Tracing the root cause of a technical glitch can be fiendishly complex. Here’s why. A client asked us to fix a glitch with their website’s translation function. Our mission to diagnose and cure the problem illustrates how the complexity of the web makes it difficult to gauge the scope of a solution in advance. We […]
Category: Web Development
Key things to know about PPC keywords.
In order to get the word out about your business, you need to use certain organic keywords to attract the attention of Google and everybody else. But the keywords you use for Pay Per Click campaigns (e.g. Google Ads) could be different from the ones you use for organic search engine optimization (SEO). Below, we […]
Why we diagnose websites before fixing them
It sounds obvious—of course we should diagnose first. But many new clients—fed up with their sites—ask us to skip that part because they can just tell us what’s wrong. Here’s why that’s a bad idea. Maybe a product image isn’t showing correctly, or a bunch of links lead to 404 pages. We understand the urgency—but […]
California Consumer Privacy Act Begins in January
This January, the California Consumer Privacy Act will restrict how companies collect and use data. RLM has a solution to help you stay safely in compliance. CONSUMERS ARE INCREASINGLY CONCERNED AND DISTRUSTFUL ABOUT THE COLLECTION AND MANAGEMENT OF THEIR PERSONAL DATA ON THE INTERNET. After headlines about Target, Equifax, Capital One, Marriott, Yahoo, eBay, Heartland […]
5 things to improve your website’s UX in the age of zero attention span.
Website owners must continually improve their user experience by making everything easier, faster, and more rewarding—because people are really impatient. Indeed, a study determined that goldfish can pay attention longer than humans. (No details on the experiment, but if it involved measuring how long a person could focus on a flake of fish food, it […]
Things website owners should know about malware. (And a few notes on those weird names.)
Hackers have devised any number of ways to get their digital destroyers to find cracks in websites. Below we take an illuminating overview of malware, including a few observations on those weird names. Viruses and malware are here to stay. We recently notified our website hosting customers that we were installing crucial updates on their […]
4 Trends that are Affecting Business Planning and Investment in Websites: Trend #4: Competitive Spend is Increasing
Businesses are investing more to acquire page rank and ad position – because it works. In our previous articles in this series, we cited 3 important contributors to the need to budget for ongoing website maintenance and marketing: increased security requirements, expanding complexity in website structure, and rapidly evolving SEO. Each of those factors demand […]
4 Trends that are Affecting Business Planning and Investment in Websites: Trend #3 – SEO is Harder
The secret to SEO is that there is no secret. Doing it well means doing many things well—consistently. “I used to outrank all of my competitors,” a prospective client told us. “And now I’m barely on page one. I don’t know what happened.” He wanted a new website, and he wanted it to appear at […]
4 Trends that are Affecting Business Planning and Investment in Websites Trend #2 – More Features, Less Hassle
Your customers expect your site to be a breeze. Here’s how to deliver. Designers and developers are always cramming new features into their sites as bandwidth gets cheaper and devices more powerful. Each feature is an improvement (at least in theory)— but a truckload of improvements can destroy your site’s user experience. We get spoiled […]
4 Trends that are Affecting Business Planning and Investment in Websites Trend #1: Security
Small businesses are realizing that hackers aren’t snobs about who they attack. They just want in. And they’ve learned that small to medium sized businesses are easier prey. Easier because of the dangerous delusion that no cybercriminal would try to hack, say, The Kupcake Korner when they could be hacking Pillsbury and its vast, flour-begotten fortune. […]
4 Trends that are Affecting Business Planning and Investment in Websites
Businesses are waking up to the costs of leaving their websites untended—and the returns they reap when they budget for regular SEO and content updates. The days when you could put a site in place, do some SEO so you’ll show up in a search, and then let it coast, are extinct. This is the […]
What is video hosting, and why should I use it?
Video is a necessary power tool for digital marketers. Inclusion of videos on business sites is huge and expected to grow. A good video can give users helpful information, how-to demonstrations, and other content that is proven to drive conversions. Video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80% or more. The average CVR […]
GDPR Compliance Is Mandatory For All Websites: Are You Prepared?
The GDPR has been implemented for a month. Here’s what’s changed. The Internet would like to apologize for all the scary-sounding warnings you received over the last month or two. You know the ones we’re talking about. There’s something saying “Our privacy policy has changed” and there’s something else about yadda yadda yadda. Also: the […]
Website ADA Compliance: Should You Be Worried?
Understanding website accessibility The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is one of America’s most comprehensive pieces of civil rights legislation. Established in 1990, the ADA lays out detailed standards for public accommodation for the disabled, among other things. As the digital world began to evolve, a new question began to arise: Does the ADA apply […]
7 Website Mistakes that can Hurt Your Business
We get a lot of new clients whose first request is that we do something about their website. They don’t like it any more. (Or they hated it from day one.) As we get started on transforming their site, we often discover common website mistakes that can hurt businesses. If we were obnoxious snarksters, we’d […]
Watch Out for “The Guy”
“So, who’s managing the back end of your web site?” “Oh, we got a guy.” And thus strike the gongs of doom. More often than we’d like, clients come to us because they used “A guy.” It conjures images of a self-taught, one-man shop working out of his basement to make websites on the cheap. […]
When To Use Professional Photography?
Amazingly, some stock photography doesn’t suck. So why hire a pro for professional photography shots? There was a time when every single stock photograph in the whole universe was an embarrassment to the very idea of imagery. I am still haunted by the memory of disturbingly phony models posing stiffly, their unnaturally white teeth glaring […]
How People Use Smartphones for Online Shopping
More and more consumers are using smartphones for online shopping. Are you adapting to suit their needs? With more than half of all internet traffic coming from a mobile device, it’s more important than ever to make sure your website is primed for mobile viewing and mobile online shopping. The research below can be used […]
You’ve Been Hacked! Now what? Unpacking Business Cybersecurity
Here’s a business cybersecurity story that happens all too often. A financial services company provides a website portal for their clients to access their investment accounts. Clients visit frequently to review their accounts and browse the company’s rich library of helpful information. One afternoon, while the company president is at lunch with a client, he receives […]
Why you should invest in website maintenance
At Red Letter Marketing, we specialize in helping our clients get the right website for their needs. That might require building a new custom site, a templated site, or updating their existing site. But no matter what, we also know every site requires regular website maintenance, and we want you to understand why. Website functionalities […]
