Coming to Terms with Terminology
Every field has terms that most have heard yet don’t actually know what they mean. It’s partly what separates the insiders from the outsiders, the initiated from the uninitiated, and the professionals from laypersons.
Computer techs about CPUs, RAM, CMOS, SATA, SSD, etc. Medical professionals talk about BMI, DSM, ICU, CPR, etc. Legal experts talk about NDAs, CFR, ATS, LLC, DOA, etc. Musicians talk about BPM, RIT, hemiolas, Dorian mode, Neapolitan sixth, Double Chromatic Mediant Modulations, etc.
Ecommerce, or digital marketing, is no different. Unlike the most fields, ecommerce is something that is very helpful for anyone in business who is interested in marketing their products and services, or just wants to bring in customers. That adage it takes money to make money does hold true. How much money you spend and how much of that money is invested wisely can depend on what you know, who you know and what you do with your capital.
In the next 10 posts I’m going discuss what will help your website to be all it can be and how to get most bang from your buck. You don’t have to actually design your own websites or even get that technical. You can easily hire people to do the work for you. The better you understand what works, what you want, and what to ask for, the better your ROI, or return on investment.
1. SEO
What is SEO? If you don’t know or haven’t heard the term you aren’t alone. It’s that thing about terminology: it doesn’t make a lot of sense yet there is a good reason for using abbreviations. It’s much easier to say SEO than the longer form: Search Engine Optimization.
While there are many search engines on the web, the top player has been, and most likely will continue to be, Google. More people use Google than actually have any inkling how it does what it does. I could explain to you, in technical detail, how it works down to the machine code level but that would only make your eyes glaze over, click away to something more interesting, or put you to sleep.
Here’s all you need to know. There are more than 1.7 billion websites on the Internet. If your goal is to advertise and reach potential customers, you want your website to be optimal (the best it can be) for Google (and other search engines). It’s much like advertising anywhere. It’s a fact that not all websites are equal when it comes to SEO. The ones that are optimized will perform better than those that aren’t. Some put it this way: Google favors sites that are SEO friendly.
What makes a website SEO friendly?
1. It has unique titles and descriptions for all pages
2. Well formatted URLs – slugs are descriptive, all lower-case, and separated by dashes
3. Fast loading webpages – people don’t stick around if a page takes too long to load (open)
4. It has unique content
5. Includes images that are optimized for search engines
6. Pages have a meaningful structure
Why do you need an SEO friendly website?
1. Increase in organic traffic (from search engines)
2. Makes your website user-friendly
3. Gives you brand credibility
4. It is cost effective
5. Helps you understand what your most important customers want
6. SEO is even more important on mobile
2. Speed
Most of these needs are going to relate to SEO but it’s helpful to look at them individually. A slow website isn’t just SEO unfriendly, it’s unfriendly to any visitor. The whole idea of what a customer is involves repeat business. Slow websites discourage return visits.
What can be done to make your websites faster? There are several considerations that are in your control that involve design and content. Design is how your website is organized. Content is what’s on your website: graphics, text, and media (audio, video, etc.). I mention graphics first because big images take longer to load.
There are other ways to speed up your website that involves caching and other tweaks on a very technical level. There are tools and resources that can make this happen for you and require no technical skills on your part. The main thing is for you to understand why this is important and how it will benefit you and your customers.
3. Security
Unlike local businesses, websites are accessible all the time. That advantage also makes them a target for hackers who want to steal your money, financial data (client records), identity (phishing and pharming), hijack your website, etc.
Thankfully, there are some really good solutions that are not only effective but very affordable. Again, the most important thing is that you understand what is at risk and why you should be proactive and implement the kind of security to protect your website, business, yourself and customers.
4. Login Control
How your website is accessed depends on login credentials. That part is easy. As administrator you have a username (it can be your email address) and a password. Choosing something other than admin for the username and a strong password is a good idea.
Even so, hackers will try to use brute force, and other techniques, to crack your password. The solution is to limit the number of login attempts from a given IP range within a certain time period.
There are other ways to supplement this protection including Captcha challenges, two-step verification by sending a code via email or text message, or the use of an authenticator. However, just controlling the number of login attempts should be sufficient.
5. Backups
Some people might not mind the work it takes to design and build a website but nobody in their right mind wants to have to do over again. Having to start over can be painful and, even with the best efforts, take it from me it will never be the same. Unless, of course, you have a backup.
Backing up your website isn’t as straight forward as you might think. There are many elements that comprise a website. There are posts, pages, themes, plugins, settings, layouts, customizations, graphics (pictures, logos, and banners), and other media. There is at least one database. All the files and folders can be compressed and downloaded. There are backups at the WordPress level as well as backups at the system level.
Restoring your website can be simple or difficult depending on your backup strategy and where the backups are located. Similar to other needs, backing up and restoring your website optimally should be accomplished with software. Performing the backups manually might save you some money, but it won’t save you time and potential mistakes. The ideal backup solution is one featuring automatic backups.
Please take it from me that you need to backup your website(s). It would be a shame for you to have to learn this lesson the hard way. Let’s just say, “When it’s gone, it’s gone, and it’s not coming back.”
6. Traffic
Actually, websites need traffic and subscribers. Traffic refers to visitors, whereas subscribers are people who have opted in to receive content delivered to their inbox on a regular basis. An email subscription is a great companion to a website registration. An email subscription helps maintain the connection to your website, providing news, sales and update information as needed. Registered users have access to your website but can’t visit often enough to keep current with new developments.
The best way to build up your base of subscribers is to have them opt-in on your website. Requiring visitors to register for a free account and, ideally, agree to receiving emails (with the option to cancel) means that no one will ever have to complain about getting spam (unsolicited emails) from you.
The reason for email accounts is to be able to communicate with the people and organizations you are interested in. SPAM is a nuisance because it fills your inbox with unsolicited emails, which crowd out and obscure emails from the very people and organizations for whom you have an email account in the first place.
You can configure a means to allow people to register for an account on your website and send a confirmation link.
Traffic is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.
Spam Control
The primary reason spammers leave comments to get free advertising. The comments may contain flattering phrases about your website, posts, and pages but reveal themselves as spam when read in context and the inclusion of an advertising link. Some real comments might also contain links. So, what can you do?
The most ineffective way to moderate comment is read each one individually before deciding. That can be time consuming, particularly when you get a lot of comments.
Some people choose to disallow links in comments. As with most simple solutions, this throws out the baby with the bathwater. Users are prevented from sharing legitimate links, making your website forums seem hostile and unfriendly.
The best solution is software based and uses artificial intelligence to check your comments against a web service to see if they look like spam or not. Then you can spend time moderating legitimate comments. Work smarter, not harder.
8. Contact Forms
Many people think “What’s the big deal? I’ll just put my email address and phone number on my website and… VOILA!!! Customers will email and call me. Easy peasy.”
That’s before they get flooded with spam in their email and phone calls from solicitors and scammers who will eventually get them to buy $$$$ in gift cards.
The best, safer way, is have guests fill out a contact form.
Typical fields in a contact form
1. name
2. email address
3. subject
4. details about why they are contacting you
Other nifty uses for these types of forms
1. new user registration
2. order requests
3. support requests
4. customer service requests
5. where to send reports, gifts, prizes, etc.
9. Link Checker
Links are similar to portals that, with a simple click, will transport the visitor magically wherever you want them to go.
Alas! Sometimes those links get broken. The reason might be the destination has moved or no longer exists. Broken links are often called dead links. Dead links not only no longer work, but also make your visit begin to suspect you’ve abandoned your website. You know, like an abandoned house without electricity or water. That’s not a good thought for visitors you hope will return someday.
Thankfully, there is software that can automatically check for broken links (missing images, etc.) and notify you. The most important thing is for you recognize this as a potential problem and know there are solutions out there, some better than others.
10. Statistics
Statistics, like trivia, can provide you with fun facts about your visitors. Unlike, trivia, they can also be useful to help you make improvements. An example might be you discover that almost half of your visitors speak Spanish. Knowing that, you could easily add Spanish as a choice on your home page so that visitors would see a version of your website translated into Spanish, yet with all the same content as the English version. Also, statistics could inform you which browser was being used the most. That could be useful to know when testing the website because not all web browsers are the same.
It would be very time consuming for you to manually compile statistics about your site. Imagine if there was some way you could get all the statistics you need, plus some you never thought about, without having to do any work or, even, have any knowledge about statistics or the mathematics involved.
Well, you don’t have to imagine because software exists, not only to manage all the statistics about visitors to your site, dynamically updating itself in real time, but also to provide additional security services, as well as speed up images, and help you get more traffic.
I hope this information will prove useful to some of you. Thanks for reading!