Good Time Web Design

19 Articles

Man using a smartphone
SEO

When someone searches for a plumber, cafe or accountant nearby, Google often shows a map with a short list of businesses. Those listings come from Google Business Profile. For many local businesses that small panel brings in as many calls as the website itself. Getting it set up properly is one of the simplest local search jobs you can do.

The good news is that Google publishes clear guidance on how profiles work and how local results are ranked. You cannot pay your way into the map results. You can make sure your profile is accurate, verified and kept up to date. This article walks through the main steps using Google’s own help pages.

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Laptop on a desk
Email Marketing

You can write a great newsletter and still watch it land in the spam folder. Often the problem has nothing to do with the words. It sits in a few lines of text in your domain settings that most business owners never look at. Those lines tell inbox providers that your emails really come from you.

The three standards are called SPF, DKIM and DMARC. They sound technical, and the setup does involve your domain’s DNS records. The ideas behind them are simple though. This guide explains what each one does and why big providers like Gmail now expect them.

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Dark Mode 2.0: The Next Evolution of User-Friendly Design
Web Design

It’s odd to think that something as easy as a colour scheme could impact people’s Internet experience.

Yet here we are – we scroll, swipe and click through websites that reflect a darker side of the world than we see in daylight.

Dark mode isn’t brand new. It has existed for years – slowly changing the way people read, browse, and think about digital design. However, there seems to be another shift occurring.

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How Web Design Psychology Influences Your Buying Decisions Online
Web Design

If you have ever bought anything online, you might be under the impression that the decision to buy was all down to you, however, it is almost certain that web designers played a part in your decision too. Now, you might be thinking “Nonsense” because you do not know any web designers or are certain that it was purely your desire for a product that led you to purchase it, but we are here to tell you that your decision was influenced, to some extent, by outside forces.

By “outside forces” we are not suggesting that you were brainwashed by some evil force, nor that you did not choose whatever you bought of your own free will. However, it is also the case that whenever websites are designed, especially those that want those visiting to make a decision to buy or at least take some form of action, some of the design elements of that website were chosen for how they play a role in human psychology.

Sparking Emotions

To many outsiders, website designs are the way they are due to choices made about appearance, colours, and layout. To some extent they are, but deeper than that, many elements that appear on websites follow well-established design psychology principles. As such, they are present in a website’s design to elicit psychological responses from those who visit that website.

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7 Mistakes To Avoid When Choosing Web Hosting
Web Hosting

If you are looking for a web hosting service for your business’s website it is a decision that warrants careful consideration. Your website is what those online will visit research and interact with your business, so if your website is compromised due to inferior hoisting, it is going to have negative consequences.

To avoid those negatives, choosing the right web hosting company is imperative, and that can be achieved if you avoid making one or more of the mistakes we have outlined below.

Choosing The Cheapest Option

Choosing something based purely on price often ends up in disappointment, but when it comes to hosting your website, it can be disastrous. There are many ways in which you can reduce costs for your business but trying to do so with your web hosting is not the way to do it. Remember how important your website is to your business and regard your web hosting as an investment in its success, rather than a cost

Selecting A Hosting Plan That Is Unsuitable For Your Needs

As well as choosing a web hosting company you also need to select a web hosting plan. The right way is to assess the needs of your business and choose accordingly. The mistake occurs when you either choose a plan that does not provide sufficient resources and functionality for your needs or conversely, you choose hosting that is beyond what you need and you do not have the technical knowledge needed to configure and manage it.

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Web Design

Given the huge role that the internet plays in our lives, all dentists should hopefully have realised by now that their dental practice needs to have its own website. Now assuming that your skills and experience relate to dental matters rather than web design, it is a safe bet that you are going to have to hire someone to build you that website.

That then brings us to the question of where to find a reputable web designer, and it is a process that needs to be done with care. Bear in mind your website is the first thing people who find you online are going to see, so you want that first impression to be a good one.

The first place many people start their search for a website designer and developer is to ask those that they know such as friends, family, and business associates. As a dentist, you could even ask those patients whom you know have websites themselves.

Word of mouth recommendations are a great way to discover the experience the person who tells you about a website designer had when they hired them. However, do not just rely on their word. Check out the website that was built for them, and if you have can, ascertain the name of the web designer’s own website, and visit it to see if there are reviews and references.

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Mobile Responsiveness
Web Design

If you know anything about SEO, you will know that updates to the Google rankings algorithms over the past few years have led to an increased focus on mobile-friendly content. A huge percentage of the world’s internet users now browse from smartphones and other mobile devices, which means that it’s important to make sure that your website is accessible to them.

The best way to do this is by creating a mobile responsive website which is versatile and able to adapt to different devices. In short, SEO and mobile responsiveness are closely linked, because websites which aren’t optimised for mobile browsers tend to be penalised by the search engines.

With this in mind, I’ve covered a few of the most important questions people have about mobile optimisation and SEO.

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Rank Number One on Google
Web Design

In short, yes – of course it’s possible to rank number one on Google. However, doing so will take a lot of work optimising your SEO strategy to make sure that you’re doing things better than your competitors.

Similarly, you need to choose your number one targets carefully. There’s no point trying to rank at the top for highly competitive keywords like “lawyer”, because you will have to spend a small fortune to get there.

Rather, if you run a lawyers business in location X, you might focus on keywords like “lawyer in location X”. As you can imagine, phrases like this are much less competitive.

What Do I Need To Do If I Want To Rank Number One On Google?

To put things simply, if you want to rank number on for a certain keyword or phrase, you need to be doing things better than your competitors. You will have to put a lot of work into your SEO, and you will have to make sure that your content is very well written and highly optimised.

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Law Firm Website
Web Design

If you’re the owner or manager of a lawyer’s office, you would have had to make a lot of changes to your marketing strategy over the past decade or so. In the modern world, the vast majority of marketing is done online and via other digital streams – like TV or radio – which means that you need to get familiar with different online marketing techniques.

One of the best ways to market your law firm online is by creating and promoting a website. One of the best ways to promote your website and gain a larger audience is to create regular blog articles that provide clear, useful information. Make sure that your blog posts are written well and shared on your social networks is also important.

To expand on this further, here are our top 3 reasons why you should write a regular blog for your law firm website:

  1. A well written article will improve your SEO score:

When it comes to creating and running a small business website, one of the most important things is making sure that you appear high in the search engine rankings. This means that you need to improve your SEO score for relevant keywords.

One of the best ways to do this is to write high-quality blog articles that include the keywords that you want to rank for. Make sure that you do some keyword research before you start writing, and make sure that your content provides value to your readers, otherwise it won’t be received as well.

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Web Design
Web Design

A lot of businesses are paying top dollar to get work on their web design done nowadays, and all those who do not feel like they should spend so much on this are wondering why web design is so important for them. Is it not enough that they have a good website that functions well enough? Does what it looks like really matter?

Well, that is not how things work in the online realm. If you ask online marketers, functionality is a very good concern that you have but the web design for your website is one of the foremost aspects of your company’s online presence. We’re not saying you should bring yourself to the brink of bankruptcy in order to get good web design done, you just need to get the kind of web design done that works for your business in the current landscape.

Here is a look at some of the reasons why web design is important.

First Impressions

Your website is the portal through which your potential customers can interact with your business online. It’s the face of the business and you need to make a really good impression on your customers the first time they come to you.

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SEO Done Right
SEO

The world of digital marketing involves several key factors that make it possible for businesses to increase their chances of success by leveraging the power of the internet to reach out to people who are potential customers. When people are looking for solutions to their problems, they go online and search for solutions. They search for them on the internet using search engines like the internet giant Google. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the strategy used by businesses to make sure that information about their business show among the top results when people are looking for something related to their business.

SEO is not a piece of cake to pull off nor is it a magical elixir that will suddenly drive all the internet traffic to your website. It takes time to come into effect but there is a way to go about your SEO. Here are a few steps to get your SEO done right.

  1. Keyword Research

It’s all about targeting the right keywords. This is your keyword strategy to outrank your competition. Remember, SEO does not mean that you just pick up the most popular keywords and start to chock your content full of them. If you think that there’s something that you feel people will type in when searching for a business like yours, type it in and see what results Google shows you. When you type in less common and more specific phrases and keywords more closely related to your business, you will find that the search results fare better in terms of your business, which also pops up among the relevant search results. Also, make use of the keywords that your competitors use to rank high. Stealing some of your competitors’ traffic isn’t a bad thing. It works. Use it.

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ecommerce
eCommerce, Web Design

If you are looking to start a business where you will be selling products through the Internet, you are going to be one of the millions of people who have made careers in the world of what is now known as e-commerce.

What is Ecommerce?

The term e-commerce can essentially be defined as the activity of buying and selling products and/or services through online channels (i.e. the Internet). E-commerce first emerged in the 60s through electronic data interchange.

With the advent of the internet becoming more accessible around the world, the 90s and early 2000s saw a massive boom in the ecommerce industry with the likes of Amazon becoming giants after having started off from the founder’s garage back in ’95.

Over the years, the e-commerce industry has seen development with advancing technology taking the helm. With the rise of social media platforms like Facebook, mobile devices, and ever-increasing accessibility to the internet around the world, e-commerce has become an expansive field. Proper enterprise-level businesses now make up a strong portion of the e-commerce industry, and it is estimated that in four years’ time, e-commerce is going to make up for almost 20 per cent of all retail sales in the United States. With communications technology improving every passing day, the numbers are going to keep on increasing in the US and around the world as we move forward.

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Branding
Branding

When it comes to branding, there are several bad examples which you will see when you are online. You look at branding that is just not on point you can tell there’s something not on about it but when it actually comes to determining why bad branding is so bad, it is difficult to point it out.

A branding campaign, which is poor, results mostly from the fact that there haven’t been proper research efforts put into it. If you are looking to make your branding online a success so that your business can enjoy profit based on your brand’s popularity, here are the 3 tips that will cover how you can get your branding done right in 2018.

  1. Research Social Media

You will see plenty of examples of businesses that attempt to make use of all the social media platforms there are in existence in a bid to project their branding to the stratosphere. While the intent is noble and ambitious, it almost always turns out to be a big mistake especially when starting out. If you have a small company, most of the people you have working for you, and you yourself will be heavily preoccupied with the operational aspects of the business.

Managing several social media platform profiles with efficiency is not going to be difficult, it will be impossible. Your social media campaign is an important aspect of your branding and it should be done correctly. Research the different social media platforms and try to determine which one or two of them are best suited to portray the brand of your business. That’s how you start building a good online presence.

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WordPress Web Design
Web Design

WordPress is one of the internet’s premier content management systems and web design platforms. According to recent data, it now powers over a quarter of the internet, which speaks volumes about its versatility and ease of use.

If you are designing a new WordPress website, you need to take steps to optimise your site, both visually and behind the scenes. The following WordPress design tips and tricks should help you do this, and should help prevent any major problems in the future.

Do Your Research:

As a major website building and content management platform, online WordPress tutorials are everywhere. Before you start designing and building your website, spend a few hours watching videos and reading these tutorials.

While free tutorials are great, it can be worth paying for a premium subscription, especially if you plan on developing your website to become a major source of income. These are usually up to date with the latest versions of WordPress, and they cater to web developers of all levels of experience.

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Local SEO Tips
SEO

If you want to build a strong online presence using a small, local business website, search engine optimisation (SEO) is absolutely essential. Most small businesses in the modern world have some sort of online presence, but they definitely don’t get as much out of it as they possibly could.

Small business SEO is usually centred around local optimisation. For example, if you are a plumber in city X, you don’t care how many people from the rest of the country visit your website – you would rather a small number of relevant people saw your content. This means that you have to target your keywords and content to both your field and your area.

The SEO Company provide some of our top local SEO tips for small business owners include:

Use online business directories:

Backlinks to your website are a great way to increase your search engine ranking. One of the best ways to get high-quality backlinks is to post your business profile on a range of online business directories. Include your business details and services, and direct people to visit your website for more information. Check Slinky Directory for a great online business directory.

Use local keywords:

There is no point targeting highly competitive, general keywords if you are aiming to get local traffic to your website. Sure, they can be useful, and they can help increase your site’s authority in the eyes of search engine crawler bots, but they won’t help you drive relevant people to your website.

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Perfect Marketing Email
Email Marketing

Online marketing can be extremely competitive, and costs can prevent a lot of people from doing as much as they would like. However, there are a lot of ways that you can market your website or business without having to spend a lot of money. Some of these require a lot of work and social outreach, while others – like email marketing – require no more than the development of effective copy for your marketing emails from time to time.

Once you have developed a decent sized email list, you need to think about your email content. Writing a marketing email should be relatively easy, but it is also very easy to get it wrong. Below are our top 5 tips for writing the perfect marketing email.

  1. Make your message simple and scannable:

Most people receive a lot of emails every day. If you want to engage your readers, you need to make sure that your content is easily scannable, not too complex, and very simple and easy to understand. One of the best ways to do this is to make sure that you use subheadings which are clear and easy to follow. Limit the writing under each subheading to what is really necessary. You can also tweak your font, your text size, and your text colour to make your content more engaging and easier to follow.

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Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing

In the modern world, professional digital marketing and a strong digital presence are essential for almost every business, whether they operate online or offline. Different businesses are better suited to different types of digital marketing depending on who they are, what they do and what their marketing budget is.

Unfortunately (for them), small businesses don’t always have a lot of money to spend on digital marketing efforts. However, this doesn’t mean that they should ignore it, but that they should choose what sort of digital marketing they use carefully.

Some of the best things that small businesses can do when it comes to digital marketing include:

Build a website:

Although this may seem pretty self-explanatory, you would be amazed at how many small businesses don’t think they need a website. If you want to be successful in the online space, you do! A strong social media presence is not enough, and you need to do more than just share your business name on different online business registries. The benefits of having a decent website include:

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Design Your Website
Web Design

Modern business is rarely successful without at least some sort of online presence. The best way to build an online presence is through an effective website which is customised and tailored to your business and its needs. However, if you are a small business with a low budget, website design and development can seem like a very daunting prospect.

Luckily for you, it absolutely doesn’t need to be. Content management systems and website design platforms like WordPress have made it possible for anyone with an internet connection and a bit of time to build their own website.

Our top four reasons why you should use WordPress to design your new website include:

  1. It Is Free:

If you can’t afford to spend money on a professional web developer, then you probably don’t want to spend a lot of money (along with your time commitments) to build a website yourself. One of the things which make WordPress so popular is the fact that it is absolutely and completely free. There are no hidden costs, and – taking into account costs like domain registration and hosting fees – it is possible to set up a basic website for around a hundred dollars if you do everything yourself.

  1. It Is Simple and Popular:

WordPress is designed to be able to be used by anyone with a little bit of technical experience. Absolutely no coding experience is necessary, which means that you don’t have to be any sort of computer developer or professional website designer to use it.

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Web Design Best Practices
Web Design

WordPress has become the most popular web design platform and content management system in the world. It allows people with little to no web developer experience or knowledge to build their own websites from scratch at very low costs.

Although it is very simple to build cheap websites from scratch, building good cheap websites from scratch is a whole different matter. There are a number of best practices that you should follow when designing a new WordPress website to make sure that you get the most of your site, including the following:

Make Sure That Your Make Your Site Simple And Easy To Navigate:

When it comes to the internet, simplicity and ease of navigation are an absolute must. People in the modern world are lazy – they don’t want to and/or can’t afford to spend their time trying to navigate a complicated website. If your site is too complicated, they will simply exit it, head back to their favourite search engine, and will choose the next most relevant search result.

Keep your new website simple by putting important information and links in obvious places. Make sure that all links are responsive and that there are no broken links. Keep irrelevant links and information to a minimum, and if you must include it, put it in a back corner or somewhere on your site rather than on the front page.

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