Web Design
Should I Have a Website?
If you have a business, you MUST have a website. No ifs, ands, or buts.
How many people shop online in the U.S.? Nowadays, you can sell almost anything over the internet. People are buying everything from books to computers to cars to real estate to jet airplanes to you name it. If you can imagine it, someone will find a way to sell it online.
“You should have a presence on the web so that existing customers, potential customers, employees, business partners and even investors can find out more about your business and the products and services that you offer.”
In order to be taken seriously, you must have a professional-looking website. Many consumers now search for information online before making a purchase, your site may be the first chance you have at making a good impression on a potential buyer. If your site looks like it was designed by an amateur, your chance at making a good first impression will be gone forever.
The good news about the internet is that it has leveled the playing field when it comes to competing with large companies. Don’t forget that you only get one shot at making a good first impression.
With a well-designed website, your small company can project the image of a much larger operation. However, the opposite is also true. Some big company websites are badly designed and hard to navigate which makes them lose credibility and above all… professionalism.
When it comes to benefiting from a website, size does not matter. You can be a 1-man show or a 25,000-employee corporation; if you don’t have a website, you lose business to other companies that do. Here’s something to keep in mind: It’s actually better to have no website than to have one that makes your business look bad. Your website represents your business. It either says, “We take our business so seriously that we have created this wonderful site for our customers,” or it screams, “Hey, look, I let my 16-year-old nephew design my site. Good luck finding anything.”
Your website is a very important part of your business. Make sure you treat it as such, and hire a professional agency to create your website.
At Local Digital Works, we have a team of webmasters and SEO professionals that get involved in the creation of the websites, to make sure they are SEO-friendly and be found by search engines.
your website should be your number one sales person
Why Local Businesses Need Websites in 2023
Websites give customers easy access to a business’ products and services. However, nearly 1 out of 3 businesses still do not have a website, which is hard to believe considering that more than 75% of shoppers visit a business website before their physical location. The good news is that a lot of small businesses plan to have a website in 2023.
DO YOU ACTUALLY NEED A Website IN 2023?
Tech Radar – January, 2023
one website for every device
Responsive Web Design: “It’s a Must”
Over 60% of website traffic comes from mobile devices, and with the increasing use of smartphones and tablets, businesses must have a website that is not only mobile-friendly but consistent and user-friendly across all devices, meaning that the content of the website will adapt to the size of the different devices that are available.
By having a Responsive Web Design (RWD), it provides your visitors a better user experience, support search engine optimization goals, save your business time and money in the long run, and will give your website a competitive advantage over other websites that are not responsive.
for your website to go live, you need…
Hosting Services
Shared Web Hosting Service
Cloud Based Web Hosting
Virtual Private Server (VPS)
Dedicated Web Server
Courtesy of HostingAdvice.com
Business owners know they need a website. Even if you’re a two-man operation, you’re not in sales, per se, or you only cater to locals, you still need a virtual storefront to bolster the success of your business physical location. Having a website means exposure to a broader pool of potential customers or clients; it helps you establish credibility, and people trust businesses with an online presence other than a Facebook page and a Yelp listing.
The follow-up to that tip is the often understated importance of keeping your website online consistently once you’ve built it. While your brick-and-mortar may have routine 9-to-5 hours of operation, your virtual store is open for business 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year (no holidays off).
Anything short of 100% not only means a drop in traffic but revenue loss as well. You wouldn’t randomly close your doors during peak business hours, would you? Downtime costs you, so web hosting providers offer uptime guarantees to provide assurance of their service and reliability.
What is Uptime?
Uptime is the amount of time that a server has stayed up and running. This is usually listed as a percentage, like “99.9% uptime.” … If a hosting provider has a high uptime percentage, then that means that their servers stay up and running and so any site you host with them should stay up and running too.
Uptime Guarantee Definition & Downtime Calculator
Bringing it back to the basics, uptime is the amount of time your website is online and accessible to the public. Naturally, you want this rate as close to 100% as possible. As such, hosting providers often offer an uptime guarantee to distinguish their service from that of their competitors.
An uptime guarantee is your web host’s assurance your site will be online a certain percentage of a year. You can calculate how much cumulative downtime to expect for your site given a certain uptime rate, or see the highlights below. It’s generally understood that 99.9% uptime is a hosting industry standard, whereas five nines or better (99.999% and up) is the ideal.
- 99.9% uptime means your website may be down for a total of 8 hours, 45 minutes, and 57 seconds each year.
- 99.99% uptime means your website may be down for a total of 52 minutes and 35.7 seconds each year.
- 99.999% uptime means your website may be down for a total of 5 minutes and 15.6 seconds each year.
- 100% uptime means your website is always online (be sure to read any SLA fine print.)
Some hosts offer a service-level agreement (SLA) with their promise of availability. In short, an SLA commits the host to a refund should a customer experience downtime in excess of the uptime guarantee. An SLA typically defines a minimum outage period to give the host time to detect the error, and then a host may credit you a certain percentage of your monthly fees for a month in which you experience more downtime than normal.
ensure the security of your website with an ssl certificate
Why You Need an SSL Certificate
If your website doesn’t collect sensitive information, like credit cards or social security numbers, you may not have needed an SSL Certificate. However, with the new browser notices, it’s now very important that every website has an SSL Certificate.
Transferring data in plain-text or in non-encrypted format can be intercepted, compromised and stolen! Many transactions done online involve submitting personal information such as social security numbers, credit card information, usernames and passwords. Cybercriminals who intercept unencrypted communications will gain full access to this data and can use it for fraudulent purchases.
An SSL certificate is what makes a website trusted, as it makes people confident enough to provide sensitive and private information online. Organizations must use an SSL certificate to secure their site if they wish to take online payments or expect their visitors to submit confidential information. Besides building trust and security into your website, SSL certificates also help with SEO efforts now that Google is providing a rankings boost for pages that are served over https (“s” stands for security) instead of http.
Over half of the websites use an SSL Certificate to encrypt their traffic. If you use Chrome as your browser, you probably have noticed the ‘Not Secure’ label in the location bar, and when you click on it, it reads as follows: “Your critical connection to this site is not secure.“ You should not enter any sensitive information on this site (for example, passwords, or credit cards), because it could be stolen by attackers.”
Google HTTPS Ranking can no longer be ignored.
Since July, 2018 to be exact, with the release of Chrome 68, Non-HTTPS sites are now labeled as “Not Secure”. Technically, this doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with your site, but visitors may be confused by the label. Furthermore, this has the potential to directly affect the credibility of your website. Google wants a more secure web and they encourage website owners to switch to HTTPS, also known as SSL.
Data from Google Chrome usage shows that more than 80% of Chrome users are visiting HTTPS-enabled websites, which indicates that browsing via HTTPS is practically the norm.
At Local Digital Works, we promote security and safety when navigating online. If your website is not secure, now is the time to get an SSL Certificate. Have it done through us for just $54/yr. + a $25 installation fee. Email us or call us at 703-408-1411 to have your website secure within 24-48 hours.
Featured Clients
Get a New Website or Redesign Your Site for 2023
A website will effectively promote your products and/or services so you can sell to more clients. Yet, having just a website is not enough. It needs to look professional, and easy to navigate to make a great first impression.
It is very important to understand that “redesign” or “modernize” doesn’t mean you need to change your content, branding, or design elements. In fact, website modernization can just mean making functional updates to help your website work better and assist you in reaching your marketing goals.
If you’re not sure whether your current website needs a facelift? Here are 11 reasons why you should update your website this year.
If you’re sure that your website needs revamping, then don’t wait any longer and click the button below…