A strong company website has emerged as a crucial marketing tool for staying relevant and effective among target consumers and rivals in today’s “new normal.” Having a strong online digital presence and an internal digital marketing strategy are essential for preserving profitability and growth in an era where conventional/traditional business strategies are constrained.

Redesigning a website is a major move, but if done effectively, it might be quite profitable. To make sure that your brand is presented, articulated, and portrayed in a compelling and natural way that appeals to your target audience, it is essential to routinely assess your company’s online presence. In conclusion, there are several factors to think about while considering a makeover. Before choosing to move further with one, take into account the following important questions:

Does your current website accurately reflect the positioning of your brand?
Numerous companies that once relied heavily on trade exhibitions and in-person sales are rapidly losing brand recognition. Many companies still still employ antiquated websites that no longer serve their customers’ needs or brand strategy. Implementing a website redesign project plan is a quick and easy way to increase brand recognition and connect with your target market.

It’s essential to leave your company’s brand identity a lasting impression on your online presence in order to foster brand trust and loyalty. Your website should effectively communicate your company’s brand guidelines, tone, and voice through smart message, design, and content.

It’s essential to tell your brand’s narrative in a way that is both captivating and memorable for a website project to be successful. If your current website does not accurately reflect your current brand positioning and values, you should think about revamping it so that users may use it as a source of reference and validation.

Are You Using Search Engine Optimization to Its Full Potential?
Your website will rank better on the search engine results page if you have a solid SEO foundation and strategy. Due to improved brand and search visibility, more qualified prospects will visit your website, expanding the network of your business.

A few benefits of upgrading your website for SEO include lead creation, brand visibility, and more organic traffic. To increase brand recognition and search rankings, it’s essential to implement a search engine optimization strategy that analyzes the Google search console and determines which terms are best for SEO and SERP exposure.

To put it another way, your website’s content must have the proper title tags and adhere to all Google recommended practices in order to rank. The following SEO aspects should be taken into account while designing a website or establishing whether your website is already SEO friendly:

Does your content rank for any particular keywords on Google?
Do you currently keep track of your ranks?
When was the last time you conducted an SEO audit?
Have you set up your 301 and 302 redirects correctly?
Have you set up internal connections correctly?
Does the SEO work you now do adhere to Google’s and other search engines’ recommended practices?
Do you employ a lead generation and conversion system?

With user journeys targeted to nurture leads and direct users toward conversion, a well-designed digital presence may be used as an internal sales and marketing tool. With obvious calls to action and several possibilities for the user to convert, complete a transaction (if e-commerce), or contact you, it should represent and support your sales cycle.

A site audit to understand user behavior may be helpful if your website isn’t converting or generating new money. To determine how long visitors stay on each page, where they leave the site, and which content pieces are the most popular, you can use heat maps and Google Analytics. This information will help identify each user’s ultimate goal as well as any present problems with the user experience and page optimization. All of the following should be taken into consideration during UX/UI design in order to increase conversion rates and create a website that can serve as a lead generating funnel.

Can your target audience locate the information they need?
In addition to user testing, it’s important to evaluate the kind of content and information you’re giving customers as well as how you’re delivering it. Visitors to your website will likely leave and fail to convert if they can’t find the tools and information they need. In other words, your bounce rate will increase.

There are a variety of reasons why your target audience may be experiencing a knowledge gap when they visit your current website. Put yourself in the position of your target audience and think about whether the language and copy you’re employing is straightforward and understandable versus convoluted and technical. A content marketing strategy that breaks up text with infographics and images to make the website more user-friendly may be useful if your language is too difficult for people to understand.

A redesign is a great chance to construct user journeys that are simple and clear and to enhance the content. To draw attention to thought leadership, case studies, and blog/news articles for your target audience, promote easy access to resources and information as well as efficient site navigation. It’s also a great moment to reconsider the way you advertise your goods and services.

Your organization’s strengths can be highlighted in a variety of ways. Perhaps you might start by analyzing your data architecture. Once you have assessed your target audience and their behavior, it will be simpler to group products and services based on use cases. In other words, by optimizing a website’s menu to produce many routes to the same goal, a cross-linking information architecture can be developed. As an illustration, consider grouping case studies according to industry and business type. By doing this, two different members of the target audience can access the same case study through various entry points. If you give consumers alternate routes to complete their task, bounce rates will inevitably fall.

Along with improving the organization of your website’s information architecture, a user-first approach to responsive design can help you display your goods, services, and content more effectively. This calls for modifying your website to meet the needs of your intended audience and ensuring that content is consistent across all platforms. A few examples of responsive design include making sure your website is mobile-friendly, employing white space to emphasis text, and using motion/animation to make photographs pop. It’s imperative to remember that every design element should serve a purpose other than just to “look great.”

When the aforementioned UX/UI components are merged, they will aid in filling in knowledge gaps and providing users with the information they need to convert. If your current site has a high bounce rate or if users are having trouble understanding what you do, you might want to think about redesigning it.

Do You Adhere to the Most Recent Regulations?
If the standards listed below are not met by your current website, a website redesign is in your best interest.

adherence to the GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation, as it is often known, is an EU regulation that controls data protection and privacy for the European Union. If you receive visitors from other countries, it is imperative that your website complies with this requirement.

accessibility in accordance with the WCAG standards
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are intended to protect persons with disabilities. These regulations are concerned with increasing the accessibility of web content, which can be done by following their requirements for text, sound, image, and code. In order to ensure that you are adhering to the correct WCAG Accessibility criteria, it is essential to know who is viewing your site. There are three levels of WCAG accessibility (2.0, 2.1, and 2.2).

American Disability Act-compliant
Together, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) help to safeguard website visitors with disabilities and to make sure that all of the site’s pages and content are accessible to them.

The post Here are five queries that businesses should ask themselves while thinking about redesigning their websites. appeared first on Berlin WebDev.

After two years of COVID-19, people are gradually adjusting to the new normal. Although some limitations have been relaxed, many people are still concerned about the possibility of infection.

As a result, you can anticipate people to keep searching for brands, viewing new products, and making purchases online.

Given this, updating your e-commerce website is crucial if you want to give clients a seamless experience.

Additionally, you must find and fix any gaps in your website right once to maintain customer attention given the intense competition in the digital arena nowadays.

There will undoubtedly always be new things to do because technology is constantly developing. The top five changes you should make this year, in order of urgency, are listed below. To optimize your benefits for 2022, be sure to act quickly on these.

1. Use keywords to optimize your website.

Although search engine optimization (SEO) is not a new idea, if you haven’t yet developed a solid strategy for it, the time is now. Many clients can visit your store if your website appears in the top ranks of search results.

Finding suitable keywords, including branded and non-branded keywords, is essential for good e-commerce site optimization.

Long-tail keywords that resemble real speech should also be included now that voice search is growing in popularity. Consider these to be whole phrases or hypothetical queries.

Additional pointers for your keyword research are provided below:

1. Examine the opposition.
Along with your ranking, you should also keep an eye on how your rivals are doing. Missing the top rankings results in missed conversions, which can help you determine where your optimization efforts need to be improved.

2. Strike a balance between search volume and competition.
Naturally, you want to target terms with high search traffic, but you also need to take the competition into account. It will be more challenging to score highly for certain keywords if many other people are already utilizing them.

3. Check that your keywords correspond to the search objectives of your users.
You must employ the appropriate keywords based on your users’ goal because user intent can be navigational, informational, or transactional.

4. Choose the appropriate section of your website to include a particular keyword.
After selecting your keywords, you should consider which pages will be the most pertinent.

2. Upgrade Payment and Security Systems
Without a doubt, you must take further measures to secure your website and guard it against future intrusions. As more individuals shop online and submit private financial information that might easily fall into the wrong hands, it is more crucial than ever.

Many other types of e-commerce data breaches are possible, including identity theft, password guessing, phishing, and computer outbreaks. To avoid any financial repercussions, you should have adequate security precautions against all of these.

Cyberattacks cost firms on average $200,000 in 2019. In addition, they risk harming your reputation by causing consumers to stop believing in your company.

Here are some crucial actions you should do to strengthen the security of your e-commerce website:

• Utilize industry-standard HTTPS across the board.
  Customers’ credit card numbers and other payment information should not be saved.
  Put password restrictions in place to assist clients in protecting themselves.

3. Address UX Issues and Gaps
Users are becoming increasingly critical of the websites they visit as they get more immersed in the online world. If you do not provide customers with a seamless and easy buying experience, they can depart empty-handed.

Due of this, you should audit your website to find user experience (UX) gaps and problems and remedy them as necessary. To identify where your site is doing poorly, look at your analytics first (if you have any) before conducting tests.

From here, you may ascertain which phases of the shopping process most customers abandon and concentrate on improving these areas.

Here are some crucial UX elements to look through to help you with your audit:

• Keep your page loading time at two seconds by taking measurements.
  Verify whether it is mobile-friendly.
  Make product searches simple and effective.

4. Use Analytics to Track Your Metrics
You shouldn’t put off doing this any longer if you are still not employing analytics to track your site stats. To increase conversions and provide a positive experience in e-commerce, it is essential to track every stage of the consumer journey.

With the help of e-commerce analytics, you may learn a lot about the habits of your customers and identify areas for development.

You can start by configuring Google Analytics for ecommerce tracking. You may monitor pertinent key performance indicators (KPIs) and discover more about your website visitors using this free application.

You may take swift action and address problems right away if you have access to this information to stop them from getting worse.

While you may have particular KPIs based on the goods you sell and your overall objectives, the following crucial indicators are ones that all e-commerce companies should monitor:

• Data on transactions and purchases
  lifetime worth of the client
  Site visitors and organic traffic Impressions, reach, and engagement
  Rate of conversion

5. Switch to Zero- and First-Party Data
When search engines begin to phase out third-party cookies in 2022, the Internet will undergo a significant change. You should still get ready for the impending change now, even though Google has rescheduled the phase-out to the end of 2023 and delayed it by a year.

Removing third-party cookies will need you to alter your advertising approach because they were crucial in the development of targeted online ad campaigns.

To keep ahead of your rivals, you should instantly pivot your efforts if you haven’t already.

Naturally, first-party cookies will still exist, so you may keep using them to track visitors’ behavior on your website.

Zero-party data, however, is increasingly becoming a significant opportunity in the field of digital marketing. Basically, it refers to voluntary information that consumers choose to share with marketers.

There are many inventive ways to gather zero-party data without interfering with users’ experience.

The post 5 Changes Your Ecommerce Website Needs Right Away appeared first on Berlin WebDev.

Don’t fall victim to scammers who lock your computer or browser with screen pop-ups and frozen browser pop-ups.

I have always been the computer guy that family, friends and clients consult for computer/web advice. It is alarming to me how many times I can recount over the years receiving calls regarding this particular kind of computer scam.

“Hey my computer or web browser won’t let exit away from this message that says I need to call customer support, there is a virus on my computer and they will remove it for X amount of dollars”.  

Sometimes these scammers will claim to be from Microsoft, Google or some other brand name company we are all familiar with. This allows the scammer to establish some sort of trust with the potential innocent victim. Most of the time I have been able to steer people in the right direction and have them avoid the pitfall of wasting several hundred dollars to an internet scammer.

Don’t fall victim to this type of malicious behavior. There are a few different steps you can take to remove yourself from this ugly situation.

If you are extremely uncomfortable with computers, simply disconnect from the internet if you can or just turn off your computer completely. Power down and consult with someone you trust to help you.

If you are stuck on a frozen browser message or screen in Windows, open task manager and end the process for the browser. Alternatively, Force Quit on a Mac. I would recommend immediately running anti malware and virus removal software on either Windows and Mac OS, yes, Apple computers get infected as well. One of my favorites of my favorites:

Malwarebytes

Make sure to stay protected with a good antivirus program. Remember, don’t hand over money to a stranger on the internet demanding it from you, call someone you trust.

The post Computer and web browser scams – DON’T fall for it! appeared first on Berlin WebDev.

WordPress 4.9.3 Auto Update Bug – Manual update required to 4.9.4 to fix auto update issue.

Shortly after the release of WordPress update 4.9.3, WordPress made it known that there was a critical  WordPress Update Bug that affected the auto update feature we have enjoyed since 2012. Thankfully, the WordPress team released WordPress update 4.9.4 that solves this issue.

You will have to manually update to WordPress update 4.9.4 to fix the bug issue from WordPress update 4.9.3. Simply login to your WordPress dashboard and click on the update icon and update to the latest version of WordPress.

So, if you have not done so already, simply login and update to the latest version of WordPress as it is the only way to have auto updates restored.

The post WordPress 4.9.3 Auto Update Bug (Manual update required to 4.9.4) appeared first on Berlin WebDev.

How to change the Divi mobile menu icon color for the Divi WordPress theme.

Have you been working on your Divi based WordPress website only to find that the mobile version of the Divi menu’s color does not match your chosen Divi theme colors? The Divi WordPress theme has mountains of options but changing the color of the hamburger mobile icon sometimes is finicky. As always, before you make any changes to your WordPress website or WordPress theme, make sure you have a recent complete backup of your complete installation.

To change the color of the Divi theme mobile hamburger icon, you will need to copy and paste this CSS snippet at the very bottom of the Divi theme options page.

span.mobile_menu_bar:before {
    color: red !important;
}

Make sure that after you paste the snippet, set the color within the snippet to what suits you. You can use HTML color codes here. I think I had originally seen this on one of my favorite Divi sites, can’t remember. However, it’s a fantastic site with a really great Divi plugin, check it out: https://divibooster.com/

The post Change DIVI mobile hamburger icon color appeared first on Berlin WebDev.

To change the color of the Divi theme mobile hamburger icon, you will need to copy and paste this CSS snippet at the very bottom of the Divi theme options page.

span.mobile_menu_bar:before {
color: red !important;
}
Make sure that after you paste the snippet, set the color within the snippet to what suits you. You can use HTML color codes here. I think I had originally seen this on one of my favorite Divi sites, can’t remember. However, it’s a fantastic site with a really great Divi plugin, check it out: https://divibooster.com/

The post How to change the Divi mobile menu icon color for the Divi WordPress theme. appeared first on Berlin WebDev.