Category: Online Advertising

Before you start working on a web design Santee, you have to think about hosting. The files of your website will have to be stored somewhere. Although it is possible to host your own website on a local server, it is better to host it on a remote server. When you choose a hosting company to work with, you will be presented with at least four options to choose from. They include the following.

Shared hosting

This is the most affordable hosting option. The shared hosting plans cost less than $10 per month. The problem with this package is that your website will be placed on the same server as several other websites. This means the bad reputation of websites on the shared severs can tarnish the reputation of your website more so when it comes to search engine ranking. Your web designer Santee will mostly recommend shared hosting if your budget is limited.

Cloud hosting

This is a more reliable hosting option. Your website will be hosted on several severs instead of just one server. The beauty of this option is that in case one server fails your website will still be reachable through other severs. Cloud hosting is more expensive than shared hosting but cheaper than Virtual private servers. The cost for managed cloud hosting can, however, be higher than the cost of using dedicated hosting.

Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

With this option, the hosting service provider will divide one sever into virtual services. This means that your website will get hosted the same as dedicated hosting. The reason for this is because each virtual server has allocated resources which are not shared. Unlike shared hosting where a website can take up most of the resources, you will maintain the same allocated resources throughout when using a VPS.

Dedicated hosting

This is the best option for a business website. All the resources are dedicated. Needless to say, this is the most expensive hosting package you will come across. It is perfect for large companies that have high-traffic websites. The cost for dedicated hosting starts from $100 per month.

Always consider the reputation of hosting service before purchasing a hosting service from them. Today most hosting companies offer domain name registration which means you don’t have to use more than one company to get your domain and hosting. You must also consider your website needs in order to select a package that is perfect for your website.

Web Design Santee

An experienced web designer Santee will be happy to tell you that hosting packages are not the same. Yes you might have selected a dedicated package from one company but the results will not be the same across hosting companies. Some companies offer better services than others. If you are searching for the best hosting package, here are the key features you need to look for in a hosting service.

Storage and bandwidth

The amount of bandwidth and storage you need will depend on what you will be hosting on your website. For example if your web design Santee will rely heavily on high resolution images you will need a bigger storage. On the other hand, if you want your website to load fast and if you expect to get lots of traffic, you need to get more bandwidth. Bandwidth is what determines how fast your website loads. If you have high traffic, and offer video downloads you need to get more bandwidth. When deciding on the bandwidth to use you have to account for traffic spikes as well as growth.

Be wary of unlimited plans. Unlimited never means infinite. In most cases, you will end up paying more if your visitors exceed the average customer that is set by the hosting company. Always take the time to understand what the hosting company means by unlimited.

Security

Security has to be a top concern when deciding on the hosting package to use. Most hosting companies offer SSL encryption, SPAM protection and some form of website backups. For an ecommerce store, you will need extra security. You have to look beyond the basic features and check for such features like hack protection and DDoS protection. You will find these features under the advanced plans.

Automatic backups

Once your web design Santee is done, the last thing you want is to lose everything. This is why you need a hosting company that offers automatic backups as well as one-click restore. Getting daily backups means you will be able to restore your website easily in case it is compromised in any way.

Customer support

Last but not least, you have to make sure that you will get dedicated customer support. In case something goes wrong with your hosting service, you should be able to get the technical support you need to restore your website. If the company has a poor customer support you will end up suffering.

These are the key features you need to look for when choosing a hosting package. More time has to be committed in learning more about the hosting company. Are their services reliable? Do they have a good reputation?

Web Designer Santee

The primary focus of any experienced web designer Santee is to create a website that loads fast and one that performs perfectly. The main focus is usually on speed. Nobody wants to spend his time on a slow website. If your website is slow, visitors will quickly click away and this will be registered as a bounce. A high bounce rate will not only cost you valuable business but also push your business ranking down. If you want to learn how to optimize your website’s performance, here are the top things you need to do.

Test your website’s speed

You will not be able to pinpoint the issues on your website without first testing its speed. The good news is that there are so many online tools that you can use to test the overall speed of your website. The results will help you know where your website is lacking. Here are the most popular tools you can use:

• GTMetrix
• Yoast Google Analytics Plugin
• PageSpeed Insights
• Pingdom
• YSlow
• Web Page Analyzer

Optimize your images

To improve the speed of your website, you need to optimize the file size of your images. This is the first thing you need to do to your web design Santee. Your images need to be in small file sizes. You don’t have to sacrifice resolution when doing this. There are many tools you can use to resize the file size without sacrificing resolution. You also need to use suitable formats. JPEG is optimized for photos whereas GIF and PNG are recommended for icons and web graphics.

Use CDN

CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. You need to use CDN if you display a large amount of data. CDN uses a huge network of servers situated in various locations to help deliver content to visitors much faster. The closer to a CDN server a visitor is the faster the content will load.

Reduce the number of plugins

Plugins will save you from coding every function that you want on your web design Santee. The problem, however, is that using too many plugins will cause your website to be slow. You should only install a handful of plugins and deactivate and remove the unnecessary plugins from your website. If you are not sure if plugins are the cause of the slow speed, you can deactivate all of them then test the speed.

Enable browser caching

This is the first recommendation a web designer Santee will give you. With browser caching, your pages will be stored on the website of your visitor. What this means is that when the visitor comes back to your website, the page will not have to be loaded afresh but just to be updated. As a result, it will load much faster.

Pick a reliable web host

Last but not least, you need to use a reliable web host and select a package that offers the resources that you need. Steer clear of shared hosting plans if yours is a resource-intensive website.

Web Designer Santee

Web design Santee is not something you should rush. There are so many things you have to consider. Top on the list is the speed of the website. More often than not, websites fail to meet their purpose because they are slow. As a result, they record high bounce rates which subsequently lead to poor ranking on search engines. If you are wondering why your website is slow, here are the main things you should consider.

Third-party online ad network

To monetize your website, your web designer Santee will recommend that you use online advertising. Although this option will bring in money, it poses a risk to the overall performance of your website. This is mostly because the codes, mostly JavaScript, which is used to display online ads can cause your website to be slow.

Wrong web host

One of the first things you will need to do when creating your website is to find a web host. This is where your website’s data will be stored. Not every web host will guarantee reliable speeds. Most websites are slow because of poor choice of web host. If yours is a resource intensive website and you select a web host that cannot keep up with the demand, the performance of your website will decline. In this case your website will be slow and may even keep on crushing. This is common when using a shared server environment. Changing your web host or upgrading to a new web host can solve this issue.

Too many plugins and widgets

If you are building your website on WordPress, you may be tempted to use plugins to add functionality. The problem with using too many widgets/plugins is that they will cause the speed of your website to decline. What is more is that some plugin might conflict with each other thus slowing your website even further. Be careful when selecting plugins and use as few of them as possible. Only install plugins that are updated regularly and ones with good ratings.

Too many external embedded media

It is highly recommended to embed external media instead of uploading videos directly to your website. Doing so will help your website to load fast. Even so, it is good to note that having too many embedded media will slow your website. This is because too many external embedded media add additional code to your pages. This will affect the load speed.

Using large image files

This is the most common mistake people make when working on a web design Santee. Failing to reduce the size of image files will bloat your website. You need to trim the size of the images before uploading them.

There are many other things that will affect the performance of your website. An experienced web designer Santee will make sure that your website is optimized for both speed and performance. Don’t hire just any designer that comes your way.

Web Design Santee

Your web design Santee will not be complete without an SSL certificate. When purchasing your domain name and hosting service you have to consider spending a little more money on an SSL certificate. In the past this was needed only on websites that dealt with credit card payments. Today any website should have the SSL certificate. Here are the main reasons why SSL is essential.

Protects data

One of the main purposes of having SSL is so as to protect the data that is exchanged between you and a visitor. SSL works by encrypting the data that is sent over the Internet. What this means is that the data is locked and can only be unlocked by the intended recipient. This is particularly important when dealing with sensitive data. Your web designer Santee will insist on having an SSL certificate if your website will deal with sensitive data like credit card numbers, passwords and IDs. SSL protects you and your audience from the mischievous arm of skimmers and hackers. SSL works by turning the data into undecipherable format which cannot be accessed by hackers. The recipients’ server or browser is what unlocks the data. This in turn helps affirm your identity.

Better search engine ranking

Back in 2014 Google made changes to its algorithm. The change gave an upper hand to websites that used HTTPS. Today, researchers have found that websites that use https get better ranking on Google results than those that don’t. There is a very strong correlation between HTTPS and high search engine ranking. This is according to a study by Brian Dean; the founder of Backlinko.com. Getting the SSL certificate will hence boost your search engine rankings.

Satisfy PCI/DSS requirements

If you accept only payments, you are familiar with the PCI/DSS requirements. For your website to receive payments you must be PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant. Getting the SSL certificate is one of the steps of getting PCI compliant. SSL is one of the 12 primary requirements that have been set by PCI.

If you are working on your web design Santee, SSL is one thing you must never ignore. The cost is not as high and there are so many hosting companies that even offer SSL certificates for free. However, if you want to receive online payments, you must find a trusted SSL certificate provider. It is also good to note that having an SSL certificate is a requirement today for any website. Even for a personal website, if you want to rank well on search engine results, you must consider getting the SSL certificate.

Web Design Santee

Web design Santee focuses on more than just the appearance. As search engines try to keep Internet users safe, there are many regulations that website owners have to adhere to. One of those regulations is having an SSL certificate. SSL is the backbone for a secure Internet. It protects sensitive information that is being sent across the world computer networks. Today having an SSL certificate is no longer optional. This is regardless of whether your website handles sensitive information or not. SSL provides critical security, privacy and data integrity for your website and the user’s personal information.

It encrypts sensitive information

The primary purpose of SSL is to keep sensitive information that is being sent across the Internet encrypted so that only the intended recipients can access it. With SSL, no computer between you and the server can see the information you are sending may it be usernames, credit card numbers or passwords. Having an SSL certificate will even boost your search engine rankings on Google. This is one of the top reasons why your web designer Santee will recommend you get an SSL certificate.

Provides authentication

Away from data encryption, having an SSL certificate will give authentication. This means you will be sending the information securely to the intended server and no imposter will be able to eavesdrop. Having SSL means you will be able to avoid websites that trick users into sending information to them instead of to your website. All you need to do is get SSL certificate from trusted SSL providers.

Trusted SSL providers only issue SSL certificates to companies that have been verified. Several identify checks are done to verify a company. Special types of SSL certificates like EV SSL Certificates require thorough validation than the other types.

SSL provides trust

One of the reasons you need to account for the cost of SSL certificate in your web design Santee budget is because having SSL will provide trust to potential clients. Web browsers provide visual cues that let web users know if they are on a trusted website or not. If your website still uses http:// instead of https://, users will know right away that yours is not a secure website and they might never trust you. SSL providers will give you a trust seal which helps win the trust of visitors.

Required for PCI compliance

Last but not least, it is good to note that SSL is needed for PCI compliance. To accept credit cards your website must have an SSL certificate.

There are so many reasons why you need to get an SSL certificate. The only two disadvantages of using SSL are cost and performance. You will pay more to get the SSL certificate and on performance using SSL requires more server resources. You will gain a lot more from getting SSL.

Web Design Santee

Web design Santee is mostly considered when creating a website for the first time. Thereafter, the only thing that people do is update the layout and content. But did you know there are times when you might need to build a whole new website? In this post we will be looking at the main reasons why you might need a new website.

Outdated layout

If your web design is outdated, it will be easier to create a whole new website. A new website will mostly be needed if your website is not mobile-friendly. According to Google, 77% of mobile searches occur in places desktop computers are likely to be present. There are more mobile searches than ever before. What is more is that in April 2015 Google rolled out a new update which favors mobile-friendly website in ranking. Asking your web designer Santee to build a new mobile friendly website will actually boost your search rankings.

Search engine rankings are terrible

If your search engine rankings are abysmal now might be the best time to build a new website. If you have been doing everything possible to boost your rankings but your website doesn’t seem to rank, creating a new website can help achieve better results in search engine rankings. The reason your website might not be ranking well is because your web design is not SEO friendly. The best way to solve this issue is by creating a new website.

Your website is not interactive

If your website is passive, you need to build a new one. Expectations of visitors on your website are changing. Visitors want to spend time on a website that offers them what they want. A passive website will repel visitors whereas an interactive one will encourage visitors to come back, link to you and stay longer on your site.

Takes over 3 seconds to load

How fast your website loads matters. Slow speeds are often caused by how your website has been designed. Therefore, if you have optimized your images, made use of caching plugins, changed to a better hosting plan but still experience slow speeds, there is a good chance the problem is in how your website has been coded. Creating a new website might be the only way forward.

There are many more reasons why you might need to create a new website. The important thing to do is hire a competent web designer Santee. The last thing you want is for an incompetent designer to make the same mistakes your previous designer made.

Web Design Santee

Having the best web design Santee is not enough when creating a web shop. Yes the web design is crucial if you don’t want visitors to abandon shopping cards midway but there are other things you will have to do to make your shop the ultimate place to be. If you want to reduce the rate at which shoppers abandon your shopping carts, here are some important things you should consider doing.

Automate all that can be automated

The key reason why you build a web shop is to keep your business doors open 24/7. On the flipside, doing this means the workload will be massive. The back-office processes can be overwhelming. You need to ensure stock is available, complaints are handled fast and all the data s reviewed constantly to know where you stand. To save time and resources, you need to automate most of the processes. Your web designer Santee will recommend the implementation of application to automate things like record keeping and application monitoring. Some of the work can also be outsourced to specialists.

Keep monitoring everything

You will never know what is not working smoothly unless you keep measuring, evaluating and adjusting. It is only with consistent monitoring that you will be able to cater to the unique needs of customers. Here are some important things you have to do:

• Pay attention to details. You need to be detail oriented when setting up your web shop. Don’t forget to add comprehensive information and images to individual products.
• Offer freebies. Free stuffs will boost sales.
• Minimize cost. Making it affordable to do business with you will compel the shoppers to buy more from you.
• Base your decisions on solid data and not on guesswork. Understand what customers need before taking action.

Optimize for search

You have to love Google if you want to ace it in online marketing. Google will give you the exposure you need. Ensure your brand has a high ranking on the search engine results. This means you have to invest more in SEO, and SEA. You can also use online marketing agencies. Pick an agency that has experience in your industry.

Speed things up

How fast your page loads matters. The checkout process must also be swift. Slow loading pages and long checkout processes are the top reasons why most shoppers abandon their shopping carts. The more clicks you require from customers the higher the chances of them abandoning their shopping cart. Always give your shoppers a visual checkout process so that they know if they are almost done.

Other important things you should consider doing is offering free shipping, providing multiple payment option, adding a loyalty program and keep testing and improving your web shop. Doing these simple things will significantly optimize your web shop. As a bonus point, have your web shop created by a web designer Santee with experience creating web shops.

Web Design Santee

Most people assume that web design Santee is the same as web development. The truth is these are two very distinct terms. The term web design is mostly used when discussing a project with someone that is not a web professional. When speaking to someone who is experienced in the web industry, generalization will not be enough to explain what will be done. In this post we will be discussing the differences between web design and web development.

What is web design?

Web design is the most common term used by a web designer Santee. Often times, when a designer says web design they mean a very broad set of skills one of which is the visual design. Web design is basically the front end part of a website. This is how a website looks and how customers interact with it. This is why web designers are often referred to as experience designers or UX designers. This is because what they do is create the look of a website.

An experienced web designer will use the principles of design to create a website that looks great. Designers are also familiar with usability and know how to create a website that is user-friendly. However, it is good to note that a web designer will do more than just make your website look beautiful. There is where the web development part comes in.

What is web development?

There are two flavors of web development: front end development and back-end development. Front-end developers take the visual design of a website and build the code for it. He uses HTML for the structure of the website, CSS to dictate visual styles and at times JavaScript. For most small website, front-end development is the only thing required in web development.

If yours is a complex website, back-end development will be required. This deals with the advanced programming and interactions on a web page. Focus here is on how a website works and how the customers get things done with various functionalities. This may include programming code that interfaces with the database and creating such features as ecommerce shopping carts that link to payment processors.

When thinking of a new web design Santee, you need to hire someone that has experience with web development. The last thing you want is to work with a designer who simply creates the visuals of your website and forgets about everything else including your database. Always consider your website needs before you hire a designer.

Web Design Santee

When planning a website, you need to think about the web design Santee that will work best, what you are willing to pay and what you may end up paying. Don’t just take the package given to you by a web design company. You need to do your own research to avoid being exploited. In this post we shall be looking at the costs you should be prepared to pay when it comes to web design.

New websites will cost more than a redesign

This is the first fact you need to understand about web design. When a web designer Santee has to start from scratch to create your website, he will charge you more than when redesigning your website. This is because with a new website, a web designer doesn’t have pre-created assets to work with. The advantage of creating a website from scratch is that you can work closely with a designer to get exactly what you need and within your budget. The cost of a new website runs anywhere from $500 to thousands of dollars. The cost will depend on the options you need, number of revisions and the hourly cost of the web design team.

Blogs and content management tools

If yours is a WordPress website, you will have the advantage of having a free content management system (CMS). Integrating a website on WordPress and other tools like Drupal, Joomla! And ExpressionEngine has its challenges when building a site from scratch. You also have to think about buying premium themes and plugins. You should add $200 if you want to add a blog or CMS.

Graphics

Graphics are the images you will be using on your website including the logos. You don’t want to be skimpy in this area. Poor graphics will tarnish the look and affect the performance of your website. Even if you are supplying all the images, you still have to pay for the integration of the graphics into your website. If you need the web designer Santee to customize the images, you should set aside at least $500 for both image customization and integration into your website. If the web designer will be doing everything including getting the images, you should budget for at least $1,200.  You also need to set a budget of $350 for the icons and buttons that will be created. For the use of stock photos, set a budget of $20 to $100.

Content creation and addition

The cheapest way forward is to create your own content and add it to your website. If you cannot do this, your web designer will help with content creation and addition to your website. With content creation you need to budget about $150 per page of typed content.

There are so many other costs you need to plan for. The important thing is to always ask for a cost breakdown for your web design Santee. When you know what is being charged you can make some compromises to bring the cost down.

Web Design Santee