Who would have thought that we would be sitting here, discussing what the best at-home work policies are for business, just a few months ago? It's shocking to see how rapidly the world has changed. The lockdown proposes many unique challenges that the majority of business owners have never faced before. However, now you need to get the most out of your workers while everybody is at home in their pjs’. You will need to consider what technologies you can get employees to adopt for their laptops, tablets and mobiles. Communication is vitally important as there’s very little face-to-face speaking anymore. The chain of command must also remain intact.
Task and project management
As the business owner, how do you manage a project from your office at home? Keeping your management staff focussed on the projects at hand is one thing, but how do you know what is and isn’t feasible? Firstly you should have a meeting with your heads of departments. Ask them what they think is a realistic way forward with regard to the contingency of projects they were doing before lockdown? This will entail your management contact employees in their departments to see what their personal at-home capabilities are. Do they have the software needed to carry on working at a satisfactory level from home? Can your employees use the software they use in the office, at home on their machines? This is possible if you have cloud-based systems.
Remain in contact
Now we realize the value of face-to-face communication. Any questions we had, we could get answers to instantly and have conversations to fully understand the issues at hand. Now, however, we are left with fewer and inferior options. It's important to realize not everyone will be at their machines all day. Lockdown is tough on the mental health of individuals so they might be out for a walk or doing grocery shopping. Using group messaging services from mobile brands is a bit of an afterthought. Instead, there is a better way to do group messaging by using a specialist service. This type of platform will organize your group messages for you, so you know what groups are talking about and who is replying. You can also opt-out at any time, while still receiving the information you need. You don’t have to be part of a group to be alerted to what was said if you have chosen to be given a summary of information in the form of a list.
Chain of command
During this time, business owners will need to test their leadership skills. The chain of command is so easily broken when your management doesn't ‘feel’ your presence. However, conducting regular bi-weekly meetings via conference call software will remind employees that the show is carrying on. Ask all your management staff to buy webcams so it feels more like a meeting as everyone can see and hear each other.
These are the policies that every business will not be rushing to employ. No one really knows how long the lockdown will last, but keeping business chugging along, albeit slowly, is better than nothing.
WordPress is one of the best and most widely used content management systems available today. Around 35% of is powered by WordPress, making it a great option for you to choose.
One thing that you'll want from your WP site is lightning speed. Why? Because it not only contributes to your online visitor's user experience but also towards your SEO efforts.
Want to speed up your WP site? Here’s what you need to do:
Hosting plays an important part in your WP site speed.
If you're just starting a WP site with no experience, it won't make sense for you to invest in high-speed hosting. That's fine.
But when your website starts to grow, and you’re getting more traffic than what your current hosting option can handle, then it’s time to move on to better hosting.
Choosing a dedicated server will make your website much faster. It will also come at a higher price than a shared option, but when it comes to hosting, you’re getting for what you’re paying.
Only use the essential plugins.
Plugins are what arguably makes WordPress, WordPress.
A mistake that a lot of beginner WordPress users make is that they fill their website will make all kinds of plugins. While plugins are great and provide a lot of additional functionality to your website, they also take a toll on your website's load speed.
The best way to go about choosing your WP plugins is to use only the ones that you really need. Ideally, you should be using high-performance plugins that are known for providing value to other WP sites.
It makes sense for your site to have plugins that bring joy to your audience. Having a plugin for a live chat app will help improve your audience’s experience on your site.
Another thing with plugins is that some plugins can interfere with the working of other plugins. This may cause a loss of site speed, among other things.
Use a fast theme.
Themes play a big role in how your WP site looks. Choosing the right theme can be difficult if you're new to WordPress, but it's not that hard.
There are several factors that you need to consider while choosing a theme for your website. One of them should be how fast your WordPress theme is.
You should not choose a theme that is aesthetically pleasing but isn’t fast. The tradeoff just isn’t worth it.
So, stick with a theme that looks amazing but provides you the performance that you want and needs.
Optimize your images.
To make your website faster, you'll want all the content on your website to be optimized and to the point. You'll notice that some blogging websites aim for each of their blog posts to be below a certain word count. So, optimizing your content is really important.
Images are an important part of your website. They help your visitors visually understand the content and message you are trying to communicate on a web page of yours.
Generally, you should try to include high-quality images. But that contributes to more data on your website. And more data means more load time.
To make the most out of images and not slow down your website, you’ll need to optimize your images.
There are all kinds of tools for image optimization. But why use a tool when a plugin can help you. Plugins like TinyPNG, Imagify, Optimole, are all great choices.
Eliminate spam.
Spam comes in many shapes and forms. One of the most common kinds of spam is comment spam.
If you've seen an unmaintained blog, you'll notice that it's filled with spammy comments. These comments are off-topic, sometimes inappropriate, and are only present to insert a link.
These spam comments are not contributing anything of value to the website. They are also taking up space on your website, making it slow if there are enough of them. Also, some of these links might try to load malicious external resources on to your site.
To eliminate spam from your WP site, you'll need to monitor your website for spam manually. Worried? Well, you should be.
Manually eliminating spam is going to take too long and is not a viable solution. You’ll need an anti-spam plugin for your WordPress site like Akismet, that filters spam comments.
Having a plugin is not the only thing you'll need to do. You should also make sure to review your website for spam every month or so manually. You can vary this period depending upon your needs, but a month is pretty standard.
Limit the number of external resources.
External resources can take a lot of time to load. The time it takes for elements and assets to load on your website will contribute to your page load speed.
Try to use external resources sparingly.
If you choose to embed videos on a web page, you will be making the smarter choice. But still, that does not mean that you can embed as many external resources as you want.
Another thing that is classified as an external resource but often ignored is advertisements. Most people want to make money from their website, and showing ads is a great way to do so.
There’s just one problem with that. Most ads have to be loaded externally, and that can take time. If your goal is to make your website fast and speedy, then you should consider limiting the number of ads on your website.
Consider using a CDN.
Content Distribution Network, CDN, is a great way to make your website faster.
Think of it this way. What a CDN does is places all your static files on servers located closer to your audience and traffic sources. This helps your audience to quickly have access to the files that they want to see as the servers are geographically closer to them.
While CDNs are a great way to increase your page load time for your audience, you’ll want to use them after careful consideration. Not knowing what you’re doing can result in an undesirable effect. Study up on CDNs and make sure you know how to use CDNs effectively.
Conclusion:
WP is a forgiving platform. All you need to do is to do the basics right and make sure that you are only using essentials addons to your website.
Hamzah Adil is a digital marketer with a background in computer science. He's currently working for a startup that has released a new live chat app called SwiftChat.
The current Coronavirus pandemic has wide-ranging ramifications for every industry, including marketing and eCommerce. It's no surprise then that marketers are looking to make changes that will better help their businesses adapt to the new situation. The numbers are looking pretty grim, as statistical analysis shows drops in nearly every single part of the economy. Take a look at some statistics that represent the current situation for marketing, advertising, and eCommerce.
Fashion retail sales have been nearly halved
Unsurprisingly, people aren't in any rush to shop for non-essentials this season. While most industries are seeing record lows, the clothing and fashion sectors have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic. Brick and mortar stores across Australia have been forced to close and consumers aren't rushing to spend their money in a time when employment is uncertain.
In regions such as France, the numbers aren't looking very good. There's been a severe year-on-year drop in sales for fashion, apparel, and accessory industries. Since the start of March, there's been a sharp decline of 41% in net sales. It's a difficult time for the fashion industry in France, but other countries aren't so lucky, either. The UK is seeing a similar, albeit slightly milder situation. The drop is only around 29% for its worst day, meaning it's doing slightly better than France.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. With the introduction of massive discounts, countries like Germany have seen minute increases in sales. This might not last very long, but it could be a sign of good things to come. Online retail remains popular and website visits haven't declined much, if at all. This suggests that consumers are still checking out products, but they're reserving them for later on when finances are more secure.
Supermarkets are busier than ever
March has seen a 20.6% increase in supermarket sales all throughout the UK. It was the busiest month on record, and it’s not difficult to imagine why. The moment that there was news of a global pandemic, people were quick to start stockpiling essentials. Supermarkets saw more traffic than Christmas day, as customers scrambled to get as much into their carrying bags as possible.
There's another factor to consider. For the whole of March, restaurants saw very little business. Eating out suddenly came with a cost that outweighed the luxury. Instead, people shopped for groceries and preferred to cook and eat at home.
Despite this, large supermarket and megamarket chains suffered some slight losses here and there. As these locations are ripe for crowd-formation and close interaction, they are generally avoided. The markets that are currently seeing customers are the more local corner and convenience stores. The average household will rather turn to the closest store they have to avoid interacting with too many strangers. This has led to a sharp 30% increase in sales for independent shops. If further restrictions are introduced by governments, it’s likely that supermarkets will see a further decline, while corner shops will remain stable throughout.
Marketing strategies are changing
The continuing uncertainty of the economy has had an enormous impact on marketing. Marketers in Australia are changing their planned strategies to adapt to the current economic crisis. Only an estimated 14% of businesses are going through with their original marketing strategies for the year. This number could go even lower as the situation develops. There's no telling how the market will shift, which is why it never hurts to play it safe.
The sharp increase in changes to marketing strategies has left businesses uncertain o whether or not to proceed with the same amount of effort. While the situation seems dire, marketing is one part of a business that shouldn't be neglected, even during a global crisis. It's still very effective at attracting consumers, as long as strategies are adapted well.
Australian businesses have quickly shifted towards the delivery of digital products and content. This has led to an increase in demand for effective online marketing and SEO. People aren’t visiting a brick and mortar stores for their shopping nowadays, which is why many Australian websites need to be primed and ready for an influx of new consumers. Everything from the design to the technical aspects of the website should be improved to keep search rankings up and websites more visible.
Because of increased demand, online marketing businesses have recently seen more clients that are eager to work with them. Professionals in SEO in Sydney, Perth, and Brisbane are helping countless businesses overcome the challenges of optimizing websites for search engines. Since online retail is the only option available right now, optimization is more important than ever before.
Product and service demand drops 69%
Businesses from various different markets have seen a sharp decline in demand for products and services in the weeks of March. The extent of this is severe and, by all accounts, it is hitting nearly every industry pretty hard. In the UK, 69% of organizations have seen massive drops in demand, which has led to a halt in production and distribution. However, the problems businesses face depend on their size and revenue.
Continuing with the UK stats, businesses with annual revenue below fifty million pounds have been affected more drastically. The previous figure becomes 77% and the extent of the loss in demand is much greater. These businesses have had to make sweeping changes and adjustments to their strategy to remain functional.
Their larger counterparts have fared somewhat better. Around 64% of higher-revenue businesses have taken losses, and these losses aren’t as extensive. Drastic changes are not yet necessary, as the business model is still working well for them. On the other hand, the supply chains of over 40% have been impacted and require adjustments.
One of the most frequent changes that businesses are introducing is remote work. Jobs that previously required the worker to be present are slowly being adapted to allow for more remote access and productivity. With the same line of thinking, outsourcing services have become more prevalent as well. This has allowed many businesses to remain productive in the face of isolation regulations and keep selling their products and services.
Conclusion
There’s no aspect of the economy that the coronavirus hasn’t impacted. the numbers are showing that nearly every part of marketing is seeing record lows. The consequences of the current pandemic are likely to be felt for months, if not years after the situation has died down. Despite this, businesses need to start thinking about how to fix their marketing strategies right now. As product and service sales adapt to new changes, so does marketing. With the right kind of adaptation to their strategies, businesses should be able to eventually get back on their feet and continue seeing progress.
When I was in high school, I had this fountain pen that I considered lucky for me. Whenever I did anything with that fountain pen, it would turn out to be perfect. Be it exams or quiz of even just writing a simple application. That pen was with me till my college.
Then one this insight hit me. It was not the flow of the fountain pen or the weight of the pen that made it special; it was tit’s design—not kidding. From that point, I started thinking in terms of designs. How come some things attract us more than others? It’s mostly because of their design. A website designer is an expert in their field and they can help you to bring your brand to its best. You want to do what you can make your business work well and that means hiring the best website designer you can find.
When I started my business, this insight helped me to design my eStore with a lens of a website designer.
So, this blog is for all those website owners or web designers who are struggling for their perfect web design.
The principles that follow will help you to design your perfect website that will surely attract, engage, and make the customers fall in love with the design.
Simplicity is the first win
Study the logos of the most famous companies. What is one common thing in them? They are all simple. Read the most popular blogs on the internet. What do you find familiar with them? They are all simple. Simplicity is not just a choice; it’s a way of expressing things in which everyone and anyone can get a clear message.
Be it building a website, pitching a client, or a hard conversation with a co-worker, simplicity is something that will get the job done.
When a visitor lands on your website, they don’t want to get stuck. They are looking for a way to solve their problem. If it takes more than five seconds to load your website, they’ll leave. If they are not able to find their desired service/product within a few minutes, they’ll leave if your search filter is out of order. They’ll leave.
Point being, to grab the attention of your visitor, you need to lay down things as you do it for a toddler.
Right from the interface to the design and the content on the website needs to be simple enough that the visitor doesn’t get stuck anywhere.
Also, simplicity is one of the ever-green website design trends that are still in use.
Be Consistent
One thing that separates successful websites from the boring ones is consistency. You cannot achieve greatness without being consistent
The overall look and feel of the design must be consistent. Whenever a new user visits your website, every page, every corner of the site must show some consistency.
The navigation, the overall look of the website must be consistent. The background, the typefaces, and the UX/YI must give out just one message to the visitor.
It’s easy to say but challenging to do. For instance, even though the overall layout of pages will remain the same but there will be elements like header, footer, a sidebar, or a navigation type, which will remain the same in everything.
The goal is to make the visitor give a feeling of oneness in the site. Be it a landing page, a contact us page, or a product page. Every page must give one feel about the brand. This will help the user associate certain things with your brand. It can be a logo, a color, or a tagline. Everything must be consistent with the overall theme and design of the website.
Credibility
The end-goal of the design is to convert visitors. The design elements can give credibility to your website. If you are unable to provide the best user-experience, credibility can cover it up.
One of the fastest ways to earn credibility is to be transparent and honest about your product/service. Don’t make the users dig deep to know about your brand. You need to keep essential things like contact number, social media icons, and about us page right in the front.
Another way to increase your conversation rate and earn the credibility of the user is through social proof. When the visitor sees that other people are using your website and they are quite happy to do so, it will be easy for you to earn the trust of the customer and make them buy without putting a lot of pressure on them.
User-Centricity
It all brings down to user-experience. A professional website design agency understands that if the user is getting stuck somewhere while placing the order, the design is not user-centric and needs immediate attention.
If the website is not opening within the first three seconds, then this will raise the first red flag for the visitor. Next comes the search feature. If it’s not user-friendly, it will drive people away.
And finally, the shopping cart. You need to keep it as simple as possible. Take a little information as you can and let the user proceed with the order. Moreover, the most crucial part is not to add any extra shipping cost in the final payment. Keep everything clear. If there is an additional charge, inform the user what is the fee all about? And don’t leave anything on surprise.
Final Thoughts
In the end, it is all about getting the attention of the visitor and make them feel safe while placing an order on your website.
One mistake that most website owners make is that they focus on customer’s problems and worry too much about their profits. In doing so, they lose customers big time.
The goal of the website is to make customers fall in love with your brand. It should give a feeling of credibility. Like mentioned earlier, social proof can add significant value to the overall design of the website.
The website design is the first impression on the visitor. Everything else comes later. So, for your business to succeed, you must follow the design principles mentioned above. These are simple yet effective principles for any successful website.
Author Bio:
Aaron Starc is a strategist & writer at Branex. She is learning photography, and she likes to help people with whatever she can. She hopes to leave her mark on the digital landscape. She tweets at @ErinStarc87.
What Google wants you to do instead is “prepare” your content in a way that helps THEM organize it better. Really, what they have done, is create this $80 billion dollar industry of people who are working for Google without Google actually paying them. Google publishes their list of guidelines of what they WANT you to do (notice I didn’t say “a list of guidelines of what will make your site rank better”, although there is some overlap) so that you will spend your time preparing (optimizing) your website so it’s easier for their web-crawler, Googlebot, to understand your site better and make their life easier. Here are some of Google resources for what you should do as an SEO (this would be the closest thing to White Hat SEO):
Okay so that's like 200+ pages of super boring dry reading. I know you’re not here for that. #TLDR (Too Long, Didn’t Read)
The key takeaway here is that Google is not going to give out its secret formula to ranking on its search engine. That would be stupid. Instead, it’s going to publish a bunch of information (and misinformation) that is actually geared towards making the algorithm’s job much easier. So it can take information of all of our websites (me and you included) and display it to it’s users on the SERP (search engine results page). My prediction is that one day Google SERP clicks are going to go so low, because all the information a searcher needs will be displayed ON the SERP, and there will not even be a need to click through to the actual website. For example: no need to go to NFL.com anymore for the scores
So that is why “White Hat SEO” is a misnomer, just like black hat seo. We SEOs use it to say “what kind of SEO tactics and tricks can we do that Google “approves”. But really, Google just wants you organizing your site, not building “good links” and “guest posting”, etc. More on this later. White Hat SEO is: slower, but safer
White Hat SEO is the term we (not Google) give to label certain search engine optimization tactics/strategies as ‘safe’ or ‘sustainable’ for your website. Whereas Black hat seo would signify the search engine optimization tactics/strategies that are ‘risky’ for your website.
White Hat SEO Techniques & Tactics
So now that you understand what White Hat SEO is, let’s talk about some of the generally accepted white hat seo techniques, tactics, tricks & strategies that you can use in your business and feel generally safe about (there is always a risk of doing something wrong, or Google changing their mind about what they like, but you can’t live your entire life on what-ifs. Get out there and SEO a little).
Pro tip: One easy distinction to understand if what you are about to do is white hat seo vs. black hat seo, is look at how much automating & mass producing you are doing. If you are using bots, scrapers, spinners, and producing and/or sending out non-personalized information, it’s probably closer to black hat.
Claim the Foundational Citations (Yext, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, Apple Maps, etc.)
Fully complete (filled out with descriptions, hours, videos, images, etc.) all your listings
Submit your business to trusted data aggregators
The foundations of establishing your business as an actual business (and not just a website) in Google’s eyes is to make sure your business is claimed & listed everywhere that Google expects a real business to be. Next, you want to make sure that your business information is listed consistently & accurately across all these online directories, so Google will trust the information is up-to-date and reliable.
Check Your Business Listing Accuracy
If you have already claimed your Google My Business listing, I highly recommend you check your business listing accuracy across the web right now.
White Hat Link Building
Associations & Organization Links – Get listed (and linked to) at the various professional organizations, associations, institutions, etc. that you are a part of.
Guest Posting – Find other websites in your industry and do contribute quality articles for them, so they can share more interesting information to their audience and introduce you at the same time (and link to you).
Outreach link building – Reach out to other relevant & trusted websites in your industry and show them the valuable content you are creating so they have an opportunity to share it with their audience (and link to it).
Social Foundations – Build & fully fill-out your social profiles (Facebook, Linkedin, Yelp, Twitter, etc.)
White Hat On Page SEO
Content Clusters
Create Unique & Valuable Content
Improve Content for UX
Informative Internal Linking
Naming Images
On Page SEO Optimization (all the standard best practices)
White Hat Promotional SEO Tactics
Promote your content on social media
Brand Building – Use PR, networking & advertising to grow your brand awareness
White Hat Technical SEO
Alt text – Add alternative text (alt text) to images
Breadcrumbs
Clean / avoid thing content
Create an XML sitemap
Eliminate Keyword cannibalization
Mobile optimization
No Index Non Valuable Pages
Page speed optimization
Setup Google Search Console
Schema Markup – Add structured data markup to your web pages to give Googlebot a clearer picture of what everything is.
Website structure
Other White Hat SEO Strategies
Analytics
Conversion Rate Optimization
Final Thoughts
The idea of putting everything about White Hat SEO into ONE article is insanity, so we didn’t even try. This article was meant to be an introduction to what white hat SEO is, and some of the techniques & strategies that you can use to help improve your website visibility without too much risk. If you want more information, actionable strategies, or even the exact processes we use to actually implement all of these things, be sure to join our SERP University community here.
