain what it is that you do, they will surely leave your site and most likely never return. Be sure to include clear statements like “We are a xxx company specializing in services such as xxx, yyy, zzz”. Make it a focal point of the landing page, such as header text or a captivating graphic

2) Include The Most Important Content
Be sure to include the most important content you want the visitor to consume. If it’s most important for your visitors to know what your company does, the story behind your company and feature previous clients, then be sure to include that information on the home page. Consumers want a clean design that isn’t too cumbersome to find the information they are looking for but if you can be sure they can get the most important tidbits about your company without ever clicking away from the home page, you can feel more confident that you will generate more business.

3) Organize Your Content
Including the most relevant content on your home page will do more harm than good if you do not organize it in a way that makes sense. Avoid making your home page too busy or having related content not grouped together. 2 or 3 sections of the site is usually sufficient where you can include your core competency, what makes you different and an easy way for the visitor to contact you to start the client/business relationship. A good clean web design that organizes your relevant content in a meaningful way will certainly keep visitors engaged on your site and will surely increase repeat visitors.

Let us know what you thought about Part 1 of this new 3 part series and be sure to leave a comment below

A few weeks ago, we started a 5-part series with weekly installments entitled “Top 5 Mistakes for Businesses in the Digital Age”. In this series, we tackle the top 5 most common mistakes made by businesses while establishing their social media and web presence. On to Part 5…here we go!!

5. You Have No Written Marketing Plan

This one is probably the most common and ties together all of the previous parts of this series with a nice pretty bow. In summary, the previous 4 topics were:

1. Choosing a Business Name Without Securing Their Web Domain Name
2. Having a Published Business Email Address Using a Personal Email Service
3. Over Saturating Social Media With Advertisements
4. Not Following Up With Customers in a Timely Manner

What do all of these have in common? They should all be addressed in a written marketing plan. A written marketing plan ensures that the following are accounted for (Disclaimer: this is not an exhaustive list, just some of the most common):

1. You have a consistent brand identity across all marketing mediums (social media, email, website, business cards, flyers, newspaper ads, etc.)
2. You have a handle on who your intended audience is and…
3. You have a plan and a timeline on when you will engage those audiences and how
4. All marketing efforts are thoughtfully laid out, tie together and funnel potential customers to your intended products and services.
5. As a result of your organized efforts, your customers and potential customers develop a trust for your business over time that leads to repeat business and referral business.

When you have you marketing plan laid out, you have the blueprint to grow you business. Following that plan becomes a lot easier when you thoroughly examine all angles and approaches prior to shooting from the hip. This will exponentially increase your chances of success as a business in the digital age. We have so many electronic tools at our disposal for growing our business, we can easily become disjointed in our use of those tools if we are not careful. Include your marketing plan as a part of your business plan and watch your plan come to life!

Thanks for reading our 5 part series and let us know in the comments below your thoughts on today’s topic. We hope you enjoyed the information and let us know how we can help by clicking here to contact us. We hope to hear from you soon!

4. Not Following Up With Customers in a Timely Manner

In Part 3, we talked about avoiding over saturation of your business advertisements on social media. Today, we will touch on service level agreements. One of the quickest ways to alienate a customer base is to be unresponsive to information requests or support requests. If a customer or potential customer fills out a form on your website and you choose to send a auto response stating the timeframe in which you will be getting in contact with them, it is of the utmost importance that you honor your stated turnaround time.

This is typically a 2 step process:

1. Choose a response time promise and ensure that you, at minimum, have the bandwidth to respond in the time you are stating you will be able to respond in.
2. Try as much as possible to under promise and over deliver. i.e. if you state you will get back with the customer between 24-48 hours, try to get back with them within 24 hours.

If you are funneling visitors through a sales lead opt in form, please understand that every hour that passes by is another hour that the customer could have found another business to fill their needs in a more expeditious manner. Also, by being responsive, you will build a rapport with your customers that makes the entry barrier high for other businesses to come in and earn the repeat business of your potential and existing clientele.

Thanks for reading part 4 and let us know in the comments below your thoughts on today’s topic. In our last installment, we will talk about a topic that is probably the most common mistake businesses make these days. Stay tuned for part 5…

A couple weeks ago, we started a 5-part series entitled “Top 5 Mistakes for Businesses in the Digital Age”. In this series, we tackle the top 5 most common mistakes made by businesses while establishing their social media and web presence. On to Part 3…here we go!!

3. Over Saturating Social Media With Advertisements

In Part 2, we talked about avoiding the use of personal email services for your business email address. Today, we will touch on social media advertising Do’s and Don’ts. Have you ever run across a business that you follow on social media that seems to post advertisements multiple times a day? The frustration of seeing that company pop up on your timeline multiple times a day, especially with repetitive content may be grounds for you to click the un-follow button.

Advertising on social media can be one of your best tools to grow your business. However, it is also a slippery slope. So what should you do and not do when it comes to social media advertising?

• Don’t: Mass produce postings on social media and flood your potential customers timelines
• Do: Take the time to plan your marketing strategy up front to ensure you have a good idea of how you want to go about building your customer base.
• Don’t: Post content that is irrelevant to your customers or your business
• Do: Tailor content specific to your customers interests based upon where on your page they subscribed to your email lists.
• Don’t: Advertise too much in private groups you may be subscribed to on your personal account
• Do: Ask permission from the group moderator to post on your behalf as it may be more impactful than posting yourself and giving a bad impression to your business

There are many more do’s and don’ts but these seem to be the most common mistakes that are made with regards to social media advertising. You only get one chance to make a first impression and you want to make sure the marketing of your business is planned and calculated to ensure you achieve the growth you are looking for.

Thanks for reading part 3 and let us know in the comments below your thoughts on today’s topic. In Part 4, we will talk about communication response time and service level agreements.  Stay tuned for part 4…