Website Design, Setup, and Launch. 

With a dedicated project manager to oversee your website design and launch! 

Limited time!

And get a FREE Promotional Video with Website Purchase!

Buy Now

Call: 888-558-2446 x212

Text: 517-200-9383

Email: Sales@websiteforge.com

Or click on the link below and go to Live Chat!

https://www.websiteforge.com/10029m24/industry-specific-website-portfolio/health-and-fitness-club-website-design.html

Check out more here

Contact us: Call, Text, Email, or Chat Today!

#betterwebsites #websiteforge #lifeisgood

WebsiteForge is your unfair advantage Reason #13 Use your WebsiteForge members area as a master dashboard to send out notices about events, products, sales, and important announcements about your business to all of your social media outlets!

WebsiteForge is your unfair advantage Reason # 12.  Get more time to do what you need when you utilize the amazing built in features of our powerful system.  Don't spend precious time shopping around for ways to handle authentication and text marketing with other companies or evaluating pricing schemes with 3rd party sources to plug in to your what was supposed to be cheap/free site that is now a money pit!

WebsiteForge has an amazing feature that allows you to customize and automate a message to your customers that have made a purchase from you.  Allowing you to ask for a review, you can offer them incentives for their review, you can send them a link to a poll on ways to improve your products or services.  So many options with such a simple yet powerful feature.  How will you take advantage of this feature?

Quickly and easily print labels for your orders and update tracking info without having to mess with shipper websites or programs.  Simply login to your WebsiteForge dashboard and manage your orders, create labels, update tracking info and inform your customers in just a few easy clicks!

WebsiteForge will help you keep your website updated, every month, at your request. Remote Hands is our white glove content service. With Remote Hands, you can send us changes you wish to make to your content, such as adding or editing information, adding pictures, or even adding a coupon or a sale, anything that has to do with your content! Remote Hands saves you time and money, gives you more time to do the things you want while keeping your website up-to-date! That's winning!

Easily offer incentives and create return buyers with our Customer Loyalty Rewards feature. This amazing feature allows you to set your own rules for Store Credit / Virtual Wallet Dollars / Rewards Dollars or Points. By offering incentives such as rewards points (dollars) you increase customer satisfaction, turning your one-time shoppers into repeat buyers and raving fans!

Research has shown for a long time, that ratings and reviews play a factor in how people buy online.  "Products with reviews are 270% more likely to be bought than a product without." according to Speigel Research Centre.  And "In the U.S., 68% of online shoppers are more likely to engage with businesses that have positive reviews" (BrightLocal)

WebsiteForge has built in capabilities to collect reviews on your products, no 3rd party plugins required!

During these times, having reliable recurring revenue can mean the difference between going out of business or taking your business to the next level.  Whether you sell a product or service on a recurring basis, WebsiteForge has you covered!  Get your products and services out there with our robust tools and offer them as a one time purchase or recurring on whatever interval you want to sell at!  More tools that benefit your businesses bottom line!

Are you ready to experience a flexible coupon system that can offer intelligent discounts that will increase sales? 

You can create announcements about your coupons too!  If someone adds something to the cart you can let them know they are XX amount of dollars away from a promotion!  Helping increase conversions and creating a culture of return buyers on your website.

Many companies offer discounts, but they are usually fairly limited and require you to compromise on what it is you want to offer. With the WebsiteForge system there are no 3rd party insecure plugins to deal with or hassles with incompatible offers! 

This is a fundamental building block that establishes your public identity, credibility and connection with families that are seeking care and support for a loved one.

Your website should be inviting and pleasing to the eye, and it should also evoke feelings of trust and compassion. The layout, typography, color scheme, and overall design of your website can help accomplish this, as well as entice people to contact you. However, if those elements are not done correctly, you could be sending people right on over to your competition.

Let WebsiteForge help you convey the right message to your potential clients with a sleek website design that is built only for you!

We've helped many in the Health Care, Nursing Home, Rehab Center, Senior Care Faciliy industry to know exactly how to reach your ideal client and draw them in to your facility.  Contact us today to get your website updated to convey the right message and draw in the right clients!

Great NEWS!  If you haven't already taken steps to comply with Google's "Mobile-First Indexing" you still have time to get your website up to date!!  According to the Google blog:

Google has Extended the deadline of "Mobile-First Indexing" to March 2021, according to the article they released this past July.

"If you have a responsive site or a dynamic serving site where the primary content and markup is equivalent across mobile and desktop, you shouldn't have to change anything." ~Google Blog

At WebsiteForge, we only build websites that meet this standard.  If you are looking for a way to get your website or online store updated to meet the Google deadlines, please contact us right away!

"For the sites that are not yet ready for mobile-first indexing, we've already mentioned some issues blocking your sites in previous blog posts. Now that we've done more testing and evaluation, we have seen a few more issues that are worth mentioning to better prepare your sites"

And YES, Google is taking measures to BLOCK YOUR WEBSITE if you do not comply!  This is seriously important to understand as a business owner with a website or online store.

They have also added some new changes and updates to their requirements for "Mobile-First Indexing".  So even if you had previously made some updates and changes, be sure you are still complying with these standards.

Contact Us Today to get your website up to date!

WebsiteForge has some really great re-marketing features that benefit you at no extra cost.  One of these great features is the automated abandoned cart notice.  This notice is completely configurable.  So you can send out a unique message to your potential buyers if they abandoned cart, increasing sales without tons of effort on your part.  Once you configure your notice it handles the rest!  Easy, fast tools that help you succeed with your online business.

We've written about this and given examples and shown results on why this is such a big deal.  Read more here.  I wanted to take this a step further and show you the exact verbiage from the Official Google Blog post :

"Here at Google we're obsessed with speed, in our products and on the web. As part of that effort, today we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests."

~  Add products to the website AND Amazon from one Dashboard!
~  Manage Inventory from one Dashboard!
~  Manage Orders from one Dashboard!

 
When you have the same site that thousands of others use you look the same to the search engines.  We create a custom experience for you and your customers and that sets you up to succeed in more ways than you even realized you needed!

 Let WebsiteForge help!  We can make changes for you, read more about this service here.

 We make features and services that are your unfair advantage!

🥋 Easy to edit content editor -  Our content editor is an easy click and add content editor, so you will spend more time with students and parents and less time working on your website!

🥋 Fully customizable Forms - Our forms can collect as little or as much info you want and need to move things forward.  They are easy to edit and are very flexible to meet your TKD studio's needs.  Including a contract style option that allows you to add a digital signature that is legally binding!

🥋 Full HTML Access - This makes it super easy to embed content on your site from anywhere like Youtube, to sites that have custom live chat widgets!

🥋 Social Media integration - get the word out quick, with one post about upcoming events and classes at your Martial Arts Dojo and Taekwondo studio.

🥋 Location-specific SEO marketing -  Our team has over 15 years of SEO and Marketing expertise and we know exactly how to target and attract your new clients to your dojo.

Read More...

Our new website builder has had a few updates.  If you are a current websiteforge customer with a responsive site you have got to check these out!!!  We've also added some other great features not related to the new builder.  Check them out below:

• Auto centering all frames contents (new buider)
• Parent / Child formatting updates (new Builder)
• Updated Undo options (new builder)
• Auto Image sizing (new builder)
• ShipEngine Integration (create labels right from your order with discounted pricing)
• Amazon Pay Integration (accept credit cards from Amazon Pay )
• Mass Mailer updates.
• Automated Abandoned Cart notice (re-marketing tool)
• Automated requests for product review (re-marketing tool)

We are so happy and proud to serve our clients and to be able to continue to serve you through these tough times! Blessings be! 🙏🏼

2. Add an incentive to your site to get users to sign up and create an account.  the more users you have logged in and checkout out the site the more abandoned notices will go out and the higher conversion rate you will have.  I have seen many different incentives setup.  Anything from a free ebook when you sign up for some promotional pricing on the first order.  It is totally up to you, you probably know your clientele better than we do.  If you tell us what kind of incentive you are wanting to offer Remote Hands can get it set up for you.

3. Enabling Ratings can help too.  When people come to the site they often like to see feedback from other buyers.   Google, Bing, Yahoo and other Search Engines take ratings into account as a ranking factor when they crawl pages now. Article on ratings as a ranking factor.

4. Enable automated notifications to request your shoppers review the products they purchased.  This is a super common practice these days, and best of all you can completely custmomize the message you send to your shoppers either offering them an incentive to leave a review or appeal to the humanity of helping out others with their important feedback.  See more about how to set this up if you are a WebsiteForge customer here.

Contact Kevin Gannon today if you wish to talk about more ways to increase conversions and other ways to market your website!

(248) 349- 6281

1.  Blog...In our system when you blog you will add new and fresh content to your site(there are many ways this can be manifested on your website), you can also have your posts go to Facebook and Twitter.  Which will draw interest and traffic to your website.  On top of those ways it will also email your subscriber list.  This is one of the best FREE ways to let people know exactly what you offer and what your company is about, and how you are different than the competition!

2.  Keep your site up to date.  Life get's crazy, we understand that.  But often things change and you may forget to update your website with whatever schedule, contact info, services, etc may have changed. Maybe you are offering an alternate contact for sales or support?  Maybe you have adjusted some pricing on your services?  That info should be current on your site.  It's easy to do with our new builder! You can also submit a Remote Hands request to have that info updated as well.  Both fast and simple ways to keep your site current. 

3. Be sure all of your local info is accurate as well.  There are many ways to be seen online, using free services like Bing local, Yelp, and Google Maps is a really great way to be found.  Make sure that your contact, schedules, prices and misc info is added to Yelp, Bing, and Google Maps and is the most current info.  This is a really great way to be found.  Here is a more detailed article about those services.

Contact Kevin Gannon today if you wish to talk about more ways to increase conversions and other ways to market your website!

(248) 349- 6281

The word spoof means falsify. A spoofed email is one in which the sender changes parts of an email to look as though it were written by someone else. Typically, the sender's name or email address and the body of the message are changed to appear as though they're from a legitimate source such as a bank, newspaper, or company the recipient does business with.


The reason scammers change email information is to get people to trust them. They hope recipients of the message will take additional steps, such as following a link to a fake website intended to collect personal information (a process known as phishing); or open, read, and respond to emails about products or services they want people to buy.

How Spoofing Works

Scammers/spoofers change different aspects of an email to disguise the true sender, including the following properties:
 

FROM: Name and email address
REPLY-TO: Name and email address
RETURN-PATH: Email address
SOURCE IP: IP address

The first three properties can be easily altered by using settings in Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, or other email software. The fourth, the IP address, can also be altered but doing so requires sophisticated knowledge.

Why Scammers Spoof

In the case of phishing, the scammer sends a spoofed email message, which has a link to a website. The message may look legitimate, and even have the logo of a company the recipient does business with, such as a bank, so the recipient may not think twice about clicking. However, if the link is clicked, it goes to the scammer's website, which is fake and has been set up to collect personal data.


The recipient may be asked to enter a username and password, and then given a message that the website is down. Meanwhile, the scammer has collected the recipient's login information for the actual site and is busy taking money out of their bank account before they realize what's happening.

Another scenario involves scammers who run illegitimate businesses. Their email messages get flagged as spam before anyone can read them, so they spoof them to make it look like the messages are from a legitimate entity. The emails may appear to be from an ordinary person, a real company, or a government agency. The purpose of this scam is to get recipients to open the messages and read the spam advertising inside.
 

Types of Spoofing Software

While some spoofed emails are changed by hand, the majority are created by custom software. For example, the use of mass-mailing ratware programs is widespread among spammers. These programs run built-in word lists to create thousands of target email addresses, spoof the source email, then blast the email to those targets. Or, the ratware takes illegally acquired lists of email addresses and sends spam to them.

Mass-mailing worms are also common. Worms are self-replicating programs that act as a type of virus. Once on a computer, a mass-mailing worm reads the email address book of the recipient, then falsifies an outbound message to appear as though it's from a contact in the recipient's address book, and sends it to the entire contact list. This process may offend recipients, and tarnish the reputation of the innocent sender.

How to Recognize and Defend Against Spoof Emails
As with any con game, your best defense is skepticism. If you don't believe an email is truthful or that the sender is legitimate, don't click the link or enter your login information. If there's a file attachment, don't open it. If an offer in an email seems too good to be true, it probably is, and your skepticism will save you from giving out your personal information. Finally, study examples of phishing and spoof email scams to train your eye to distrust these messages.

What to do if you Find You've Been Spoofed

 Many times you won't even know your email has been spoofed until you've received a bounce back from an invalid recipient.  This means that someone pretended to be you (using your email address) and sent an email to an email address that doesn't exist.  And the server bounced that message back to you.  What do you do if you get one of these bounced back messages?  A spoofed email does not mean that your email account was hacked or hijacked.  It simply means that someone pretended to be you.  And anyone can do this.

First, there is currently no way to stop spoofing, especially if they masked their IP address.  Email wasn't built to make sure the person sending the message is who they say they are. And that's created a headache for billions of innocent email users out there.

My additional advice is to also report it to your Internet Service Provider. They have more time and tools to do more research and may be able to block messages from the IP address. Of course, the IP address can be spoofed. But ISPs are constantly fighting this too. If you have phishing, spoofing or malware issues, contact your ISP:
 

• Comcast: constantguard.xfinity.com/help/report-abuse/
• CenturyLink: Email  spam@centurylink.net ; also offers tips for spoofed phone numbers and advises customers to call CenturyLink Annoyance Bureau at 800-582-0655.

You can also report spam, phishing, spoofing and other email annoyances to these sources:

    U.S. Federal Communications Commission: consumercomplaints.fcc.gov or 888-225-5322
    U.S. Federal Trade Commission: Forward phishing emails to spam@uce.gov; file a complaint at ftccomplaintassistant.gov; or read more at consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0003-phishing  

Also, as an extra precaution in case your email was compromised by such things as keyloggers, you should scan for any malicious software and remove any found.  Then update your email passord to a new complex password.

1. E-commerce Advantage: Lower Cost

One of the e-commerce benefits is that it has a lower startup cost. Physical retail stores have to pay up to thousands of dollars to rent one of their store locations monthly. Also, they have several upfront costs such as store signs, store design, buying inventory, sales equipment, and more. Physical retail stores also have to pay staff to work and run each location. They may also need to hire security staff depending on the product value in the store.

However, with WebsiteForge annual costs for your e-commerce website can be as low as $1,188, cheap even when you compare to Shopify at $3,192 annually!  The WebsiteForge package is packed with Enterprise level features that don't cost you extra!  We're not here to nickel and dime ya, we want to help you succeed in your online venture.  Offering things like Free site reviews annually, free updates and upgrades that are automatically added for you to utilize, free assistance (Remote Hands and Unlimited FREE support) and so much more!

2. E-commerce Advantage: 24/7 Potential Income

One of the best advantages of having an e-commerce website is that it is always open for business! With your Facebook ads, you can attract someone at 11 p.m. or 4 a.m... Or like most WebsiteForge customers you can rank well organically and attract business for FREE from the search engines.   Most physical location stores are open between 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. By being available at all hours, you can attract people who would normally pick up a product in stores, if the store were open. You can also attract those who may have odd work schedules or who don't have time to shop in-person. For a customer to order at night, you don't need to have employees working the night shift to ensure all orders get processed. You'll never need to hire a security guard either!

3. E-commerce Advantage: Sell Internationally

Next on the list of e-commerce benefits is that a new brand can sell to customers around the world easily. You have the ability to discover your audience whether they're in the U.K., South America, or neighboring countries. If you choose to dropship from Inventory Source which has a variety of manufacturers to choose from or perhaps you want to push your product out to a variety of places online, you can do that with the Go Data Feed Integration.  Both options available from WebsiteForge, giving our customers another advantage.

Contact Us Today to get your business online

The Requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act Rules

In order to remain on the good side of the email spam law, you'll want to be sure you're abiding by the following:

 Existing Customers, Click here to schedule your FREE website review!

Are you not a WebsiteForge Customer, and wanting more out of your website?

Click here to learn more!

The holiday shopping season is upon us.  It is estimated that $123 Billion dollars will be spent this holiday shopping season in E-commerce ALONE! According to Statista

That's approx. 17 Billion dollars more than last holiday season!  What are you doing to prepare to get a piece of that E-commerce pie? 🍕

If you haven't made a plan of action yet, that's ok!  We are here to help.  I've put together some questions to help you decide the best plan of action for your online business this holiday season.

✓ What are you going to feature on these super savings days? do you have a service you can offer a discount on?  Or perhaps you have a unique set of products you want to offer a discount and free shipping on?

✓ How you are going to inform your old customers and your new potential customers of this amazing offer?  We have several ways for you to make an announcement using our mass mail feature (FREE or put up a teaser graphic on your website luring people back on these days.  If you need help with either of these options and you are a current WebsiteForge customer feel free to contact support and we can assist you in getting this done.

✓ Are you going to offer more savings to users that sign up? Hint hint, we think you should!  Getting user data will help you with future offerings and building a customer base that will keep coming back.  We also have ways you can incentivize returning customers.

We cater each website to the business owners needs.  This makes you stand out from your competition.  Not only to your customers, but to the search engines.  Because let's be honest, while you can adjust color schemes in templates to trick people into thinking you are "customizing" your website it doesn't fool the search engines.  The coding to change the color schemes isn't much at all and when the search engines see the same coding over and over they tend to start passing sites by.

Having a fully customized website, and the tools that we have built into our system to help you not only get seen in the search engines, but PREFERRED will put you miles ahead of where you would be with those other guys out there.

If you are wanting to get a custom website built for your business feel free to reach out to us!

Informational Website Checklist:

1. Social Media Integration

This area works in conjunction with many other areas and modules in our system.  For example, if you have a blog set up, you can have your blog posts automatically post to your Facebook wall, Facebook business page, and Twitter feed every time you create a new post!

2. Add an incentive to your site to get users to sign up and create an account.  the more users you have logged in and checkout out the site the more abandoned notices will go out and the higher conversion rate you will have.  I have seen many different incentives setup.  Anything from a free ebook when you sign up for some promotional pricing on the first order.  It is totally up to you, you probably know your clientele better than we do.  If you tell us what kind of incentive you are wanting to offer Remote Hands can get it set up for you.

3. Enabling Ratings can help too.  When people come to the site they often like to see feedback from other users.   Google, Bing, Yahoo and other Search Engines take ratings into account as a ranking factor when they crawl pages now. Article on ratings as a ranking factor.

4. SSL certificate.  Securing your whole site with the new SSL certificate has benefits with the search engines too. More Details about our SSL

5. Send offers. Whether it's an offer to subscribe to your awesome blog or some sort of promotion on your website...OFFER IT! :) They won't think about you unless you intentionally become a thought in the minds of your audience. You don't have to have an e-commerce site to take advantage of the traffic that is already on your site!

6. Offer a Live Chat option.  There are free apps that will let you offer it.  There is an article here about the different types of clientele that appreciate Live chat vs other options.

7. AMP.  Google Amp is something that not everyone wants to offer.  It's a faster version of the site(which really helps with mobile loads) and is something that Google shows a preference for. https://www.ampproject.org/ there is more info on their site about what AMP is.  If you are wanting to have your pages AMPED it is something that Remote hands can

E-commerce Website Checklist:

1. Setup the abandoned cart notice (this is something that Remote Hands can do for you or you can set it up yourself.)
let us know if you wish to offer people a discount for returning or if there is any particular message you would like to convey (such as a reminder on your great shipping rates )  The abandoned cart notice will go to any user that was logged in added items to their cart and left before checkout.

2. Add an incentive to your site to get users to sign up and create an account.  the more users you have logged in and checkout out the site the more abandoned notices will go out and the higher conversion rate you will have.  I have seen many different incentives setup.  Anything from a free ebook when you sign up for some promotional pricing on the first order.  It is totally up to you, you probably know your clientele better than we do.  If you tell us what kind of incentive you are wanting to offer Remote Hands can get it set up for you.

3. Enabling Ratings can help too.  When people come to the site they often like to see feedback from other buyers.   Google, Bing, Yahoo and other Search Engines take ratings into account as a ranking factor when they crawl pages now. Article on ratings as a ranking factor.

4. SSL certificate.  Securing your whole site with the new SSL certificate has benefits with the search engines too. More Details about our SSL

5. Send offers. Whether it's an offer to subscribe to your awesome blog or some sort of promotion on your website...OFFER IT! :) They won't think about you unless you intentionally become a thought in the minds of your audience. You don't have to have an e-commerce site to take advantage of the traffic that is already on your site!

6. Offer a Live Chat option.  There are free apps that will let you offer it.  There is an article here about the different types of clientele that appreciate Live chat vs other options.

7. AMP.  Google Amp is something that not everyone wants to offer.  It's a faster version of the site(which really helps with mobile loads) and is something that Google shows a preference for. https://www.ampproject.org/ there is more info on their site about what AMP is.  If you are wanting to have your pages AMPED it is something that Remote hands can

• A Review is a buyer feedback about a product or service. 
• A Rating is generally a buyers input on the quality of a product or service. 
• And a Testimony is a consumers experience with your business or service. (IE Fast shipping, friendly customer service etc...)

Consumers generally rely on these types of feedback when they are making their purchasing or service choices online.  It is important to display this info loud and proud! :)

It is quite ok to ask your customers and clients to give you Testimonial feedback, ratings, and reviews. You can do so easily with our FREE mass mailing system!

(Use the instructions in this video and choose "ordered within" instead of "no purchase within" then ask your clients for a quick rating, review or testimony based on what you want and need on your site.)

All of these aspects are important for online businesses and they all have their place.  Each business is different, our system can accommodate all types of feedback.  Regardless of what you want or need to display on your website, WebsiteForge has you covered.

Feel free to contact us today if you would like to get set up with ratings, reviews or testimonies on your site.

This topic is going to discuss reporting from Google Analytics.  Managing the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of your own website can be a full time job, if you have been tinkering with your SEO you will come to the understanding that SEO is not a "set it and forget it" area of your business.  You can setup your contact page and pretty much not need to touch it again until something with your business changes such as a phone or email etc...  SEO is different.  Going through reports can help you understand what changes you need to work on next.

The “Acquisition” reports are located under the “Acquisition” section in the left-hand navigation. You can use the Acquisition reports to compare the performance of different marketing channels and discover which sources send you the highest quality traffic and conversions. This can help you make better decisions about where to focus your marketing efforts.

The focus of this article is going to be on HOW traffic was sent to your site, referred to as the "Medium" report. Here are some examples of mediums you will see in your report:

• “Organic” is used to identify traffic that arrived on your site through unpaid search like a non-paid Google Search result.
• “CPC” indicates traffic that arrived through a paid search campaign like Google AdWords text ads.
• “Referral” is used for traffic that arrived on your site after the user clicked on a website other than a search engine.
• “Email” represents traffic that came from an email marketing campaign.
• “(none/Direct)” is applied for users that come directly to your site by typing your URL directly into a browser. In your reports, you will see these users have a source of “direct” with a medium of “(none)”.

The majority WebsiteForge customers will see the most traffic from "organic" searches.  This is great news for our WebsiteForge Customers!  Because Organic search results are FREE!

Let's break down a real life example here.

Our top traffic source is "Direct", but we're going to ignore that line for now.  Our second greatest source is Google organic search, which has a relatively low bounce rate compared to other sources. Facebook has a great number of new sessions, but a pretty high bounce rate. Let's do a bit more analysis to understand if this is a problem.

We can click into the comparison view and select the metric “bounce rate” to compare bounce rate for each source/medium combination to the site average. Sure enough, we can see that our Facebook traffic is bouncing at a much higher rate than the site average.

Now that we can see for sure that the bounce rate is really high from this avenue and where they are being directed we can evaluate the content and layout of that landing page to produce a more valuable page being presented to those users.

If you are wanting to rank better organically in the search engines, feel free to contact us and we can help you look over what you've done so far and help you determine what steps to take next!

We optimize, and test, then optimize some more at no extra charge!

I've talked to some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts and read many recent articles and the resounding replies I get, sound a lot like this:

"People need to understand that it's now a ranking factor and if their site is slow then it's going to hurt them."

Here at WebsiteForge, we stay faster than our competition to make sure our Clients stay faster than their competition.

I strongly suggest that you use a 3rd party testing tool - like www.gtmetrix.com to compare your site VS your competition...

And as always, feel free to reach out to us if you are not killing the competition in speed.  There is likely a very simple solution to resolve whatever is delaying loading.

We did a recent test, using some data that was provided to us by our friends over at ShopBakersNook.com

They have a good working friendship with one of their competitors and have done many different tests.  Over the course of the last year and a half we have poured into optimizing and updating the core elements and coding structure for optimal speed and loading times.  And this is a great example of how it's really paid off!

3rd Party Speed Test:	Google Speed Test

 You might think, well great, so they test better.  Why does that even REALLY MATTER?

THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS YOU NEED TO BE DOING ON YOUR WEBSITE:

Step 1. ✏️ Content Content Content! Add relevant content to your site about your products and services.  I wrote more about this last year and wanted to bring this post to light again because it is very very important for ALL websites.  If you get stuck on how to write good content you can also check out this article precisely about that! :)

Now that you have added all the content that will overly describe how awesome your business is and how well you do you.  we head over to the next very important key to having a successful website.

Step 2. 📈 Get and KEEP your visitors.  I wrote about this last week and earlier this year. Do you know why?  becuase it really is so very important to capture and utlize the traffic that you do have.  This is important whether you are a service based business or Ecommerce! 

Ok GREAT! you have now taken steps to add super power ⚡ content to your website, you have added all of our tips and tricks to capture and keep your existing visitors...what's left?

Step 3. 💨 Speed and Mobile Compatibility. Yep, I said it.  If your website is not yet responsive.  You need to do it NOW.  Google has announced another algorithm change being released in JULY 2018 that speed IS a bigger ranking factor.  And the SEO community has been talking about it.  So you may ask why does having a responsive site mean it will be faster.  And this is a great question.  In and of it's own it does not mean it will be faster.  With WebsiteForge when you have a website designed or re-designed our team KNOWS that Google factors speed and we pour our experience into creating the fastest and most user friendly design we can.  We have tools that help us offer you the fastest initial load times as well as optimizing images for faster loading. You can see in this previous post that our client's site ranked better and loaded faster than a major competitor!

Now that you have followed steps 1 - 3 you can start watching your sales increase like our other clients that have followed these best practices steps.

If you would like an estimate for a site re-design please contact me.  Or if you would like a site review, we can evalutate your site and let you know if there are any features that your site may benefit from using.

There are 2 pieces to really improve sales from existing traffic.

1. Capture your audience.  

2. Communicate with the people that are ALREADY on your site!  This means:

a. Get people to sign up!

Whether you offer a free guide to something amazing that is relevant to your site, or a subscription to your blog...whatever it may be.  There are many many ways to get people to sign up on your site.  Find the way that works best for your ideal target clientele.

b. Setup an abandoned cart notice!

For e-commerce, one of the best ways to increase sales is to reach out to those that have already been pondering a purchase on your site.  The abandoned cart notice does just that.

c. Send offers!  

Whether it's an offer to subscribe to your awesome blog or some sort of promotion on your website...OFFER IT!!!  They won't think about you unless you intentionally become a thought in your audiences minds. You don't have to have an e-commerce site to take advantage of the traffic that is already on your site!  If you don't have a blog, you should really consider starting one.  There is a really good article here about how to decide what you should blog about.

Now, if you are having traffic issues on your site (traffic is low) I've written an article previously about ranking either with paid ads or Organically.  Check out the article here.  We can also evalutate your website with you to discuss ways that you can improve the traffic on your site.  Feel free to contact us to schedule a time we can review your site with you and offer up some FREE suggestions on your website.

We offer free integration with Google Sheets for all of your data.

With Google Sheets, you can create, edit, and collaborate wherever you are. For free.

Google Sheets is an online spreadsheet app that lets users create and format spreadsheets and simultaneously work with other people. Google Sheets allows businesses to integrate their data with 3rd party apps to expedite and in some cases automate every-day business processes, such as operations, reporting, shipping, updating Clients & exployees, etc.

Feeding Data Into Google Sheets 📝

Let's begin with a few ways that you can feed your data to Google Sheets. Once it's in Sheets, you can create charts, dashboards, or conduct the analysis to get the answers you need. Later, we'll talk about how Sheets can be an intermediate step in a workflow, and how it can go from there, out to other services or platforms.

• Feed your WebsiteForge product data To and From Google Sheets
• Feed your WebsiteForge order data To and From Google Sheets
• Feed your WebsiteForge Members To and From Google Sheets

These can be utilized in many different ways.  More to come on this below.
Also, soon, more areas of your WebsiteForge members area will be integrated with Google Sheets.

Google Forms 🎫

These days with the Google Docs Platform, it couldn't be easier to create a form and log the responses into a spreadsheet. It is now a built-in option to route your Form responses directly into Sheets. Forms can be a much more natural feeling method for users when you're looking to have them input data; consider this approach if it makes more sense than opening up your spreadsheet for collaboration.

Zapier ⚡

Introducing Zapier into your workflow can open up many powerful options to meet your needs. With Multi-Step Zaps you can do things like have an email with an attachment trigger a zap that will upload the attachment to dropbox, then have it notify you about the attached file in a communication app like Slack.

That is just 1 example of a multi step zap.  You can see all kinds of integrations with Google Sheets and Zapier here. 

Here's a good example of how to use the already great tools in WebsiteForge and maximize your social presence.

If you aren't already familiar with how our social media integration works I will summarize it by saying it's like having a dashboard from your website to broadcast to your social media.  With zaps you can take it a step further by expanding which social platforms you broadcast to.

Now that you see some ways that Zapier works, you can start to play around with the options at your fingertips.  Being able to push your WebsiteForge module data automatically to a google sheet and then triggering events from Zapier can help you automate tasks like never before!

If you would like assistance setting up an integration, feel free to contact support.

You don't want to find a storage unit to park your car in and never touch it again...You want a pit crew you can count on to keep your business engine running smoothly.

This is what sets WebsiteForge apart.  We don't piece together random elements from 20 different coders to try and just "Make things work".  We have in-house Designers, Programmers, Project Managers and tech support so that you get the very best option for your business.

We are your unfair advantage, here's another reason why:

WebsiteForge's Managed Services Broken Down for you...

Our monthly managed services are so much more than "just hosting".  It's an all in one bundle of savings that no one comes close to offering!     WebsiteForge offers an incredible monthly package that includes Hosting AND Services:

Outside research from Narvar has revealed that the modern retailer needs to look carefully at the quality of the communications experience they are providing before and after the "buy button" is pressed.

"Customers Judge their online shopping experiences in large part based on how retailers communicate with them after they click the 'Buy' button.  And the more thoughtful, intuitive, and personalized the communications are, the better."

The study also found that millennials and baby boomers strongly believe that fast and direct communications about an order are the number one factors in securing their loyalty.

Key findings:

• Millennials are 20% less likely to contact a retailer via email than baby boomers and are five times more likely to use live chat on a website

• Fast and direct communications about an order are the number one factors in winning the loyalty of millennials and baby boomers - that's over things like retailers sharing recommendations and product reviews

• Millennials are the age group least likely to want to be contacted by a retailer over SMS

Did you know you can customize(personalize) your automated notifications about orders to your customers?

There are some really helpful variables listed in this help article that can help you personalize your communications with your clients.

In this help article, you can see how to customize the invoices and order related notices that your customers receive.  If you have not done this already I strongly recommend doing so.  It can mean the difference between a 1-time customer and a repeat customer!

Google Data Studio is a service from Google that let's you pool data from multiple sources into a data sheet.  It let's you customize the layout of the sheet and even updates the data in real time.  Giving you the ability to create and share relevant information about your website statistics to those that need to see it.

This video shows you how to make a simple report using the Google data studio tools.  The benefit of this tool can be great!  Perhaps you are wanting to keep an eye on some very specific aspects of your website and only want to view that data. 

Creating a report can give you a great looking sheet of data that is interactive and live fed data, only showing you the information you want to see.  You can also share that data with your co-workers.

There are even pre-built templates that you can use to get started.  Take a look at the 3 reasons we love Google Data Studio:

1.Use Multiple Data Sources

At first glance, we thought Data Studio was a nice alternative to the standard dashboard in Google Analytics. While it can pull in data from Google Analytics, the ability to customize and arrange the data takes it to a whole other level. What's more, Data Studio allows you to pull multiple data sources into one place (not just Google Analytics). Some of the data sources that you can bring into Google Data Studio are:

• Google AdWords
• Google Analytics
• Search Console
• YouTube Analytics
• SQL
• Google Sheets
• And More

Data Studio also has many 3rd party “Connectors” that are available to connect with and pull data from. Some of the Connectors are:

• Amazon Seller
• Stripe
• AdStage
• Facebook Ads and Insights
• DoubleClick
• eBay
• Twitter
• And More

Overall there is massive value in being able to view multiple data sources in one place.

2. Google Data Studio is Customizable

Now that you have all of your data, it's time to customize it. Yes! Data Studio gives you the ability to pull your multiple data sources into one customizable dashboard and lay them out in a visually appealing way. Some of the features of the dashboard:

• Ability to pull in multiple data sources and report on the metrics that drive your business ROI
• Brand it by changing colors
• Easy drag and drop elements within the dashboard
• Add and edit text
• Customize data displays as bar graphs, pie charts, and more
• Customize for easily save, email, and/or print PDF's

3. Sharing & Collaboration

Collaboration within Google Data Studio is a complete time saver. Grant access to your team set permissions, and at any moment they can view and contribute on any dashboard. Even if you have that old school team member you can easily save and share the dashboard as a PDF by email or print it.

• Grant access and set permissions
• Edit and save in real-time
• Make a copy of your own
• Share the dashboard by email or print

These days there are so many ways to stay in touch with your clients.  You have Email, Text, Phone calls, Live Chat, and so many other ways. 

1. Recover Abandoned Carts

2. Target, Re-market, and Upsell to previous customers

New Customers vs Existing Customers:

It's 68% more expensive to acquire $1 from a new customer than it is to upsell current customers (forEntrepreneurs)

You can see a general overview of the mailer here.

3. Announce your new products

Did you know you can setup automatic notices to go out, not only to your customers, but to Facebook and Twitter too!?!  This is a great way to inform your customer base and new potential customers about the items you have.

4. If you don't want to offer coupons offer STORE CREDIT!

	Monthly History: This graphs out the unique visitors, number of visits, pages, hits and bandwidth on a month by month basis (see chart).(Good thing they get Unlimited Bandwidth!!! 😵)
	Weekly/Rush Hour Activity: This charts out the activity of your site based on the hours of the day. It will show you the busiest and slowest times that activity is being generated.(see chart)
	Search Keyphrases: This analyzes and displays the keywords or key phrases that users typed in in order to get to your site. This can be a major to tool to utilize if you plan on doing any SEO or promotion for your site.(see chart )
	Favored Browsers: AWstats allows you view your visitor's most used browsers.  Many website owners don't realize how many people use different browsers and therefore do not take into account many things about their website.  Each browser renders website code differntly.  It's a good practice to be aware of how your site appears on multiple browsers.  Especially your most used ones. (see chart)
	Robot/Spider Counter: These are automated programs that enter into websites and follow internal links to seek content and use them as key phrases that may pertain to your websites products. With AWstats, you can track these search engine robots and estimate when your website will be found and be established on the internet.(see chart)

Let me summarize by saying that AWStats is an incredible analytics tool! You can pull data and create graphical and textual displays of your sites activity.  As an added bonus, AWStats offers the ability to export data into an XML format for presentations. WebsiteForge offers you all of this for FREE, you can access it from your "Dashboard", "Sites and Stats" area.

	1. Google https://business.google.com
	2. Yelp https://biz.yelp.com/support/claiming
	3. Bing https://www.bingplaces.com/

If you think about the last search you did looking for a business or service, you may recall seeing the "maps" or "Local" listings before any other listings.  That's because the search engines are looking to try and show you the most relevant information for your area.  As a business owner, you need to make sure you are listed with these places so you are the company that shows up next time someone does a search for your business!  

Here is a brief summary of what each option offers.   Even if your business doesn't have a storefront.  You can claim an area that your business services and that is more useful than not being listed at all.

Google My Business;

Make the most of your free Google listing.

Show up when customers search for your business or businesses like yours on Google Search and Maps. Google My Business lets you post updates to showcase what's new, respond to reviews to build loyalty and add photos to highlight what makes your business special.

Yelp for Business Owners;

Yelp provides you with a free suite of tools to showcase your business and connect you to the Yelp community.  You can also respond to messages and reviews right from the mobile app!

Bing Places for business;

Get Online Customers for Your Business
Add your business to Bing for free and help online customers discover your business.

It's hard to think of a group of buyers that are more likely buyers than your existing customer base that has had an abandoned cart... 

Imagine walking through a store and picking up an item, reading the items details, maybe even putting it in your cart or trying it on.  For whatever reason you take it out and put it back on the shelf.  Now, what if an employee, approached you with a 10% off coupon - not available to other buyers - but simply because you were carefully considering buying it but had not yet done so...  I think it's safe to say, for a good number of people, that might be enough to get you to buy.

Now imagine your website management software gives you a FREE tool to reach those buyers...

You can stop imagining now because WE DO!  WebsiteForge offers you a free customizable Abandoned cart notice.  For WebsiteForge clients, you can contact support or take a look at this step by step guide on how to enable and configure your notice.

Increase your conversion rate by motivating customers to recover their abandoned carts. Send automated cart reminders, easily customize email template and offer coupons to encourage your visitors to come back to your store.

•     Use customizable sending schedule
•     Add info about the shopper's cart they abandoned
•     Track sending history
•     Add a coupon code to incentivize your buyers

See what some of our customers that have taken advantage of this free feature have to say about it:

Shane Merem

Now keep in mind there could be some junk in this area that bots cause.  We are going to overlook those and focus in on items that could be real customers doing a search on your site and not finding what they are looking for (if you do happen to carry the said item or offer that service)

I have received permission from our friends over at ShopBakersNook.com to use their data as an example.

 So if we look at the screenshot above you will see "Keywords" in blue links.  These are the keywords that were searched on your site, that resulted in 0 (Zero) results.  There could be some legitimate reasons for this.  For example, you may stop carrying an item and now it is no longer found on your site.  (That's fine, and this is the appropriate response that should be seen)

However, there may be users looking for things on your site that often spell things differently than you do.  You can see on line item 2 here the search for "Coloured Sugar Sprinkles".  I know for a fact they carry colored sugar sprinkles, but they do not spell "coloured" that way.  We have a fix for you!

Head on over to the "Full-Text Search Settings" area.  If you have not set up a full-text search as a 404 be sure to check out this article on setting it up!

In this area, you can add Synonyms.  this will help you taylor your search results to your users needs.  Adding in the synonym "coloured=colored" will make them mean the same thing.  You can also add in other variations that you can think of that users may accidentally type in. 

Now you can see a whole page full of results when I search for "Coloured Sugar Sprinkles"

The "Zero Search results" area data get's wiped out every 4 days.  You can have a report emailed to you every 4 days so that you have records of this data and can update your synonyms whenever it is convenient for you.

If you see data in your zero search results area and you are not sure what it means, you can contact us at any time and we can help you out!!!

1.  SEO experts have put together some Reporing templates and made them available for YOU!  The average joe tends to feel overwhelmed by SEO and Google analytics reports.  These templates are a good way to find useful information from your website. 

2. Here are some great guides to creating your own custom reports.  Having the data about your website is one thing, but having reports make sense of the data is another.  Every site is different and therefore the needs of every site is different.  Be sure you are looking at reports that will help you grow your business.

3. This report can help you a lot!  This will take the keyword data and the traffic data and make a report for you so you can see what keywords are actually driving business.

What is Mobile-First indexing?

"Mobile-first indexing means that we'll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking, to better help our – primarily mobile – users find what they're looking for."

1. Google Search Console
Google's webmaster tools offer a range of very useful tools as a website owner.  You can submit your Sitemap to Google, ask Google to Crawl your site, get reports of any errors on your site.  You can see an article here about managing your webmaster account regularly
 

Why use Search Console?

Monitor your site's performance in Google Search results:

    Make sure that Google can access your content
    Submit new content for crawling and remove content you don't want to be shown in search results
    Create and monitor content that delivers visually engaging search results
    Maintain your site with minimal disruption to search performance
    Monitor and resolve malware or spam issues so your site stays clean

Discover how Google Search—and the world—sees your site:

    Which queries caused your site to appear in search results?
    Did some queries result in more traffic to your site than others?
    Are your product prices, company contact info, or events highlighted in rich search results?
    Which sites are linking to your website?
    Is your mobile site performing well for visitors searching on mobile?

2. Google Analytics
No matter what your website does or offers you should use a tool like Google Analytics.  There are plenty of free options out there.  be sure the option you choose offers adequate training or support so you can understand the data you're reviewing.  Google Analytics actually has a beginners course and lots of articles to support using it.
I recommend setting some time aside and doing this.  Understanding this data on your site can mean the difference between a good website and a great one.  How you handle the data and make changes to your site can really alter the course of your website.  Flying blind is a bad idea.  And trusting a cheap SEO marketing company is a worse idea.  I have had quite a few business owners trust a cheap SEO company or marketing company with their website only to get a surge of sales and then blacklisted from all Search engines because they used shady methods to achieve a quick and fatal return.

3.Google My Business
If you are a business with a physical location that people can visit I strongly recommend setting up a "Google My Business" page.
Google will show these results usually ahead of other results.  They are based on location and keyword information.  So be sure you fill out the fields and describe your business in detail so that people can find you and understand what you are offering.