2 EASY steps to a Better Website – Guaranteed 

 August 24, 2021 | WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT 

Today’s blog talks about what pages to optimize and why!
It’s an easy read with BIG results. (Only 2 mins and 10 seconds to read)

ANALYTICS are NUTS! As a small business owner, who the heck has time to dive through all those nitty gritty details?

GOOD NEWS! You don’t have to. There are only two pages you need to be looking at to get the most from your website data. In today’s blog, we will discuss those pages, and what to do about it.

GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT: The most visited page after your homepage tells you what people need to know from your business website.  As an example.  Without fail, the next most viewed page for our Charter Fishing Clients is always, “Rates”.  People looking for fishing charters are price shopping generally.  This means we need to be sure the rates page looks awesome and is clear.  No need to hide the prices.

PROVIDE GREAT CONTENT: If you have content such as downloadable forms, or a blog, pay attention to what gets downloaded or viewed the most.  This will allow you to optimize that page.  Make it easy for your visitors to do what they came to your website for.

In summary, find out which two pages of your website are most viewed.  Find out what content is most downloaded or read.  Make those areas the best part of your website.  If you do this, everything else will fall into place.

Reach out to us with any questions, we are always interested to talk shop. 

Cheers,
JaYo Designs

Website Speed

 August 05, 2021 | WEB DEVELOPMENT

GREAT! You’ve got a website, but is it fast? How do you even know if your website is fast enough? Great question. In today’s blog, we are going to share the basic steps to know your website speed, and how to help it load faster. So, Let’s dive into it.

Step 1: Go to https://gtmetrix.com/ and type in your website domain. We are not affiliated with them, we just like to use them to test all our client websites on a regular basis.

Step 2: See what your score is. If you are scoring anything less than “A”, you could be in trouble. Keep reading to find out why.

Based on website analytics from some real geniuses in the tech world, website visitors will leave a page if it doesn’t load fast. Like, real fast. As in, loaded in less than 2 seconds.

This means that each time a visitor lands on your website, a countdown begins and they are moments away from leaving your site and going to your competitors. How do we get this sorted?

Start by looking at how your website was built. Did you build it yourself, or did you pay a company to do it? If a company built it, give them a ring and just say, “Hey, my website loads slow, what’s up with that?” They should be able to explain to you what they can do to fix it. Keep in mind, I said fix. If your site is slow, something needs to change. This should ideally not cost you anything.

If you built it yourself, here are the basics items that can help keep site load speed to zippy status. First off, are you keeping everything up to date? You’ve got to keep your plugins and addons up to date for optimum function. Next in line, your photos. Keeping photos optimized and resized. (You did get your photos optimized prior to uploading, didn’t you?) When you upload a photo, it may be WAY bigger than it needs. Your new Iphone shoots pictures with a file size so large, it will load crazy slow. You can fix this by resizing your photos, or using a plugin to help the load speed. SOmething like Lazy Loading goes a long way to help.

Work With People You Like

 January 11, 2021 | WEB DEVELOPMENT

IMPORTANT! Only Work With People You Like

Life and business are hard enough.  

In today’s post, we are going to be talking about working with people you like. This is near and dear to my heart because I have worked with a few people I really didn’t like. Even when I knew it was a bad idea, I just kept going. There were always reasons: good skill set, seemed like it could work out, we were making money so why rock the boat, no other good options… As you can see, plenty of reasons to try and make it work.

Don’t Do It! 

Your business is super important, and the future success of your business depends on your ability to drive the company in the right direction. 

It becomes super hard to do that when you’ve got an anchor hanging off the back of the boat. 

“What are some red flags to tell me I may be working with a jerk”, you ask!?  Great question!  You’ll know you’re working with someone who may be a problem in the future if their responses to your inputs are not trying to learn more and understand.  Here is what a crappy response can look like:

• You: “The contact form didn’t work properly for one of our customers, can you please verify it’s ok and working right?”
• Developer: “It works fine for us, we just tested it.”

THIS RESPONSE SUUUUUCKS!  Your developer needs to be very interested in the experience of your customers, not just what his intern said was happening on their computer.  

As you improve and build your internet presence, make sure you are on the lookout for value and service.

That is where the magic happens. 

Cheers!

How to Choose a Website Developer

 January 9, 2021 | WEB DEVELOPMENT

Hiring a website developer can feel like a scary task. You’ve made the decision to have something made, something which will represent not just your company, but also you as a business owner. Yeah, it’s an important thing! In this post, we will discuss in gritty honesty the things you need to be looking for in your search for a website development company.

Full Questions list provided at the bottom:

First things first: Decide what your website needs to do!

• Attract visitors, get them to call you, showcase your awesome photos, get emails…  You get the idea.

Clearly define your purpose. You need to do this because this will be the first thing you can ask your website company when you interview them. You ask, “how will you help us accomplish XYZ?” They should be happy and excited to answer that question. If they’re not, RUN!  

THEY HAVE ONE JOB!!! If they wont answer this now, the relationship isn’t going to get better. 

Hopefully you got a nice answer and learned some in the process.

You can talk about the budget with them. They should be able to give you a specific range and tell you why. You want to see organization and clarity in all responses, but especially in pricing. It can be easy to have cost creeping up in this area, and that is uncool! If they cannot tell you a price now, do you really trust them to be helpful in the future? 

(Humblebrag: Jayo Designs pricing is ALL upfront and clearly stated. www.jayodesigns.com)

Last but not least, what does your gut say?  Do they seem responsive?  Does it feel like they actually care? Be sure you’re only working with people you want to work with.

As usual, I’ll close this by offering to answer any and all questions you may have about your internet presence. At JaYo, we are total website nerds and love to talk shop.  Contact us anytime. 

Cheers!

Questions to ask:

1. How will you help us achieve XYZ goals for the website and what other things do you recommend?
2. How long before the first draft of the website can be done?
3. What is the process like for revisions?  How do we agree on what the “Final Revision is?”
4. What is the pricing structure?

            a. What is pricing for revisions and updates to the finished website
   

5. How do you feel about the people you talked to?