A website owner like you can be beset with various problems from day the day your website is up and running. This is because there are technological aspects of your business website that you have to be aware of when managing your online presence. Even though your content and images appeal easily to website visitors, there is a need to know if your business is faring well with competitors and if it is really patronized by many.

As we all know, a website is a huge investment in time, effort and money. Some small business owners hire the best teams to learn how the Internet can bring them good financial status as they know that they are not quite familiar with how several online processes work. These are people who are bent on taking back what they have cashed out the surest way possible.

With processes, we mean there is really an enormous list with which ordinary people are not familiar. So, if you are still trying to find out where you have gone amiss, then, most likely, you have been losing money already. You don’t need to panic. There are easy ways you can use to get your desired business outcome in time which requires effort and patience.

Why evaluating your website saves you time and money?

Website evaluation is the ultimate means of accelerating your online business success as it helps you understand why visitors are either flocking or fleeing your website. Fast Track’s Site Evaluator uses several metrics to evaluate your site’s ability to draw in people. If continually monitored and results are intelligently analyzed, your business is set to receive higher revenues using the shortest possible time.

Without knowing which way your site is going can be devastating to your purse that’s why Site Evaluator was developed to help you with this major issue.

Advantages of Using the Site Evaluator

There are several reasons why this website evaluator can make you save on time and money. It helps your business website the following:

Site Accessibility: There are sites that seem to deprive individuals who have disabilities like auditory or verbal, visual, neurological or cognitive deficiencies; include those who have temporary impediments as well. These people also like to visit websites to learn new technologies that can add to their knowledge. Using W3C and alternative text to create easy navigation would mean no visitor is lost and additional visitors for competing websites can be trimmed down.

Website Performance: A slow loading site drives away possible earning opportunities and creates negative impact on a company’s reputation. Images that are too big and placing unnecessary codes on the pages challenge the way your site behaves when clicked. If this happens, visitors are turned away just like turning away future revenues. Site Evaluator will tell you if there is a need to compress image sizes or weed out broken links.

Social Media Optimization: There are more than a couple of ways to improve your online presence and many have depended on social media to optimize their websites as well. But not all business owners know how they rate when it comes to this category. So, if you fail in this department, we would be the first ones to know. We will see to it that all social networking sites would partake of your content by means of integrating into your site all social networking buttons and see to it that there are no broken links.’

Site Availability: An ideal site responds to users at any time and that means continuous flow of business. Although no website can promise to cater to its users 24/7, Site Evaluator says being available for a little less than 100% is fair enough. We measure a site’s availability by means of the entire of number of days in a year it is on and by the web hosting company it is associated with. This guarantees good availability score for your online business.

Website Security: Security is imperative for a website so as to protect its users and to cultivate trust and loyalty. It also reinforces website rankings because if more users see that their information details are safe from hackers, more users will feel secure to share their information in your website forms.  This is paramount if you are an eCommerce site and requires users to fill in online payment forms. Greater customer trust means happy customers. Happy customers would likely mean repeat orders from you and/or refer you to their friends and families. 

Site Support: A website that has full customer support creates a more loyal audience. Customers expect their issues or even the simplest questions are addressed fast and easy. Several websites lack contact forms, chat support pop-ins or forums that can provide the right solutions anytime of the day. Site evaluator measures your site by means of feedback or communication between you and your customers.

Marketing Metric: As majority of websites that exist today function as marketing tools, there is a need to maximize effectiveness through the use of various industries’ best practices like creating active blogs and integration of social media among others. Site Evaluator assesses your marketing metrics via lead generation, mobile, SEO, blogging, and Social media scores. If you don’t have forums, blogs or RSS feeds, and most especially, an integrated social media, then, expect to get a low score on this category.

Search Engine Optimization: Websites that have good search engine rankings get the most number of viewers and customers alike.  Without effective keywords, descriptions or meta-tags, you can never compete with others who have this capability. Site Evaluator helps you see where your site is at and makes you know the difference between an entirely optimized site and one that is haphazardly done.

Site Usability: To optimize usability, your site must have a search function to make it easy-to-use and convenient for your visitors. This makes them find the right kind of product that you are selling or the type of service they are looking for. If not, possible buyers will tend to abandon your site and transfer to another that can offer them ease. Always remember that online competition is stiff and a flick of a finger can change the course of your website’s financial status. Our company can suggest ideas that may cause your business topple others after learning where you have committed a blunder. 

As nothing comes for free these days, you can get a good bargain even though you’d pay more in getting the services of experts. But while not all experts are excellent in this field, we can assure you that all benefits will be yours once you have tried our Site Evaluator. We know how much you need this tool and we know that by helping you implement it on your site, you would come close to becoming a successful online business entrepreneur in the long haul. And what else? It’s totally FREE!

Almost every month a new startup launches and new technology is introduced. The internet universe is always changing. Now, how does it impact you and your business? Well, in an age where social media has become an integral part of how we market our products and services online, we have to stay updated to remain relevant. You have to be sure to continually employ best practices. For example, researchers found out that color increases motivation to read content by 80%, so it is then imperative that marketing and social media contents be paired with images that reinforce information retention. In fact, Facebook posts that included images earned 87% of all engagements. This is an important piece of information all small businesses must take advantage of.

To help you accelerate your online success, we compiled this year's newest and most updated sizes of social media images.

If you like this infographic, go ahead and share it with a friend.

Building your online business using Power Site is the most convenient way of putting your brand out there. Leaving the coding part to Power Site's web developers frees you from doing such meticulous task. So you can focus on other important aspects of your business.

By taking a look at the features of your Power Site, you will be able to determine which areas can be easily optimized on your own. Optimizing your site increases its Search Engine Ranking Position (SERP). Ranking high usually means more visibility online, and thus, bigger chances of gaining more leads.

Here are a few ways to optimize your Power Site:

(1) On-page Optimization

Your Power Site's on-page content optimization may include the following strategies:

• Proper keyword optimization without keyword stuffing - Your primary keywords should be used on page titles, headings, sub-headings, page body/content, product descriptions and tags, image file names and alt texts, meta title and description , page URLs.
• Improve internal link building - You can link your most-linked web pages to your homepage and new SEO-targeted pages to harness link equity.
• Video sitemap - Create a video sitemap if you have numerous video promotions.
• User friendly landing pages - Improve user experience by having clear calls to action, properly constructed website navigation, and properly tagged product images.
• Mobile device compatibility - Make sure that you have a mobile version of your website for customers who use mobile devices when browsing the internet.
• Social media integration - Integrate social media to allow sharing of your content, highlight customer feedback, use as social-based commenting, show trending products/services to your social media followers.

(2) Blogging

Power Site's content management system allows you to easily manage your site's blog. Maximize these blogging features which will enable you to create properly optimized posts:

• Set up categories to organize blog content to help visitors find the topics they are looking for.
• Use primary and long tail keywords on your posts.
• Include related images and links to reliable resources on your posts.
• Include shareable images  you own. Make sure their file names are relevant to the content. Add alt tags when you insert the images on your posts.

(3) Link Building

• Build relationships with other website/blog owners and get backlinks through guest posting.
• Send request letters to manufacturers/suppliers for backlinks on their websites.
• Find and interview influencers in your industry.
• Create shareable infographics.
• Write how-to guides for your target audience.
• Answer questions on platforms like Quora, Yahoo Answers, and other Q&A sites.
• Curate a 'weekly roundup' of best posts within your industry.

(4) Enlisting your Power Site to local directories

• List down all of your business information such as website URL, physical address, telephone number/s, email address, as well as several product images you use on your website. These are required by local directory listings and will appear on a page once your account/submission is approved.
• To find where your competitors are listed, you can use Whitespark's Local Citation Finder.
• Submit your Power Site's URL to all relevant local directories.

(5) Other Best Practices

• Always stick with high quality content for your website and/or blog posts. Apply the same principle in writing services or product descriptions.
• If you do sell products on your Power Site, do not copy the manufacturer's description. Instead, write your own optimized product descriptions your customers can relate to.
• Write long form blog posts particularly for new products you are promoting.
• Many free PR sites are quite dubious. Have a budget set for press releases and make sure the site/s you will choose are highly reputable and known to produce good results.
• Avoid mass submissions to various directories. Pick only relevant authority directories to submit to.
•  Do not submit your website to Google using submission sites and tools. Use Google URL submission page.

The ease of having a Power Site for your business does not stop at the completed website itself. There is always room for improvement and there are basic steps you can take as website owner in order to optimize your website further.

The ever evolving web has seen many changes in the way websites are developed and designed. From the glitzy and glamorous, to the simplistic and minimalist, today's website layouts are geared toward the user experience rather than impressing them.

If you are looking for website layout trends in 2015, here's a mix of remarkable and inspiring layouts you may want to apply:

Single Screen

Filling a single screen is one of the trends today. It is also a type of responsive design that adapts to the screen size, but has no scroll bars. The design completely fills the screen. The content of the site is tremendously focused and the (content) hierarchy is visibly established.

Single screen website can sometimes be dominated by a responsive image or a video clip.

Check out some examples of single screen website layouts here.

Grid-based

Modular or grid-based layout is also a responsive type of design. It’s flexible to adapt the size of the screen and uses adaptable layouts using plug-ins.

Creating same-size modules is one of the challenges of this layout since it lessens the emphasis on the most interesting content on the site. It is also difficult to grab the viewer's attention if you're focused on promoting a particular material or content on the site. Creating grids with various dimensions can prevent such problems.

Open style

We are all familiar with the design elements such as shapes, lines, boxes, and other 'dividers' containing content. Two of the most prominent elements among them are headers and footers which are designed to separate the important content from the rest of the material.

The latest website layout trend to remove of these elements and design a more open and free style layout. It offers a minimalistic look and feel, with an emphasis on the main content..

Split Screen

Split screen layout allows emphasis on two principal elements on a website. The significance of any website element is usually reflected on the hierarchy and structure. In this case, if you focus on two elements and would like to promote them simultaneously, a split screen website could be the best option.

Conveying duality is another reason to use this layout. If your business puts emphasis on products/services and your team, then this is the best layout to showcase your core assets to potential customers.

Flat UI

Another emerging trend is the use of flat user interface. This website layout strongly focuses on content and provides basic pattern with minimal distracting elements. Level UI is more simplistic in technique and has fewer image-concentrated patterns. There are easier pattern elements and fewer photographs which give way to a much faster website.

These are just some of the trends that many websites have applied and implemented these days. However, these are also building blocks which can be used in a variety of ways. Design according to any of these website layout trends depends on your business goals and how you can provide the best experience to your customers.

The usability and functionality of these layouts are also ever-evolving - allowing web designers to work on challenging but worthwhile mediums for every website owner's objectives.

If you wish to know more about these web layout trends or you would like to implement one for your business website, contact us today.