5 Quick Tips To Speed Up Your Website

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Joshua

Attention spans on the internet are not quite as extensive as we would like to believe.  It has been determined that once someone reaches your website, there is roughly a 5 second timeframe to capture their attention before they decide to look somewhere else.

That doesn’t give much time to make all of the wonderful work you’ve put into building speed-up-websiteyour website capture the visitor long enough to make a sale.  Even worse, If your 5 seconds is taken up with the time it takes for your page to load you may be losing a multitude of customer’s to the competitor.

How To Speed Up Your Website:

With this is mind, you need to seriously consider learning how to speed up a website’s loading time. This can vary depending on how you like to build websites.  For those who build them based on the popular WordPress platform here are some things you can do:

  • Cache your content.  When a WordPress site loads, it’s pulling content from various locations and assembling the content on your viewer’s browser.  By downloading a caching plugin like WP Super Cache, Hyper Cache, or W3 Total Cache, you’ll speed up your website quite a bit.

For instance, the WP Super Cache will take all of the elements of your website on the server side and formulate a static HTML page.  Once it’s formed it will send that instead of having to go back and forth several times trying to formulate the site on your viewers browser.

  • Another great tip is to compress the JavaScript and CSS files on your site.  Before you feel overwhelmed wondering how to do that, take comfort in knowing there are plugins for that.

The Minify JavaScript plugin will compress the JavaScript into a single file, greatly reducing the HTTP requests and resulting in faster load times.

  • Know your host. When considering a good host you need to look at more than just a place that can keep your files online for you.

You need to look into other considerations like allowed bandwidth, which versions of PHP and MySQL are offered, and processor speed/type.  All of these need to be compared so you can make informed decisions about your site.

For The coders:

For you code junkies, you may not have preconfigured options to help speed up your website so you’ll have to take these steps into account when writing the code for your site:

  • Make sure your code is clean and well thought out.  Avoid duplicate scripts.  Learn how to use the insert script function if you are coding in PHP.

Like a CSS file you can write the code once on a separate file and insert it using the <?php insertScript(“menu.js”) ?> function.  Limiting the number of HTTP requests give the browser the time to load something else.

  • Structure your code in a hierarchy.  Put your JavaScript tags near the bottom of the web code just above the body tag.  Browsers usually have the ability to load multiple elements at once.  This is crucial for fast load times.

However when a JavaScript is loading, no other elements can download until the cript is finished.  For this reason allow for most of the page to load by placing the JavaScript at the bottom whenever possible.

Lastly,  No matter if you are using WordPress or coding by hand, take the time to preplan your project.  It will make your site more efficient and faster by building it correctly the first time, rather than having to recode or move code and create redirects.

Partial or messy code due to restructure will slow your site and it’s hard to navigate.  Follow the tips above and you’ll increase your chance of surviving the 5 second user attention span test.

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Google+ or Facebook ?

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Joshua

google plusIt has been several months since Google launched its first attempt to take on Facebook in the social media arena with Google +. Although there are many similarities between the new Google social application and Facebook there are also a few differences.

Although both applications have news feeds and profile pictures which are central to each application, Google differs in that the users friends or contacts are grouped into specific pools or circles chosen by the user as opposed to Facebook where friends are grouped all together. This gives the Google users the added advantage of being able to, for example, keep work friends separate from other social friends.

Using Google +, a user will be able to have access to their own personalized data feed which they can then contribute information to through a tool bar which is across the top of most Google sites. The site will also offer a special video chat option that will allow up to ten people on a conference call.

Photo storage is another option that can be taken up by users where Google will store photos taken on cell phones on its own servers which will allow Google + users to access these photos from any computer that they log into and share them with others .

Google plans to separate itself clearly from Facebook by claiming that it provides a better service all around through its privacy features. Keeping your privacy will supposedly be easier on Google rather than Facebook which has had multiple issues in the past with privacy options.

It is clear that Google wants to gain a foot hold in the social media market place and the will no doubt have one step up in the market due to their popularity in web search and email. But going against Facebook with over 700 million users will not be an easy challenge to overcome.

It is clear that Facebook does feel a potential threat as they unveiled many changes to the interface in previous months including the Timeline feature which caused great displeasure among followers. These actions most definitely point to a Company who is aware of their competition and want to make sure that they don’t want to lose their number one position.

For most of us who don’t own shares in either company the best option would surely be to have an account with both services and use the best services and features that fit with your life style. Why should you have to pick?

How to find a Good Web Hosting Company

Posted on July 20, 2011 by Joshua

When ever you are looking for a product or service over the internet there is so many options to choose from. You don’t know whether the company you pick is good or bad or if the service is reliable and will fit your businesses needs. Here at Absolute web services we thought we would put together some key pointers to remember if you are looking for a web hosting company or if you want to upgrade to a better service.

There are various reasons for having a website. The type of hosting plan that you pick will depend upon whether you will be creating your site for personal use or for a professional or business website. If you have a personal website that you forward to some of your friends and use to show holiday photos most web hosting plans that have 3GB of space will be more than sufficient.

If you are planning on having a website that will have a large amount of traffic visiting it or storing large databases of content and graphics/photographs, a standard site will not work for you and you will have to upgrade to a higher bandwidth plan and maybe even a dedicated server. It is better to plan this now rather than have technical problems and down time when customers are trying to visit your site in the future.

You will want your website to load quickly and have very little downtime. In your research any hosting company that you choose should have over 99% uptime as well as expandable storage space and bandwidth should you need it.

The hosting company should have a variety of features and options that go along with the hosting package. These would include: add ons, plugins, email accounts, a control panel and security to give your customers peace of mind about their personal information remaining secure.

Something as simple as multiple email accounts will help your business and employees and will give the professionalism that you need to help your business run smoothly. The same can be said for the control panel which would give you access to make administrative changes to your website like password resets or email account changes. This can save you time as it cuts out the time consuming step of having to call customer service every time you want to make a small change to the website.

Customer and Technical support is one of the most important things that you should consider. When your website is down or something is not working you want to be able to contact someone as soon as possible at any time. It is key to make sure that the hosting company is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Call them up to make sure as some companies will promise this but not actually deliver. A small note to add would be to see if the number that you have to call for service is a toll free number. Some times the wait times can be quite long; do you want to pay long distance charges?

 To help you pick from some of the more popular web hosting companies, we have put a link to a list of some web hosting companies and their reviews http://www.mybestratedwebhosting.com/ so that you can reference the type of site that you want and the services each hosting company provides.

How to find the Best eCommerce Shopping Cart Software

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Joshua

absolutewebservicesIt can be difficult to find a good shopping cart for your website. Aren’t they all the same? Don’t they all do the same thing? Do you pay for a shopping cart or do you use one that comes free with a website? The questions can be endless, so it helps to do some research as having a good shopping cart on your website can make the decision as to whether a customer goes through with their purchases or falls away from your web page.

You must decide if you want a hosted solution or a stand alone solution. A hosted solution would be a shopping cart that would be included along with your domain purchase as well as a website. This type of cart is an option that is available from Godaddy.com or Network Solutions.com. The pros to this sort of shopping cart is that if you can get your website up and running very quickly utilizing an all in one package with very little problems.

eCommerce Shopping Cart Software:

If you prefer to go with a stand alone solution, you shopping cart will reside on the same server as your website. You are not restricted to a cookie cutter shopping cart. It can come with similar options to a hosted solution but you can add to it and tailor it to exactly what you may be looking for. X cart gold would be a good example of this.

Not all shopping carts are able to accept all methods of payments. Some products or even the countries your product is available to will decide the type of shopping cart that you pick, Most carts accept all types of credit cards, some accept check payments and a few accept money orders. You must decide which is more cost effective. Some merchants for example, will not accept American Express as their processing fees are too high and therefore cut into the bottom line.

A shopping cart is a great tool for keeping track of the back end of your store front. It will keep track of your inventory and allow you to generate reports as and when they are needed so you understand what you need to keep in stock and when you need to re-order. It will automatically calculate shipping costs so that both you and the customers know the full amount of the purchase. The shopping cart can be integrated with UPS or FedEx software to make things even easier. Along with shipping, the cart will calculate taxes owed and whether they are applicable in the State the purchase is made in. This will help to streamline your accounting procedures.

Below are some key features that we at Absolute web design feel that you should look out for when you are considering a shopping cart.

1. Make sure that your shopping cart has the highest security with SSL secure checkouts and anti fraud detection. It is important that your customers feel safe and secure when they shop on your web site.

2. Inventory management/Previous customer information. Customers value web sites where they can keep a profile of their favorite things or previous orders, this cart will recognize the customer when they log onto the site.

3. Increasing business is good for your bottom line. A shopping cart that will up sell the customer on check out by show them other similar items that other customers have bought will increase your sales.

4. Marketing. A shopping cart that can help you with marketing by sending coupons or automated e-mails about up coming sales and events are quite common place. A targeted marketing campaign as well as a social media campaign can be set up to run on an automated system so you don’t have to do the work.

5. Good design. It is paramount that the shopping cart that you use is designed well to prevent fall off. A customer needs to be able to navigate between pages without getting lost and without long page load times and large amount of information inputted.

Here is a link to some of the best shopping carts today with side by side comparisons so that you can see which would be best for you in your situation.

http://shopping-cart-review.toptenreviews.com/

Should all Businesses Blog?

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Joshua

www.absolutewebservices.comYou may feel that you have a business and a website therefore you should keep up with the others around you and have a blog and join the realm of other social media. If you have fresh content to update your blog with and are willing to update the blog regularly with a predetermined strategy then blogging might be for you, other wise it might be better to spend your money and time else where.

If your website sells a service or a product, it is critical that you have a well defined plan when it comes to blogging making sure your pages are structured correctly. When you are in the service industry your blog will define you as an expert in the field giving advice and answers when needed. People will expect to come to your blog first to get answers and call on you should the need arise.

This is the same for a product driven website. If you have a few products your blog should be updated constantly to keep robot spiders visiting your site regularly. This will increase your page ranking, making sure you are one of the first pages to come up when a search is done for that particular product. If you have hundreds of pages the need to do this is not so urgent.

The worst thing is when you come across a blog that you think will give you relevant material and then you find out that the post is more than a year old and has not been updated. Worst still is when a blog only has a few posts on it and then it seems has just been left to blog waste land…forgotten and left never to be returned to…. Don’t let this happen to yours!

What is a Minisite and How Can it Benefit Your Small Business?

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Joshua

You have all heard of a web site but what is a minisite? Actually it is pretty much just as the name says a mini version of a website. Usually it is a single page and may be about only one product or subject.

For example if a company has hundreds of products on their website and they may want to concentrate on one of their products on that website that may be doing well or customers have requested more information about.

How Mini Sites Can Help Your Business:

That website company may develop a minisite that focuses solely on this product. It may have special graphics and video and will only talk about this product. The site may only be up for a short time until an advertising campaign is done or until the ‘buzz’ is over about the product.

It can also be used in terms of a service related industry, a real estate company may have a general site about all the properties that they have listed at the time as well as the Realtors who has the listing.

www.absolutewebservices.com

The brokerage may decide that they want to do a mini site about a specific property that they want to give the star treatment to because it represents a high dollar value in commission and they would like it to sell quickly. This site can then be taken down once the property has sold.

Is a Mini Site Right For You?

You may also consider using a mini site if you are a small business owner and only require a website with a few pages of information about you and your company. If you are a small business owner you can have a 5-10 page informational mini site created relatively quickly and inexpensive.

With WordPress you can have your website up and running in as little as a week if you are working with a website design company that knows what they are doing.

If you are going to be using your mini site strictly to sell your product online you can create several different mini site sales pages and test and tweak each sales page to see which one works best and brings in the highest conversion rates.

As you can see mini websites can be extremely powerful and can be used for several purposes whether you are a offline small business owner or you own an eCommerce store and want to tweak several version of your sales pages.

Mini sites (aka Niche Sites) are also very popular among affiliate circles where mini blog sites are created to rank on the first page of Google where they can earn a commission for each sale that comes through their website (assuming the visitor purchases through their affiliate link).

If you would like a minisite created for your website or would like to find out more information about minisites, then contact Absolute Web Services at (305) 937- 2526, one of our qualified professionals will be more than happy to arrange an appointment or visit us on the web at http://www. absolutewebservices.com

Another new iPhone set for September

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Joshua

www.absolutewebservices.comApple is set to start making its new version of the iPhone in August and release it in September, Apple is also expected to follow that with an increase in production of the iPad in September which would mean that Apple would then be shipping 30 million units. This would mean that Apple would own 60 percent of the market when it comes to tablets.

Apples share in the market place all together should increase in the year 2012 when the new 4G LTE is unveiled as well as a lower priced 3G model. Apple may also be releasing their version of a pocket sized T.V with the release of a smart T.V which would add $19 billion to Apples already large pockets.

Apple will also be showing an increase in revenues in the fourth quarter after negotiating with suppliers for lower prices for parts for the iProducts. This would lead to an increase in their profit margin. Apple was now able to do this as parts have become more readily available due to Japan recovering from the devastating earthquake that hit Japan earlier in the year.

Keep up with all the latest news concerning web sites and technology by keeping up with our blog at http://www.absolutewebservices.com

5 Unconventional and Overlooked Ways To Promote Your Website

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Joshua

www.absolutewebservices.comWhen it comes to promoting your blog, the first instinct is to look at different ways to promote it on the internet.

But there are other ways to utilize promotion including offline marketing that are often overlooked. Here are some ways that you can use to get the word out there about your blog and hopefully increase your traffic and page views.

5 Ways To Get Traffic To Your Website:

1. First Things first, tell everyone that you know about your blog.

Word of mouth is and will always be the best and cheapest (FREE) form of advertising EVER. Today the technical, ‘cooler’ term for this is Viral Marketing.

It’s good to get feedback on anything that may be wrong with your blog and ask about how it can be improved.

Your friends probably have similar interests to you and if they like the blog ask them to keep reading and to ‘like’ you on Facebook and follow you on other social media.

You could ask them to tell one of their friends and start a referral system. You never know where it may lead.

2. Post the URL for your blog on free message boards in places like Starbucks, small cafe’s, bookstores, office building message boards, college campuses etc.

People are always checking out the boards looking for something new and interesting.

You can also take it a step further and write your URL on a sticky note and leave it behind on coffee tables.

3. Car magnets or Bumper stickers.

If you can come up with something that is catchy enough and has a bit of mystery to it, your bumper stickers could really generate some great BUZZ for your business.

If you want to take it a step further print out extra’s and you can ask some of your friends or family to place it on their cars.

You can have a few car magnets and bumper stickers printed up for under $150.

4. Clothing –Yes clothing.

How many times do you wear a shirt or cap with someone else’s logo on it. Nike, Guess, what ever the company, it is that is advertising a product or business and not your own.
It costs very little to print up a few caps or t-shirts that have your blog or your website URL and then wear them and give them away to friends and family.

5. Flyers:

This is probably the most cost effective ways of promoting your website.
Have a few simple flyer’s created with a strong headline and your website URL on it and leave them EVERYWHERE!

You can even pay a high school or college kid to blast a few parking lots or college campuses with your flyers.

Be careful though as some cities have codes against this and it may get you in trouble.

You can have 2×4 business card size flyers printed up for about $79-$100 for 5,000 cards

Thinking this way is along the lines of branding. All your business cards and anything else that you can think of should have your blog URL.

If you don’t have cards print some up, even if it only contains your blog address and one headline it is a quick and easy way to pass your blog address onto someone without having to scramble for a pen to write it down. For more pointers just visit http://www.absolutewebservices.com

3 Simple WordPress Plugins For Moderating Blog Comments

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Joshua

www.absolutewebservices.comMany of you who have blogs and have to deal with hundreds or even thousands of comments each year and the majority of these comments will be spam.

Some of you will find it easier to ignore all the comments, preferring not to deal with any of them. Others will allow all the comments to post whether they are genuine or spam.

Neither of these options are favorable if you are trying to grow your blog to be an authority.

If you decide to ignore and not allow comments at all this can actually harm the growth of your blog because if someone takes the time to write a comment, ask a question or leave some feedback how do you think they will feel if you did not take the time to write back? Or if you not approve their comment at all?

It is highly unlikely these people will return and if they do the chances of them taking the time to write a comment is slim to none.

On the other hand if you set your blog to auto approve you will get a boat load of spam comments and that too can harm your blog because if a genuine reader comes along and see’s you have comments that link back to adult sites or Viagra sites it will look extremely unprofessional.

Not to mention the comments read as if a 2 year old wrote them.

It may also affect your rankings if Google comes along and notices your blog links out to these adult, viagra, spammy websites.

So the only real solution is to moderate your comments. If you are on WordPress, there are several plugins available to help you protect your blog from spam.

I will cover a few of them below and why you should install them. You will be able to find all these plugins by doing a search inside of your Dashboard under “Plugins”

3 Plugins to Help with Spam  Comments:

1. Akismet Plugin: This plugin already comes installed on your blog once you install WordPress. It comes “inactive” so you do have to activate it and grab an activation key from the developers website for it to work.

Akismet is one of the best plugins out there for spam protection. It runs on 100% autopilot once it’s active and filter’s all the spam comments into your spam folder.

You can even set it to delete the spam comments after 30 days.

The only downfall to Akismet is that it may sometimes grab a genuine comment and put it in the spam folder as well. So you may want to manually go in once every 30 days and see if there are some real comments from real people.

It is not difficult to determine the general, spammy comments from genuine ones.

2. G.A.S.P Plugin: This plugin is another amazing spam blocker and the functionality is extremely simple.

All it does is add a “check this box to confirm you are not a spammer” function right below your comments box so people have to tick this box to be able to comment on your blog.

This plugin alone can help fight off a lot of spam.

3. CommentLuv: Now this is a great plugin that allows you to reward your genuine readers who leave a comment on your blog with a link back to the latest article on their blog.

So it’s not much of a spam protection plugin but more of a reward plugin for those who leave real genuine comments.

If the plugins above are not something you would like to give a try you can always follow the 3 steps below to further protect your blog:

1. Don’t allow anonymous posting.

2. Use the “nofollow” attribute for links in the comment field.

3. Don’t allow hyperlinks in comments at all.

That is pretty much it my friends and I hope you found this article helpful and you are able to protect your blog from all the spammers out there looking for a quick backlink.

5 Common SEO Terms You MUST Know

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Joshua

While visiting the world of SEO (search engine optimization), you may come across some strange words that may seem like they were written in some alien foreign language. Here are just a few of them and their definitions so that you can better understand SEO and how it works.

5 Words You Should Know For SEO:

1. Google Bomb – this is where a group of web masters might get together and change the meaning of a search term to something else that is usually comical. For example Anthony Weiner might come up if you searched for fallen stars etc.

2. Cloaking – this is a black hat technique which allows search engine spiders to see different content than human users who visit the site. Using this technique will definitely cause your website to fall in ranking.

3. Keyword Cannibalization – this is where you use the same keyword too many times on different pages through out you website. This confuses search engines as they don’t know which is the most important page to index relative to that keyword.

4. Google dance- When Google changes its algorithm it causes a change in SERPs. This means that website owners have to change their site periodically to match what Google is looking for so they don’t see a fall in ratings.

This typically tends to happen for relatively new sites that are working to establish themselves as an authority in their niche but have yet to earn Google’s trust.

What will happen when Google is dancing with your site is you may see some first page rankings one day, then you’ll be on page 2, then page 10, then deindexed completely and then back to page 1 again.

This process can occur for several months while you are building your site, adding content, building backlinks and showing Google that you are growing your site.

5. Backlinks: This is a VERY popular term you will hear thrown around A LOT in SEO communities. To put it as simple as I can backlinks is the process of one website linking to another.

This is probably the most important piece to the puzzle when ranking your website. The more website’s that link back to your website the higher search engine ranking you will obtain. Assuming you are getting backlinks from good quality, high Pagerank websites.

These are just a few words that you will hear quite a bit in the SEO communities. There are a few other’s but for the sake of time and length of this post I can’t cover all of them today.

If you have any words you are not quite sure the definition or it’s role in your SEO leave me a comment below.

If you need help understanding SEO and formulating an SEO campaign for your website, call Absolute Web Services at (305) 937-2526 or visit us on the web at http://www.absolutewebservices.com.

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