Airtight Site (2026)

24/05/2022

So you're going to boost your marketing with paid ads?

BUT is your website ready for the extra visitors?

Sure you've created that beautiful landing page that you believe has everything needed to convince someone to answer your call to action. You may have even optimised the page to make sure it is a lightweight speed machine but there are two more factors that you may have missed so you're not wasting your ad spend. Your website hosting capacity and the rest of your website need to be in tiptop condition because a large proportion will check out the rest of your website.

You've tested the speed of your new landing page with your normal level of website traffic and most likely at a low point in the day. A web page load time of 3 seconds now can quickly go to 12 seconds and beyond once you start sending large volumes of traffic to your website.

This all depends on how well you optimised the landing page and on your web hosting service. You can test how it will perform before you start your campaign. Load testing your website will show you how your website response time performs with increasing traffic. There are many of these tools available but if this is new to you and you'd like to try a free one to get started then try loader.io

09/05/2022

What I'm about to tell you about improving online sales should not be a surprise but what will surprise you is how easy it is to do.

Is your website fast every minute of the day and night?

Have you checked while there was a spike in traffic? Because this can impact the speed of your site.

Why should you care? Because I believe SPEED = SALES. In my books, a sale is anything from a contact form sent to an eCommerce sale. I'm sure you've left a slow website I know I have.

You've worked hard and in some cases paid to get visitors to come to your website so a little work now will continue to reap rewards for your business.

What do you think is your first step to a faster website?

Did you answer upgrading your web hosting plan? Then think again!

You see that's like using a high-performance sports car engine in a bus. So let's lighten up your website first.

There are a few simple steps you can do that will only cost you a little time now and pay dividends for every website visitor from now on. Plus when it comes time to upgrade your web hosting service it will be able to power your website so much better.

Here is the easy part. The biggest impact I see for a slow web page is that images have not been prepared correctly. There are a few factors to preparing images for the web. The size of the image, the file compression and the file format (more to come on this soon).

Other factors for a slow web page are the way you place a video on the page, the software used to design the site and the cache to serve the page quickly.

Remember website speed is linked to search rankings and better website conversions so it's worth your time to get it optimised or ask someone to get it done for you.

So now that you have your site optimised you can monitor the site for speed during those spikes in traffic and adjust your hosting plan accordingly keeping all your website visitors happy and buying from you.

Comment below if you have any questions.

03/05/2022

Nobody likes a long line to wait for what they're after. Right?

What do you do if the line beside you is much faster? You may stay in your line for a little while because you say to yourself this can't last and as soon as I change then the line will slow down. Eventually, you change because the data becomes overwhelming. A good manager will see the long line and open another checkout so are you doing this for your website visitors? Because this scenario is happening on your website every minute of the day.

Web visitors arrive on your website and the page begins to load. They use the data that they have collected from years of online searches and have formed their own standard of how long they will wait and it should not be a news flash to hear it's not long. Google recommends under 3 seconds.

OK, you've checked your website speed after some basic optimisation but was this a one-off test and you moved on? Well, I want you to think again. You see the speed is going to be dependent on a couple more factors.

One is the current volume of web visitors on the site. You need to optimise the site first then choose a hosting service to handle the traffic you've worked so hard to attract. Not just the traffic you expect in a day but the traffic spikes that happen within a few minutes at peak times of the day.

The other can be more difficult to detect for most website owners if they are not monitoring performance over time. The service that your web host supplies can fall off over time or for a certain period of time. This may be due to them overloading the shared hosting environment with more and more websites or it could be any number of server changes they can make without you knowing.

So monitor your website performance so you can manage your customer's experience.

26/04/2022

What if you treated your website as one of your team members?

If you're managing a team you'll be ensuring they have what they need to do their job now and in the future, as the business grows. To do that you'll be interacting with them on a regular basis to assess their progress and any issues that may be coming up. You'll be providing a good environment that encourages your team to stay with the company and providing professional development to enhance their skills. Are we doing the same for our company websites? From what I've seen this is not the case for most websites.

Usually, the website goes through the build stage and is then put online and forgotten. Yes the quality of the build can help and I'll be going into that in a future post but every website will benefit from a few important ingredients going forward.

INSURANCE: Your company website is an asset so you need insurance but how? You put in place the people and tools that can fix or restore the website in any situation quickly. Some basic essentials are monitoring for required updates, errors, performance and hacks. Backups that have been tested in a full restore situation.

HOSTING: Putting the website in a secure environment with performance in mind for your web visitor. Would you have a brick and mortar store with dirty windows and clutter throughout the store?

CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT: I like to think you need a MAP.
Measure your published changes.
Analyse the data and look for opportunities to improve
Publish those ideas gained from your analysis to test your theory.
This is a never-ending cycle.

Comment below for my e-book "5 Steps to a Winning Website" or ask any questions you may have.

18/04/2022

A business is like a boat...

No matter the size of the boat you'll need some basic items to ensure you stay afloat.

A sound hull, a source of propulsion, a rudder and an ability to navigate. Now that's an optimistic view because you see the ocean is an unpredictable environment and the weather can change at any moment so what else should you plan for? A leak in the hull or a strong current that pushes you off course. Possibly even pirates that will take over your boat.

What pirates? how does that relate to business? You see business security has never been so important because now that we're online we are more exposed to all kinds of threats.

One of our services is to protect our client's websites from hackers. In many cases, business stops if their website is not up and running. Your website also impacts our reputation and trust with customers. From my experience, most business websites are built and then forgotten. I feel that is not only a huge risk but a missed opportunity for business growth. I'd like to see you treat your website as one of your team members giving it professional development and support to grow.

Preparation now will save you time, money and frustration. The old saying "An apple a day keeps the doctor away"

There are more threats than websites hackers so please share the ways you protect your business so others can learn from your experience.

13/04/2022

"You can't manage what you don't measure" — Peter Drucker

Your Google universal analytics is ending on July 1, 2023, so you should activate your Google Analytics 4 for your website now. I hear you say now, why the rush?

Installing Google Analytics 4 now will give you a bank of 12 months of data at switch over. Plus it will give you a chance to adapt to the new system.

The best part is that it will take less than a few minutes to activate. If you're not sure how then for this month only we can do it for you for free. Book a discovery call via our website.

05/10/2021

Is your inbox filled with junk emails from people you don’t know? Emails from people who scrape your address from LinkedIn to push their services on you? I know mine has been.

What's the conversion rate of this method? Is it worth the time? Is this method now socially accepted? Or am I missing something?

28/09/2021

Don't let these 3 mistakes keep you from reaching your SEO goal.

In a recent Entrepreneur Magazine article (linked to in the comments), Zac Almeida reports that some businesses skip over these 3 important SEO guidelines, decreasing their visibility.

Are you being patient and committed to your SEO strategy? Are you performing proper keyword research? Are you including backlinks in your content?

Zac gives the short and sweet of guidelines you need to follow in your strategy so that you can start driving more traffic to your site.

We found Zac’s article to be clear and concise and we think you will too! Check it out and let us know what you think by commenting below.

22/09/2021

HTTP or HTTPS. Pasting passwords. Resolution of images.

Have you given these any thought? These are a few of the many best practices that should be on your site.

They affect the way your visitors interact with your site. The way they perceive the security of your site. And the tampering potential of your site.

So, how do you know the “best practices” score of your site? By using Google Chrome’s Lighthouse (Press F12 on your browser – et voila!).

It’ll give you a score, things to improve on, and an explanation for each. It’s an all-in-one website feedback tool. Aren't you curious to see where you rank?

Find this tip helpful? There’s more where that came from!

Sign up for our monthly newsletter with the link in the comments below. You’ll get website/business tips sent straight to your inbox!

21/09/2021

Do you brush your teeth every day? Do you get regular oil changes?

Of course, you do. Because you have a proactive posture. You’re acting in advance of a negative situation instead of responding to it. You’re avoiding the cavity and the car trouble.

How about… checking your website regularly? Do you let it carry on by itself and hope for the best? Or are you constantly monitoring every plugin update?

Are you of the mindset that you’ll fix it if and when it breaks? Which, for all you know, could be... never?

We want to know how YOU think. Tell us in the comments below.

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Airtight Site

24/05/2022

09/05/2022

03/05/2022

26/04/2022

18/04/2022

13/04/2022

05/10/2021

28/09/2021

22/09/2021

21/09/2021

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