Technology is advancing at such a rapid rate that many devices actually become obsolete before their expected lifespans have been reached. Few people are connecting to the web using old, conventional computers. Even stationary, all-in-one systems are largely used for gaming purposes. As such, if you want to use your website to connect with the largest group of consumers possible, you have to make sure that this platform is built to accommodate a vast and fast-growing range of devices. If you have every wondered, what is a responsive website, then the information that follows will help clear things up a bit.
In years past, websites were designed to be read and used largely on full-size computers and laptops. They simply weren’t coded for use on mobile phones or tablets. Smaller screen sizes made them too small to be viable and efficient. Moreover, certain features simply weren’t accessible. This is only an issue if a website was capable of showing up on one of these small-screen devices.
Think about how your customers are likely to access your site. Given the nature of your services or products, it may be best for people to connect online while on the go. In most cases, people are connecting with companies via their smartphones.
You should note that there are also a number of things that company owners commonly do to get their clients engaged online. For instance, if you intend to have an app, you will want your application to coordinate seamlessly with or perfectly complement your site. Having a mobile app is rarely sufficient for meeting all the needs of your market. Information that cannot be accessed on an app will likely be searched for on the traditional website.
Responsiveness is not something that you want to think about after already having designed your web pages. This is because it is far cheaper to hire a company that can get this aspect of the coding and design process right from the outset than it is to go back and fix areas of insufficiency once these have already been built in. You will save more money over the long run by simply budgeting for a reputable designer from the outset.
It is vital to understand that optimising your web pages will not be possible if these are not responsive. This is currently one of the top factors that search engines are looking at when indexing pages. They want to know that their users will be able to access the available links to get the information they need.
When SEO tactics aren’t working, upgrading to a responsive site design may be the needed solution. Once the accessibility and viability of an outdated site is improved, it will often rank a lot better. Responsiveness is definitely something you want to think about if your site hasn’t been seriously upgraded in some years.
Companies offering these services can actually help you with many aspects of the design and online marketing process. From SEO to content curation and more, these entities act as one stop shops for helping companies get websites and then get these sites noticed. Working with these agencies is often the best way to establish an affordable, seamless and truly effective plan for entering the digital arena.
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At Acceler8 Media our aim is always to provide customers with the best web presence possible, whilst providing an exceptional level of support and advice. This is exemplified by the experiences of North West Asbestos who tasked us with rebuilding their website and implementing a combination of SEO and Google Ads to promote the new site. The review they provided in response to their experiences makes all of our hard work worthwhile:
‘Since joining Acceler8 Media our work has increased by more than 30%. The most amazing thing about this up turn in business is that the amount we were spending on marketing prior to moving to Acceler8 was more than double what it is now. They keep in touch with us and send us a regular up dates from our advertising with them. Fully recommend them.’
Ian
North West Asbestos
Year on year, the performance of the website continues to improve and the latest Google Analytics data demonstrates the uplift in traffic:
- 41% increase in visitors to the website compared to the same period last year.
- 37% increase in page views compared to the previous year, due to improved content and usability on mobile devices.
- 42% increase in new visitors to the website compared to the same period last year.
Spam is a huge issue with contact forms on WordPress websites – both the websites we design, and on a global scale. As the most popular platform for websites, the WordPress contact form is highly targeted by spammers. Spam contact form submissions can be a huge issue for WordPress websites with high traffic, receiving hundreds of spam emails each day. These are inconvenient and make it difficult to spot the genuine messages amongst the spam.
At the end of 2018, the standard anti spam functionality provided by Google’s Captcha facility became obselete. At this point websites worldwide got inundated with hundreds of unwanted spam messages. Once the team at Acceler8 Media became aware of the issue, we systematically went through every website and added a new spam protection mechanism. This has worked perfectly and you should no longer be receiving unwanted emails on a daily basis. However, the spam issue did impact certain email addresses and they started to mark all messages received from customers websites as spam. Given the importance of website contact forms and the potential new enquiries, it is always good practice to check your spam folder on a regular basis. If you find a legitimate contact form in there, mark it as not spam and eventually your email host will start to add the contact forms to your normal inbox.
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The Truth About Web directories and SEO
For many years a popular strategy amongst website owners was to simply submit their sites to as many web directories as possible. This was a quick and easy way of getting links.
The intention here was to improve search engine visibility and potentially boost rankings.
This method was popular for many reasons, with the main ones being –
It was low cost
It worked
It was easy to do
It didn’t involve a great deal of work
After some time, Google decided enough was enough and started devaluing links from directories, removing directories from their index, and in some cases where the submissions were so poor, sending site owners unnatural link warnings and applying penalties.
As a rule of thumb, you should avoid using software or paid services to submit your site to directories. Although, this might seem like an easy way out, it’s rarely worth it. From what we have seen, a lot of organisations offering directory submissions like this, will end up submitting your site to all sorts of junk sites that are not in slightest bit relevant to your business or location. You need to ensure that your contact details are correct, and that you’re easily able to login later if you need to, to update them. Don’t try to cut corners using services or automated software. Do it right.
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Take a look at this infographic by Acceler8 Media which will tell you everything you need to know about the latest Google search algorithms.
