Websites have changed drastically since the birth of the first website in 1989. Early websites were nothing more than online storage systems that evolved into online business cards and eventually evolved into an extension of a business. In order to serve as a viable marketing tool today, a website must meet specific criteria. Aside from the obvious factors such as being mobile responsive, user friendly, and search engine optimized a business website must also achieve the following five goals:

1. Tell a Good Story

   What makes you different than your competitors and why should a potential customer choose your company? Your website is an extension of your company tasked with achieving the same sales and marketing goals. Tell your story and tell it well.

2. Educate and Inform

   Your content should answer all the questions that a visitor might have about your products and services so that they are able to make an informed purchasing decision.

3. Flaunt Your Stuff

   Put your services and products in the best light possible. Use videos, great photography, and well-written content to showcase your goods.

4. Wow your Audience with an Interactive Experience

   Incorporate social media and actively blog. It’s important to leave visitors wanting more so that they will return again.

5. Reflect your Brand – be Recognizable & Memorable

   The theme of your website should be consistent with the overall brand of your company. Stay away from generic out-of-box websites that represent any brand USA. Customization and personalization go a long way.

I gave my own website and branding had a little makeover during the blizzard that hit New England this past week. A website is a window into a business and it is important to keep it up to date in terms of technology, information, and graphics for a number of reasons.

1. Fresh material keeps visitors coming back for more. Give potential customers a reason to come back by regularly post new content and updating images.
2. Keep up with the Jones in terms of SEO. Like everything in technology, SEO is continuously changing. Some of the older SEO techniques do not work as well as they once did especially when competing against today’s equipment.
3. Social Media Inclusiveness. Don’t be a social media outcast. Like it or not, social media platforms are here to stay and they are a powerful marketing tool. The platforms should be integrated into your website so that you can begin building online relationships.
4. Mobile Compatibility. While it isn’t necessary to have a mobile website, it is imperative that your site be mobile compatible and/or responsive. More people are shopping the net than ever before and their mobile experience cannot be discounted as unimportant.
5. Credibility. An outdated website or a website with errors affects how potential clients perceive your business. A competitor is only a click away.

So take a look in the mirror. If what you are violating any of the above website musts then a makeover should be on your 2015 to-do list.

Hackers and spammers work tirelessly at their craft and they don’t do it for kicks.

WordPress websites are a favorite target of hackers and their intentions are not honorable. There’s big money in the business of hacking – primarily they want to steal from you, bombard you with adware and spam or collect intellectual information. If you have been hacked you are in good company. This month alone JPMorgan Chase, Staples, the White House, and my client, Martin Cutler MD, were hacked by cybercriminals. Here are four simple steps that you can take to avoid being victimized.

CHANGE LOGIN/PASSWORD

Typically hackers work like an amateur burglar who walks down a hallway testing doorknobs until they find one that opens. To avoid this type of break-in be sure that you are not using the default ‘admin’ as the username and come up with a strong password.

UPDATE WORDPRESS, PLUG-INS & THEMES

Just as it is important to keep your antivirus software up-to-date on your computer, it is important for business owners to protect their CMS platform by regularly updating plug-ins, themes & Word Press when updates are available.

STOP SPAMMERS PLUGIN
Stop Spammers is an aggressive spam plugin that stops spam registrations, logins, and comments using multiple checks. It looks for typical spammer bad behaviors and blocks those. I have disabled comments altogether on many websites because owners cannot deal with the high level of spam. This plugin has terrific reviews and works wonders.

BACKUP

It is important to back up your database regularly – whether you do it manually or install a plugin to do it for you. Backup buddy will back up your entire WordPress blog. Unlike free plugin’s which will only backup your database, backup buddy export your database with images, files, and whatever you have in your blog’s content folder. Don’t wait until it is too late!

I recently purchased a new Canon Rebel T5i for both personal and professional use. While I encourage business owners to hire a professional photographer for headshots and photos of their office space, I often need to fill in the blanks with stock photos and it can be a painful process. Often times after an inordinate amount of time searching for the right image, I fight the urge to settle for a mediocre choice I remind myself that an image can make or break the final product. Here are three questions to ask yourself as you rifle through the glut of stock photos on the internet.

Be Emotionally Real:

Photos of executives jumping up and down or posed shots of coworkers grinning at one another are not believable. Regardless of the emotion is that you intend to capture be sure that there is at least a hint of authenticity.

Make the setting believable:

Many staged office settings show blank computer screens, white walls, and workers with matching coffee cups. These unrealistic scenes lack conviction.

Do the people look real?

The people in the pictures must look like they belong in the scene. If the women in the photo are all wearing identical stilettos shoes for example the credibility of the photo may affect the brand itself.

Long-tail keywords are those three and four keyword phrases that are very specific to what you are selling. Customers who know what they want will be specific with the search phrase. Statistics show that the conversion rate to sales is far greater with long-tail keywords than with general generic searches. Generic searches are more consistent with a customer who is doing initial research and shopping around. Here are a few examples of long-tailed keyword phrases.

• Website Designer North of Boston
• Social Media Marketing Boston North
• Logo Design North Shore Boston

The two most important reasons to use long-tail keyword phrases in your page titles and content is because:

1. The long-tail keywords are much easier for Google to rank
2. People who search by using long-tail keywords are far more likely to become buyers!

I’m often asked about the difference between a mobile website and a responsive website. A mobile website is designed to function exclusively on a mobile device – typically a smartphone. The site runs parallel to a desktop site meaning that a business must have two sites for twice the investment. On the other hand, a responsive website adjusts itself to provide an optimal viewing experience across a wide range of devices and browsers.

I can think of a few good reasons why a business might invest in two websites, such as a restaurant site, where desktop users will likely want to see the menu and mobile users will likely want directions to the business. Mobile sites are typically offering something specific as opposed to an overall experience. For most small businesses, the one-size-fits-all mentality of responsive design is the more cost-effective and efficient approach. Regardless of whether or not a business launches two sites, it is imperative today that all websites be responsive.

What’s new on the Internet? On January 29 Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) delegated 100 new generic top-level domains (gTLD) and that is only the beginning. Among the extensions currently available for purchase are .singles, .coffee, .blackfriday and .beer among a multitude of others.

This move represents the biggest change to the internet since the first set of TLD’s (.com, .org, .net, and .gov) were introduced back in 1984 and the industry anticipates a bit of chaos as a result and it could initiate a return of the wild, wild, west days on the WWW!

The new extensions may well change the way businesses and consumers use the internet and the way brands are marketed. There is a lot of concern from large businesses such as Coca Cola, Microsoft, and P&G who bargaining with Icann for limited preventative registration in order to protect their trademarks.

The internet has become an ultra-competitive playing field that intimates many business owners. The idea of trying to keep up with social media superstars is overwhelming at best. Bloggers are publishing half a million posts every day, there are just as many tweets sent and e-commerce sales now surpass $200 billion annually.

Like my mother always told me, there will always be someone prettier, richer, and skinnier than you. Accept the fact that there will always be a better blog, a sleeker website, and a wittier FaceBook post than yours and carry on. Keep your head and focus on how you can use digital technology to better your business and help your customers. You do not have to be the biggest and best brand on the web you simply have to recognize who your audience is, how you can improve for the benefit of your customers, and then leverage the necessary technology in order to get their attention.