Small business websites

This post first appeared on Flying Solo. “I’m sorry to inform you that your website has been hacked.” These are some of the hardest words that any business owner ever wants to hear (right up there with, “I am not paying your bill.”) Your business website is your pride...

She shuffled her feet under the desk while looking downcast at the papers in front of her. “I am just no good with tech. Computer type people start to talk at me, and my brain turns to mush. After a few minutes, I start to get panicky and can’t understand a word they...

I looked out over a sea of business-suited executives crammed into an over-heated conference hall. I was the last speaker before lunch, and thoughts of sandwiches and coffee were front-of-mind for most of them. “Our next speaker needs no introduction – Ingrid Moyle!”...

Building and hosting websites is an industry based on trust. You need to trust that the domain name registrar is decent and has fast systems. You have to trust that your web copywriter and web designer know what they are doing. You have to trust that your web host is...

Batman and Robin. Thelma and Louise. Han Solo and Chewbacca. Patsy and Edina. Bert and Ernie. Sometimes you just need a partner to get great things done. When you build a website, you need the dynamic duo of a domain name and web hosting working together to create...

Websites that are slower than a toddler being told it is bedtime cost businesses clients and money. A recent page speed report by Unbounce showed that nearly 70% of consumers say website load time affects their willingness to buy. So, what’s an acceptable web page load time?

The number one cause of slow loading websites is fat, uncompressed images. In a previous article, I talked about ways you can compress images to still make them look the same, but not be as heavy. This is great when you are the only person looking after your website...

WordPress Gutenberg has dropped this morning - 7th December Australian time. We flagged it was coming in our post Gutenberg is Coming: What You Need to Do to Prepare. Now that it has dropped, we have filmed a quick walkthrough of what you will see when you...

If you have had your website for a few years, you tend not to pop in and visit it all that often. It’s a bit like a distant relative. You know that they’re there, and hope that everything is fine, but unless they make the front page of the local paper for breaking out of a nursing home to run away and become a groupie with Justin Bieber, you don’t think much else about it. However, ignoring your website does have a downside when technology changes and something breaks on your site.

Many small business owners like adding YouTube videos to their websites or blogs. Videos are great for engagement and are a fantastic way to share information and connect with your audience. The problem comes when the lovely YouTube video that you embedded into your site ends, and your potential clients are shown a stack of “related videos” as the final screen.

Changes to website code rarely make headlines and aren’t something that I normally talk about on my blog as they are more effective than Stilnox in inducing slumber. Website code is generally created by raging introverts fuelled by energy drinks using liquid cooled computers in darkened rooms. It is not inherently sexy or newsworthy, except when an icy blizzard of code is bearing down on small business websites, and my businesses need to know what is about to hit them.

WordPress powers 31.9% of all websites across the internet, owning nearly 60% of all the content management system websites. Over 600 new WordPress websites are launched each day across the world compared to just 170 per day for Squarespace. And yet, most business owners think that their WordPress website just is an elegant digital brochure sitting in a virtual rack that promotes their business for them when no one in the business is looking.

One of the more challenging questions both small and large businesses face is whether to display their phone number on their website, and if so, which number should they use. Why you don’t want to include your phone number on your website There are a multitude of...

This article first appeared at the GoDaddy blog. If you run a small business website, data security is often the last thing you think about. After all, don’t hackers just target the big end of town? Here’s the bad news. Hackers actively target small business websites...

Humans always search for absolute meaning in life. However, at times we find that “everything is relative”, often to our frustration. Absolute vs relative take on a whole new meaning when we talk about websites, and the difference between the two can cause links to...

This post first appeared at the GoDaddy blog. 3 rules on finding the perfect domain name There is a science to choosing domain names. Read on for the basics. Keep it short and easy-to-spell. Make it memorable. Use the right domain name extension. Before we dive into...

This is part 2 in a two-part series about GDPR Compliance. One of the things I recently did to get my small business ready for GDPR was revise my privacy policy and site terms.

In Australia, certain small businesses with an annual turnover of less than $3million, already need legally compliant privacy policies in place and displayed on their websites.

For the past fortnight, your inbox has probably been stuffed fuller than a toddler’s cheeks with unsupervised lollies around, with emails telling you how committed the email sender is to your privacy, and please take a look at their new revised privacy policy terms.