Why do I need a website?
Think about why you want a website (not just because everyone else has one) and then think about what you want to achieve from it. Everyone wants to sell products or services and inform their customer and attract new ones, but other than these reasons why do you want a website?

The answer to this question will inform all your choices about how to develop your website. Always refer back to this when making every decision, having your target audience in mind.

An example
I would like a website to be able to display my finished designs and it needs to let people sign-up for my newsletter.

Q: What colour should my website be?
A: Who is my target audience and how can I appeal to them through my choice in colour?

A good plan to a website that succeeds is broken down into four parts:

1. Website Research
2. Website Build
3. Planning
4. Marketing

1. Website research

• Your target audience
• Your competitors
• Search engine marketing (SEO)

Before you start any business or even begin to think about your website, take a look at your target audience, your competitors and this is the time to be thinking about your search engine optimisation. Any keywords relevant to your industry and service should feature in the written content of your website.

2. Website build

• Navigation
• Content
• Structure (map/tree)

The website structure form the outline build of your website, this includes your navigation (how many pages to feature on your website). A tree or spider diagram can be drawn up to map out all the pages on your website. Your website content needs to be identified, from text to images and other media such as video.

3. Planning

• Design
• Functionality
• Specific requirements

People often make the mistake of starting with the design and shifting the content around to match. A better way is to collate all your content, develop the structure then think about the design when you know of everything that needs to be included. Functionality is anything that has a function for example email newsletter sign-up or a contact form. Specific requirements covers anything that isn’t strictly off-the-shelf e.g. a message board or a booking facility.

4. Marketing

• Publish
• Promote
• Measure your success

You publish your website and promote it through networking, word of mouth, on your business card, you direct people to it through emails but how do you know what content people are looking at and where they are spending their time? We install Google Analytics on every website we build, it is a FREE tool from Google and helps you find out much more than you will ever need to know!

Have you found any useful tools that could help others, plan, organise or build their website? Share your finds here:

So what can we expect from Google as they move forward? Earlier on in the year Google held its annual I/O developers conference and announced some exciting changes and developments.
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• Google Assistant will have an update that makes having a conversation with the app much more natural. It will also have the capacity to understand multiple questions at once.
• There will be more AI features for Google Photos and powerful tools to edit and organise your photos as Google strives to become the home for all your photos.
• Google Assistant is coming to Google Maps. In order to better personalise the user experience with Google Maps, the new AI features will help provide better recommendations for local places.
• AI is also coming to Google News which will let users read about the news they actually have an interest in and understand the whole story.
• Gmail Smart Compose is a new addition which sees AI suggesting ways to finish sentences as they are being written.
• Google Duplex is the name given by Google for the new technology resulting from the research and development into “natural language, deep learning and text-to-speech”. The aim of this technology is to create computers that sound and behave like humans during interactions.
• Dashboard to help users find the right balance. In an attempt to help users moderate their use of technology Google have designed features that will help identify how much time they are spending on their device (and on which parts), a feature that will put the device to sleep and in silence mode when it is placed face down and a “Wind Down Mode” feature that will put the device on hold and dim the front of the device at a time set by the user.

Here are 7 free Google tools you should make sure you have on your device:

1. Google Calendar is a free, time-management web app. It allows you to create, edit and share events as well as  many other time saving functions
2. Google Docs this free app lets users create, edit and share all manner of documents, from invoices to resumes.
3. Google Analytics is a free app that allows you to analyse the data from your business and give you a better understanding of your customers.
4. Gmail Using Gmail as your email client for your domain specific email address is easy and free. Find out how here >
5. Google Drive is a cloud storage app, giving you 15GB of free storage space.
6. Blogger is a free publishing platform which lets users easily upload their content to their blog via email and other apps. It’s also integrated with other Google apps such as Analytics giving the user access to valuable information about their audience.
7. Google Voice is an internet based app which allows you use one phone number and forward it to multiple phones. This means as you move, change jobs etc your phone number stays the same for your contacts.

So, the future is looking great for Google and the end of Google+ seems to have been a mere blip for this innovative company. AI is a major development which sees Google moving from strength to strength.

For more information and downloads to the Google apps click here >

We all know how fast the technological world moves, there’s always a new gadget/ phone/ must have gizmo on the horizon and it almost makes your head spin trying to keep up with it all. But it’s important to remember to ensure your website can cope with these changes.

Your website needs to be accessible on all the devices, especially mobile phones. Our mobile phones are no longer just for making calls and are now an important asset for our everyday lives.

This doesn’t have to be a big headache for you, although if you don’t keep up with your website maintenance it can get more tricky! Here are some top tips to help make sure your website is mobile friendly:

1. Check how Google views your website Use this Google Mobile Friendly Test page to see if your web page is mobile friendly.
2. Don’t build a second website specifically for mobile Google does not like duplicate content so a second website with the same content could affect your Google ranking.
3. Test your website on all market-leading phones or tablets don’t assume that because your site works fine on your iPhone that it also works on an android too.
4. Make sure all the important content is above the fold. This is where first impressions count. You want to make sure your visitors see full images and get the whole message or they might not read on.
5. Make sure text is readable. Users don’t want to have to zoom in to read the content on your site. Consider a larger font size if the content is difficult to read on mobile devices.
6. Use high resolution images If you want your website to look professional the last thing you need is for the images to appear blurry or pixelated when viewed on a high resolution device.
7. Responsive Web Design is where your website is designed in a way that allows you to change the layout so it will automatically adapt to a mobile device. This means it won’t matter what device your website is viewed on as it will always adjust to the correct resolution and size.

What steps have you taken to ensure your website is working well on all mobile devices?

• What does http mean? http (HyperText Transfer Protocol) is basically the protocol computers use to transfer information that form a website.
• What does https mean? Https in simple terms is the secure version of http, the ‘S’ standing for secure. It means that all the communications between your browser and the website are encrypted. This is especially important when dealing with ecommerce or submitting contact forms for example.
• July 2018 is when Google Chrome will start warning users when they visit a site that is not secure (http). It is estimated that around 50% of internet users have Chrome as their browser so the effect of these messages could be massive.
• How will this affect your business? If you don’t change your website protocol to https your business could suffer as a result.  Visitors could be put off by a security message popping up when they visit your website and this could in turn lead to reduced site traffic, a fall in online sales, reduced number of enquiries etc.
• Why does Google want businesses to change to https? https will protect your site and it’s users and uphold the integrity of your website. Google are working hard to ensure everyone has a safer online experience.
• Do you need to upgrade your site to https? It makes sense to think about upgrading to https if your site is currently http especially If you have a contact form or any data is transmitted through your website. Google Chrome can start to have an impact on your website and business from July.

Whether you choose to change your site to https is obviously a decision for you and your business. Ultimately Google set the rules and want to help us be more secure in our online activities. In the long run it will pay dividend to follow these rules to get the best results for your business. And given that such large number of users will be accessing your site via Google Chrome.

If your website is hosted by Creative Remedy on a CMS system, be sure to contact Sara for a chat about making your website secure.