Happy Halloween! Bring on the candy, trick-or-treaters, and spooky costumes!
At a time when it's acceptable to scare your friends, colleagues, and anyone else that happens to get in the way of you and that candy bowl - you can afford the excitement.
What you can't afford is having a website that scares potential customers all year round!
Keep reading for some actionable tips to make your website more like a beautiful mansion and less like a haunted house.
Step 1: Security, Security, and More Security
Other than the little lock icon that appears in the URL box on your browser, securing your website is an invisible, but vital, backend feature your website absolutely needs. If you're unsure whether or not your website is secure, Hubspot has a simple tool that will allow you to scan a URL and check it's security - click here to try it out!
People value their personal information, and giving them a secure platform while they browse your website shows that you care about protecting their information. Additionally, most internet browsers will flash a warning message when you attempt to enter an unsecured website and according to Hubspot, "82% of respondents would leave a website if they saw this 'Not Secure' warning."
There are a few ways to fix the security on your website:
• Contact your website host, they may have a blanket SSL Security Certificate that covers the websites they manage.
• Purchase an SSL certificate; can be complicated if you aren't a tech-oriented person.
• Let a team of experts manage your security (recommended) - Our company, NWPC Marketing Solutions, offers worry-free maintenance plans covering various security and backend support to ensure your website is always in the green!
Step 2: Make it Mobile-Friendly
Over 50% of web traffic is produced by mobile phones and tablets, that's A LOT of traffic! Next time you go to a coffee shop, just look up from your phone (hint) and you'll quickly realize how prevalent the nose in screen look is!
Current and up-to-date websites have a function called dynamic design, this means that when your desktop page width is decreased, it automatically resizes to fit and function properly. Our awesome web design team has helped many clients upgrade from old, static web pages to shiny new dynamic pages that look great across computers, tablets, and mobile phones!
Step 3: Make it FAST!
So you've secured your website, and it looks great on various platforms... but it's SLOW! This is one of the most common issues our website design team comes across when we start working with a new client. There are many reasons why your website is slow:
• Slow website server or host
• Large images (usually not optimized for web)
• Database issues
Many speed-related features are fixed on the backend of your website and require some sort of expertise in web design and hosting. When we work with a new client we perform a full-scale analysis of their website. The report contains so much tech jargon it'd make your head spin, but luckily our awesome team is amazing at translating the information into easily understandable metrics.
Having a secure, mobile-friendly, and fast website is VITAL to making the biggest impact on your market. Think of it as your digital doorstep, prospects visit your site to verify your trustworthiness, you don't want to scare them away!
NWPC Marketing Solutions is a team of marketing experts dedicated to helping you achieve your goals and BOOST your brand! Our awesome employees strive to build a culture of trust and commitment and work side-by-side with businesses as advisors and consultants.