Getting noticed on the internet is no small feat.   

We’re happy to say that it’s not rocket science and we’ve found some things that will help to put some method to the madness. 

Basically, here’s a check list to help you optimize the pages within your site.  Go through this for all your pages and you will be golden.

Accessible

Available

Marketing

Performance

Security

SEO

Social

Support

Usability

If you'd like to try a free website evaluation tool, get in touch with us. Or better yet, click here to get started.

Among the web design trends that we saw coming in the past couple of years is pageless design. It fully utilizes its digital platform and creates a unique and enjoyable user experience that is intuitive, appealing, and with lots of options.

If you're at the brink of deciding on whether to use pageless design for your website, here are several reasons to do so:

(1) Motivates customers through storytelling

It's been said that storytelling is the best form for delivering one's message. Stories can inspire and motivate people to take action. A pageless format allows you and your design team to control the order of information that's being presented to website visitors. Since pageless web design uses a 'linear format', it helps in crafting the story while also delivering experience that's impossible to achieve using multi-page website structure.

(2) Improves user experience

Intuitive and simple navigation of a pageless design are achieved through scrolling. This eliminates the confusion and distraction that may cause your visitors to overlook the most important sections of your website content.

If you look at today's computers and mobile devices, they all have the scrolling capability which can help many users adapt to the technology. The smarter interfaces and simple navigation encourages visitors to continue perusing these sites, and eventually take action.

(3) Increases conversion rates

Generating new leads, growing your online community, and increasing sales are every website's objectives. A pageless website can help you achieve these goals, thanks to its simple and uncomplicated design that's coupled with compelling story and instinctive interactions among site visitors.

(4) Creates device uniformity

Scrolling your website on a mobile device or desktop doesn't have to be different in terms of user experience. Visitors can easily navigate using any device without the unnecessary constraints of dropdown menus and numerous clicks on page links. Best of all, it's cost-effective since you'll only need one design for both mobile and desktop.

(5) Decreases bounce rate and promotes sharing

The lack of complexity and distractions are just two of the main reasons why website visitors stay for a longer period of time. With a pageless design, your visitors can enjoy and focus on your storytelling.

Sharing your website's story is better than just sharing a particular page. This helps drive your visitors into an effective sales funnel organically.

(6) Enables faster, easier, and more effective iteration

Dealing a single page based on visitors' feedback and analytics makes it easier, faster and effective. You'd only have to tweak specific interactions in order to improve and make them more satisfying to your visitors.

(7) You save time and money

As mentioned earlier, it's more cost-effective to have a pageless website especially if you're developing one that's compatible with all types of devices. Traditional websites take a lot of time and tens of thousands of dollars to develop. You'll not only get a visually appealing website, but also one that actually gives you the best results.

(8) Use of interactive elements

Parallax scrolling, animations, videos and sliders are ideal features that make pageless websites more visually appealing. These features also initiate user-generated interactivity throughout your website.

As a business owner, you'd want a website that goes along with the ever-changing development and design objective. It needs to fulfill the primary goal of providing great user experience in order for visitors stay within the sales funnel, while sharing your site and returning for more.

Need a pageless web design for your own business website? Fast Track can help your business achieve one of today's web design trends. The first step is to contact us today.

The proliferation of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, presents a need for mobile-friendly websites. This need became inevitable a few of years ago when many online businesses delve into mobile marketing strategies (i.e. SMS or text ads) in order to reach new audiences, while retaining the old ones via mobile channels.

For small business owners, it is never too late to develop online presence for both computer and mobile device users. The first step is to choose a small business website solution that can help you build a website with a responsive design. With a responsive design, your viewers can see a good layout of your website whenever they prefer to use a mobile device.

To better understand the current impact of mobile-friendly websites, consider these stats:

In 2011, Microsoft created and published an infographic that shows internet usage via mobile will overtake desktop by 2014.

And according to Google…

• 80% of online searchers leave their homes with their mobile device
• smartphones are used: 97% at home, 83% on the go, and 78% in shops
• 70% of mobile searchers are connected with a business
• 52% of them called the business/service
• 50% looked up on a map or got directions to that business
• 66% of mobile searchers visited the business and 48% visited the website
• 36% of mobile searchers made a purchase

There are many online reports and whitepapers showing stats similar to these. What they all convey is the opportunity to convert mobile searchers into customers. If you haven’t considered how visitors are interacting with your site through their mobile devices, you should.

If you're considering converting your site to be mobile responsive, consider these on four important things:

(1) Ensure you have a mobile-friendly website so your existing customers and prospects can shop your products and services on both desktop and mobile devices.

(2) Find ways to interact and engage with your potential customers, especially during promotional specials.  Keep your customers informed and engaged.

(3) Use mobile-specific tools/features to enhance the customer experience. Since this depends on the type of business and customers you have, think about the best way to get their attention without offending or bothering them.  Typically, companies offer informative articles, tips and other types of content that enhances the life of the consumer rather than selling to them.

(4) Mobile is not about technology. It is about your customers and prospects and how they use their mobile devices in finding and interacting with you. A successful mobile strategy entails getting more (new) customers while also selling more to existing clients.

Why go mobile?

• It’s easier to immerse customers into your brand if they get the full electronic experience of your company on all devices.  
• Having a responsive design is good for your site SEO.
• Quite simply, it gives you more opportunity to sell!

Updating your website to a mobile-friendly format is essential to gain more customers. Most importantly, you have another way to keep the existing customers up-to-date and engaged.

Should you need a website update to make it mobile-friendly, Fast Track is here to help. Contact us today and let's begin this journey.

Having an online presence is essential in business today. However, we live in an era when accessing the internet is as easy as using your phone - whether you’re looking to get in touch with family and friends, to search for products and services, or to make a purchase from our favorite online store - while on the go or having a few minute break from work. This integration of the internet with tech-savvy mobile devices has created a new channel for businesses to capture new sales opportunities.

Responsive web design vs. Mobile template

The term 'responsive design' was originally coined by Ethan Marcotte on this article back in 2010 and it is definitely the most widely used technique in mobile website design. A responsive design requires that the website adapt various screen sizes, regardless of the device that the site is being displayed on.

If you're still using a non-responsive design or you're planning to create a mobile-only website, make sure to consider these reasons to use a responsive web design:

(1) Google recommends it

Google recommends responsive design because it only requires one URL and the same HTML regardless of device, but it can deliver different screen displays based on the device's screen size. This also makes it easier for the search engine to crawl, index, and organize content. A responsive design eliminates the complicated and time-consuming process for both Google and the website owner, allowing you to optimize both your website and mobile user experience.

Therefore, responsive design is also…

(2) Ideal for SEO

Aside from the above-mentioned reasons, responsive websites also perform better and have lower risks of experiencing on-page SEO errors.  

(3) Easier and more efficient

Without having two entities to manage (mobile and website), it is easier and more efficient to manage your SEO, marketing, and content. One good example is incorporating mobile-specific keywords into responsive design, instead of just using them on mobile-specific SEO strategy.

(4) Better user experience

Your site visitors will have more pleasant experience whether they choose to view your site via desktop or on their mobile device.

Consistency is key to providing good user experience since people can now search and view websites on their PCs, smartphones, and tablets. You'd want to capture more online customers via mobile, but it's also important to provide them an 'easy to view' website on their chosen device.

And let's not forget that first impression is crucial as it can make or break the interest of a potential customer. Take for example a potential customer who found your site using his PC, but decides to check later using a smart phone. If your site isn't responsive, what he'll see and experience via mobile can frustrate him. Imagine if this happens to ten people per day! You'll be losing a lot of opportunities.

(5) Social media and blogging can increase mobile traffic

If you're using social media and blogging as part of your inbound marketing efforts, chances are you'll see increase in mobile traffic. In fact, this report states that 55% of social media consumption occurs on a mobile device. So, if you're sharing links to your website content and it’s not mobile-friendly website, you can expect high bounce rates, low conversion rates, and frustrated site visitors.

If you're still using a non-responsive website, now is the best time to change. Power Site can help you achieve a responsive website based on your business needs. Contact us today and let's get started.

It’s important to perform a website audit on a regular basis, particularly before a major website redesign. Evaluating your website can help determine if it's optimized to meet your goals, and for you to find ways to improve your website's performance.

If this is your first time or if it's been a long time since you've done website evaluation, seek out the help of a professional (an individual or a team) who has the technical know-how to execute this process effectively.

What are the benefits?

One of the main benefits of a site audit is achieving increased website performance. Generally, this is the ultimate goal for both technical and content aspects. A website evaluation allows you to check the strength of your site's technical framework, asses if it is search-engine-friendly and can be easily navigated by visitors.

An audit also allows you to enhance your SEO by identifying overlooked SEO opportunities, remedying poorly executed SEO practices throughout your site's content, and re-focusing your SEO strategy to put your site visitors first before the search engines. This protects your site by minimizing the impact of the constantly changing search engine algorithm.

Also consider reassessing your site's lead generation and conversion rates during evaluation. This will help you to identify overlooked opportunities to convert site visitors into leads. Remember to include relevant call to action statements and pinpoint deficiencies in landing pages to improve conversions.

Why do you need a website audit?

Below are 15 reasons why auditing your website is important.

(1) The internet is ever-evolving and, so are the standards.

(2) Change in best practices, software, device compatibility occur quickly online. Your site should be able to handle and adapt to these changes.

(3) It can help you find the probable cause as to why your site is not converting visitors into customers.

(4) You can derive insights from analysis reports with regards to how well the graphics are optimized.  You can also get insights into consumer behavior that could affect your strategic plan.

(5) Analysis reports provide insight on your website traffic rank (i.e. increase or decrease of site visitors), search percentages, and bounce rates, showing the popularity of content on your site.

(6) You have a basis for modifying your site's components that impede performance.

(7) Using the traffic report that your site audit has generated, check where your traffic is coming from and which keywords are being used by visitors to land on your site.

(8) You'll be able to identify and repair broken links which are affecting your site's functionality.

(9) HTML errors, that present website pages incorrectly on browsers, can be identified and fixed.

(10) The analysis can provide a review of how/why your site is too slow.

(11) Erroneous page output is often caused by incorrect character setting and this can be identified and fixed during the audit.

(12) Ensuring that your site contains 'link juice' is another reason for performing site evaluation. It checks link juice flow to pages which helps in achieving optimum search engine ranking.

(13) Download time is often impacted by the size of your website, so an audit is necessary to also achieve optimized bandwidth usage.

(14) You can also check if website security has been compromised via security audit. This requires the use of a server and security testing software.

(15) Human error such as duplicate input of page titles and metadescriptions can be checked and fixed during an audit.

There are still many other reasons to perform a site audit to ensure that yours is secure, safe to users, and compliant to all the applicable standards. However, as mentioned, you will need the expertise of a professional company that offers this type of service.

Fast Track has been performing website audits for our customers for years, and we'd love to provide the same service to you. Contact us today and let's get started.