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Tag: website development

What makes a website user-friendly?

In today’s digital age, many businesses are widely investing in digital assets. Most big brands nowadays are on Facebook, YouTube and a variety of other digital platforms where they can promote awareness and boost lead generation. In this day and age, having a website is a must-have not only to maximize online presence but also as a means to direct clients to a central location online where all users can see everything about your brand and product.

Your website not only serves as the landing page for all of your potential clients’ searches, but it also receives traffic from your followers on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. But, your online efforts shouldn’t just end after you’ve built your website. Having a website is also about maintaining it, keeping it updated and user-friendly, and making sure that it converts revenue and adds value to your business.

Below are three factors you can take note of, to ensure that your website is doing its job of being your 24/7 online ambassador:

Usability

One of the important, if not, the most important thing for a website to have is proper usability and functionality. This pertains to the links and buttons inside the website. Keep in mind that all website functions must be clickable and must always lead users to the right information of what they want to see and know.

According to HubSpot.com, 75% of website visitors prefer to find the most important information immediately within the main landing page of a website. If you construct your website in a manner that your visitors can easily identify what they need, such as your contact details, or an inquiry form, then you can rest easy knowing that the right customers can find you anytime.

Layout/Design

Keep in mind that website visitors always consider a website’s layout. Users are able to immediately identify a company’s legitimacy and modernity with just one look at their website. A company who may have not invested in a website since their time of establishment may be deemed as a fake business due to their lack of presence online. At the same time, a company that has an old website may lose customers to a similar company who sells the same products just by the way their products are presented and in the way the entire company is presented online.

Customer-oriented

Lastly, successful websites are always customer-oriented at its core. If your business is targeting millennials or fashionistas, make sure that your website has a sleek look that will entice users to buy your products. Always take note to combine the right colors and call-to-action buttons in order to lure them to buy or inquire. As for B2B businesses targeting professionals, create an informative and professional looking website that will let visitors know that they are dealing with a highly professional company.

In summary, having a website is one of the most essential things that a business can invest in. Considering the factors above can either make or break the success of your online business or your business’ reputation in the digital world. If you need any help in creating a website for your business, talk to us! Our website developers are adept and very intuitive when it comes to website creation. If you’re looking for an agency that can cater your web development and digital marketing needs, contact us at (+632) 490-0000 or leave us a message at imanila.ph/lets-talk/.

Is WordPress Still Secure?

 

It is not a secret to anyone that 26% of the world’s website population is powered by WordPress, and 60% of the entire global count runs on WordPress CMS. This has clearly revealed that WordPress has a wider reach over the net. It is a big global community that is continuously growing – an unstoppable force the powers more than ¼ of the entire internet. However, with this large user-base, it is also undeniable that it attracts the attention of the hackers – making WordPress websites prone to hacking incidents.

Now the question that website owners ask is, is WordPress still secure?

The answer is YES.

Surely most people will disagree but WordPress is still secured – diligence is the key for this.

What Constitute WordPress?

There are three elements of WordPress namely: the core code which makes up the WordPress install, the themes which determine how sites look and how it will function, and plugins which are small applications that extend WordPress in interesting ways.

What Causes Hacking Incidents?

Via WordPress.org, themes and plugins are made available from many other sources, that at some point, may even come from unscrupulous hackers who get their hands on commercial themes and embedded malware in them. The worse thing in this scheme is that these themes and plugins are given away online to people willing to get them for free. And that is where the threat lies. Because of the enormous size of the WordPress installed base and the complexity of its ecosystem, vulnerabilities could be just lying in a corner waiting for malicious activities to find them.

Why do We say It is Secured?

The core is maintained by a large group of volunteers who are incredibly good at their craft. These are coders and developers who secured the community by updating the system’s codes, themes and even plugins from vulnerabilities every now and then.

Like with app stores, WordPress sources take some measurable care in what is listed for users to use. Though there may have been unscrupulous themes on the internet, it is still safer to get from the main community. Themes on WordPress.org go through a testing process and plugins go through an initial vetting before they’re first allowed to be posted.

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Is WordPress Still Trustworthy?

According to ZDNet.com, WordPress is still trustworthy. However, if you would really like to make the most out of your site and keep is secured, there are still caveats that go with using WordPress.

  • If you are not keen or well versed with web maintenance, you might want to have it hosted via WordPress.com.
  • If you opt for freedom in customizing your website but couldn’t do web maintenance, you can hire someone who can maintain the website professionally, and who will update it regularly from themes to plugins.
  • As much as possible, refrain from downloading commercial plugins or themes from sketchy source especially those which you can get for free.
  • If you customized your WordPress with WordPress.org, you also need to make sure that you are hosting your website securely with a trusted hosting server.

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Despite the issues about the security of WordPress, it is still undeniable that it is probably one of the best platforms for website available. Again, all it takes to secure your WordPress is diligence or trusting service providers who specialize in creating WordPress-based websites.

iManila is a trusted provider of both web solutions and digital marketing services that surely covers small and medium businesses online marketing needs. Our lines are open 24/7 and our sales executives are available Mondays to Fridays to assist you with your web, IT, and digital marketing queries.

Emails: [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]

Telephone numbers: (02) 490-0000, 01, 03 or at (02) 959-4807

Mobile number: (+63) 917-8476005

Why Your Website Page Speed Matters?

 

Website Page Speed — In this age of digital transformation, time is of the essence for all. What considers the best experience for most of the people is being able to do what needs to be done in the quickest time possible. And that holds true for most things, especially on the internet.

Websites these days are not just about design and functionality; it is also about the page loading speed. No matter how well designed and informative your website is, if it takes almost a minute to load a single page, then you are lagging behind your competitor’s websites who loads faster than yours.

There are more to your website loading time than what you’ve probably thought before. Below are the two crucial points that compel website owners like you to optimize your website’s loading time.

It matters to Users.

A website that loads fast leaves a good impression to the users. Aside from that, online users have a growing rate of declining attention span. According to an article of Timothy Egan posted on New York Times online, a survey of media consumption by Microsoft concluded that the average attention span of humans had fallen to eight (8) seconds from twelve (12) in the year 2000.

It is a crucial point showing that as technology improves, the attention span declines. Optimizing your website to meet this emerging user behavior will surely improve its performance.

And it matters to Google too.

Google puts user experience at the core of its technology and business. And what matters to the users, also matters to Google. It is the behavior and preferences of the online users that became the basis of all improvements applied to the search engine.

According to Google, the average loading time of a mobile landing page to fully load all elements is at 22 seconds. However, 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load. And that where the problem lies. While most websites take 22 seconds to load, the users’ attention span is only at 8 seconds – at the most.

Below are the critical points Google shared to webmasters.

 

crucial-website-loading-time-figures

In the same way, a slow page loading time might affect your website’s search engine ranking. Since Google prioritize user experience, it will not let a slow loading website rank on the first page of Google SERP despite having marvelous content.

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What do you need to do?

To improve your website’s loading time, below are the steps that you need to take to optimize it.

  1. Using the webpagetest.org, check the loading time of every element in your website.
  2. Improve what needs to improve such as:
  • Compress large image and video files
  • Remove unnecessary plugins that slow your website loading time
  1. ALWAYS, depend on a reliable and high-quality web hosting server to make sure that your website loads on an optimal level. Servers are also responsible for loading time of the website, if your server is too old and lacks resources, your website won’t load fast enough.
  2. And you are covering visitors and audiences across the globe, you need to also use Content Delivery Network (CDN) to speed up the delivery of your website’s page loading on areas far from the location of your web hosting server.

Page speed is indeed a crucial part in the success of a website. In this age when human attention span is shorter than the goldfish, the only way website owners need to do to adapt is to optimize their websites from content to loading time according to the behavior of the users.

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iManila is a trusted provider of both web solutions and digital marketing services that surely covers small and medium businesses online marketing needs. Our lines are open 24/7 and our sales executives are available Mondays to Fridays to assist you with your web, IT, and digital marketing queries.

Emails: [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]

Telephone numbers: (02) 490-0000, 01, 03 or at (02) 959-4807

Mobile number: (+63) 917-8476005

 

 

Sources:

  1. wisdekcorp.com
  2. nytimes.com
  3. thinkwithgoogle.com

MOBILE FRIENDLINESS RANKING FACTOR: Why You Need to be Mobile-Responsive

 

MOBILE FRIENDLINESS IS NOW A THING — It is common knowledge to most marketers that Last April 2015, Google search has expanded its mobile friendliness algorithm known as “Mobilegeddon”. This update from Google has marked the beginning of a shift of focus from desktop to mobile searches and has affected a lot of websites that are not mobile-responsive. Some of the affected may have experienced a decline in their Google SERP ranking or even to the volume of their monthly traffic.

What is Mobile Friendliness?

There are 75.4 million unique mobile users in the Philippines, comprising 74% of the nation’s population. Almost everyone these days considers themselves to be “tech-savvy” with the advent of the internet allowing even the simplest devices to do an amazing amount of tasks.

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Let’s face it, with a market as large as that, you probably want your brand to be etched on the consciousness of these users.  This is exactly why it’s time for your website to go mobile.

Opting for a mobile-responsive website or the mobile friendliness of your website enables it to be sent instantly dynamic as it fits symmetrically on any screen size, minimizing usability issues such as links that are not clickable, images taking forever to appear, scrolling problems and lagging issues.

Simply put – a mobile-responsive website enhances user experience.

Want to know how to make your website friendly? Say hi to one of our account executives, or leave us a message on our contact form.

Mobile version vs Mobile-Responsive

On the off-chance that you live under a rock, you might probably be more familiar with the term “mobile version”.

Mobile version is different from mobile-responsive. The former means developing a version of your website customized for mobile users and uses a separate URL commonly beginning with “m” (such as m.facebook.com). It’s like having two unique websites with one dedicated to desktops and another for mobile devices.

The latter, on the other hand, automatically resizes the content of your website based on user device allowing for optimum user experience.

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Post-Mobilegeddon Updates

Aside from the ‘mobilegeddon’ released on 2015, other updates released were Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which launched in February 2016, and ‘mobile­first indexing’, which Google has been working on for quite a while now.
The AMP or the Accelerated Mobile Page Project is an open source initiative of Google launched in October 2015. This update works towards increasing the performance of the mobile web, loading web pages instantly, even with rich content or ads.

 

AMP is not a mobile ranking factor, however, its objective is to improve the functions of mobile websites with stripped-down versions of web pages. This enables users to read and scan your content with ease, improving your website’s traffic and in time, improving your SERP ranking. Google AMP lets publishers focus on great content while depending on other components like image carousels and social plug­ins for high performance and great user experience.

 

Another recent update is mobile­first indexing. Google has been adjusting their algorithms to primarily use mobile versions of website content to rank pages, understand its structured data, and show snippets from those pages on their SERPs. Here are some of the recommendations of google about dealing with the mobile­first indexing update:

  • Stay on your responsive site or dynamic serving site on desktop and mobile version;
  • If the two versions of your website’s primary content are different, you should make your structured data uniform, make your mobile website crawlable, and maintain canonical links unchanged;
  • Verify your desktop and mobile website versions against Google Search Console;
  • Launch new mobile sites only when they’re ready, to avoid any unwanted effects on your desktop sites that may arise from faulty mobile ones.

What is for business online?

Businesses that rely heavily on traffic and leads coming from online sources should prepare to change extensively, otherwise, their potential sales will be flushed down the drain. Below are the advantages of making your website mobile-responsive:

Know more about the benefits of a mobile-responsive website or its mobile friendliness by calling our sales executives or by sending us a message through this LINK.

It strengthens your website’s optimization.

With Google recently releasing an algorithm specifically targeting websites that aren’t mobile-responsive yet, now would be the best time to do so. Having a mobile-responsive site brings more traffic to your website which then opens doors to increase sales and revenue. A great search rank on desktop and mobile would be beneficial for your business because that’s brand awareness reaching your market through multiple channels.

It saves you time and money.

With a mobile-responsive website, you can focus your resources instead in building and creating new campaigns and content instead of developing a separate website for mobile devices.

It keeps you ahead of your competition.

There are a lot of businesses who have yet to invest in this new kind of technology because, well, it’s new; and new is a mystery few have the courage to explore.

Going mobile-responsive automatically puts you ahead of the curve because you’re already building your rank up while others are still flirting with the idea.

It provides an optimum user experience for your consumers.

With smartphones and tablets continuously increasing in terms of usage, giving your market the ability to browse through your site with ease is one step to earning their trust. Because everything is organized and made faster, potential clients are more likely to explore your website than leave it the moment they see the home page. Your site will have perfectly scaled images and readable texts so there’s no reason to not give it a chance.

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Sources:

  1. Straightarrow.com.ph
  2. Webmaster.googleblog.com