While hiring a professional web design team, it is important to ask a few key questions to ensure they’re the right fit for your business. A web designer is going to communicate your business’s image and message online to reach additional potential customers.

It is important the web designer has experience, skills and resources to get the job done successfully. When choosing a web designer, here are a few key questions to ask:

Five Questions to Ask a Web Designer

1.) How will I make changes to my site?
Content management systems will allow you to make changes to your website easily on your own time. Some companies will have a 48 hour turn-around time and when you need something changed quickly (such as a 24-hour special, closed notice, etc.), it is vital to update your website in a timely manner with that information. Be sure to ask if there is a training session for the content management system as well!

2.) Do I own my site if we part ways?
Be sure to not toss money away! The website purchased should be owned by you when it has been completed. Should the relationship with the web design company turn sour, ownership will allow you to transfer it to another web host easily. Admin access for the content management system, cPanel and FTP access are all required to make this transition go as smoothly as possible.

3.) Is my site responsive?
Being able to access all areas of a website on a mobile device is extremely important to customers. If a website is hard to use on mobile devices, there is a possibility of customers navigating to another website. Additionally, a responsive website is important to search engine optimization.

4.) Do you have examples of work in my industry?
Having a designer that has worked with clients in your industry could be beneficial to you. The end result is also going to depend on communicating your business goals, what functions you would like to see on your website and what you find to be important. If you’re looking for a team that can achieve a specific look, feel or function, the first meeting is the perfect time to ask this question.

5.) What is the expected launch date?
Depending on the scope of the project, the timeline can be anywhere from a week to a month. All design teams have different methods. Communicate your timeline to the design and programming team and ask for a to-do list to complete (website photos, content, hosting and domain information, etc.). Everyone on board need to have the same launch date goal to keep things on track.

The process of choosing a design team can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be! Ask questions, communicate your wants, needs and goals. Leave us a comment and let us know what questions you ask your web designer!

Welcome to Day One of Advanced Digital’s 12 Days of Christmas Blog Series. Every other day, from now until Christmas Eve, you can expect a new post spanning many topics from Search Engine Optimization, to Web and Graphic Design as well as some Marketing information. We hope you join us this December!

We kick off this series talking about the importance of hashtags. Whether you love them and find yourself using them in your every day life for every one of your social media updates just because they’re fun, or you hate them as you don’t see the point in them: there is no denying that hashtags are an integral part of using social media.

Hashtags are utilized on many social media platforms in this day and age. From Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to Pinterest, Google+, and Youtube, the likelihood of you running into a piece of content without hashtags is very slim. But why are they important and what benefit do they bring to your business?

When clicking a hashtag on any of the aforementioned platforms, you’ll find many other public posts that include the same hashtag. For example, we use “#ADTipTuesday” on all of our Tuesday tip posts throughout our social media platforms. Not only will hashtags provide users with content relevant to their search, but it allows customers to track a specific news story or event easily.

The Do’s and Don’t of Hashtags

DO Keep it Relevant. There are many generic hashtags that receive a lot of views, and while it may be tempting to tack on a tag or two to your post in hopes of getting a little more traffic, consistently doing this can set the precedence that your brand cares more about the number of likes rather than the quality of content and conversion.
DO Research Your Brand Hashtag. Research the hashtags relevant to your brand. Has the hashtag been used previously? Is it going to help get your brand seen on social media? It is important to keep these stats in mind when generating content and choosing hashtags on your platforms.
DO Be Mindful of the Platform. You may notice Facebook posts have less hashtags being used, however Instagram and Twitter uses them more frequently. It is okay to have personality when using hashtags! A photo of a cup of coffee may have the tag, “MondayMotivation” or even “InstaGood”.
DON’T Tag Full Sentences. It is important to tag only relevant keywords in your description or comments. Tagging full sentences, while quirky or fun between friends in conversation, can become a nuisance or hard to read in a professional setting..
DON’T Over Do It. As mentioned previously, tagging relevant keywords is going to help your impressions and conversion. Choose the keyword phrases that fit the message of your content. You may track or use 30 hashtags, however, they don’t need to be used all at once.

It is important to be consistent with your brand hashtag across all social media platforms you use. Users should be able to hop from searching your brand on Instagram to Google+ and still find the same quality of content.

Follow us on Instagram for additional 12 Days of Christmas!

With over 46,000 plugins to make website maintenance easier, WordPress is our choice for a content management system. The plugins we use depends on our client’s needs, from booking calendar, volunteer sign-ups to photo galleries. Here are our team’s choices of plugins when we first set up your WordPress powered website:

Our Top Three WordPress Plugins

Wordfence Security – Wordfence’s constant updating feed keeps your website from getting hacked. The live traffic view tracks users that have navigated your website, the pages they navigated to, etc. Be sure to add your email to the notifications to receive updates on invalid logins, major site changes, and more. Recommendation: Avoid using “Admin” as a username to increase the security of your website.

Yoasts’ WordPress SEO – Our search engine optimization analyst’s go-to SEO plugin is Yoast. Duplicate titles and descriptions can cause problems for your search engine optimization. By using Yoast you’re able to set a unique title and description for your pages and posts. Other features include no-index, no-follow, canonicalization and more!

Total Cache – The speed of your website is extremely important to your search engine optimization; test the speed of your website by going to Google’s Page Speed to see how your page performs. Install this plugin, refresh and see the result!

What are some of your favorite SEO plugins? Let us know in the comments or on our Facebook. For additional reading, read our post on The Basics of a Website and get started today!

Creating a new website can sometimes be intimidating and you may not be sure exactly where to start. With this week’s blog post in our Back to Basics series, we will talk about a few key components we take when it comes to launching a brand new website.

• Choose a Domain: Businesses want to avoid using .net or .org as users are typically going to type .com first; if the other extensions are available, you can register those as well, but it is important to keep in mind, if you do not have .com registered you could be losing potential clients. It is important for your domain name should be short and easy for users to remember.
• Choose a Hosting Company: It is important to find a hosting company with reliable up-time and quick response time if a problem on your website arises. With over 15 years of experience, our programmers have found that LiquidWeb offers the best plans and support perfect for every one! Advanced Digital, Inc. offers premium hosting services, contact us for more information.
• Build Your Website: Our programmers recommend using a content management system, such as WordPress, to build your website. With an extensive list of themes available and plug-ins to make your website function just the way you want it, very little HTML knowledge is needed when creating pages and blog posts.
  • Photography: Using stock photography is a great resource when building your website. However, if you’re selling products, you want to be sure to use have professional photos taken and edited. For additional learning, check out our article on the Do’s and Don’ts of Images for a few of our favorite resources.
  • Contact Form: Users should be able to contact you very quickly without struggling to find your information. Be sure to have a specific contact page, with a form, your phone number a map of your location, etc.
  • Search Engine Optimization: It is important that all of your website’s pages are optimized with titles, descriptions and link titles.
  • Responsive: With potential customers browsing on their mobile devices, you want to make sure your website is built so all information is available to them.
  • Launch: That’s right! Once your website is built and ready to go it is time to finally hit that launch button! Changing settings on your domain can result in propagation time of 24-48 hours.
• Add Google Analytics and Monitor Performance with Web Master Tools: Keep an eye on the number of visitors your website, bounce rate, keywords users are using to find your page in search results, set up goals and more! This is one step you don’t want to miss.

Once your website has been launched, you’re ready to start working on your search engine optimization! If you’re looking for a custom designed website, our team has over 15 years of experience in design and programming.

Search Engine Optimization requires consistent work to help increase your organic rankings on Google, Bing and Yahoo. With the multiple tactics there are a few common mistakes you could be making if you’re doing your own search engine optimization.

Duplicate Titles or Descriptions – Titles and descriptions inform users, and search engines, about a specific page on your website. Title tags are 60 characters and are found across the top of your browser tab, as well as the first line on your organic search result. It is important that when creating titles that the main topic be at the beginning. The character limit of a description is longer, but still needs to be clear, concise and grab the attention of users as people will likely base which website they opt to select from for their search query based on your descriptions.

Avoiding Keyword Research Tools – This brainstorming session will give you an idea of what you should be focusing on for your website. Failure to spend time researching will likely result in your organic search results not performing as they should in relation to your direct competitors due to lack of effective keyword usage. A few of our favorite keyword research tools include Moz, Google AdWords and Google Analytics. For additional learning, check out our article on keyword research.

Not Optimizing Images and Links – Bots are unable to visually your image, but by using descriptive alt tags, you’re informing search engines what your image is and what it is about; the content surrounding the image also helps bots. A link’s title tag should inform what the page you’re linking to is about.

Keyword Stuffing – 15 years ago, adding keywords you wanted to rank for all of your website, links, images, etc., shot your organic ranking to the top of the results. Now, that falls under black hat SEO tactics and search engines can remove you from the results all together as a penalty. Your website’s content should be organic, relevant and unique to your business.

Non-Descriptive Links – Much like the image and link optimization, it is important for the link text to be descriptive of the page it is leading to. Avoid using terms such as “Click here” or “Learn more” and rather use the term you are referring to in relation to what you are linking to, i.e. “flower arrangements”.

By consistently adding relevant content, link building, evaluating and maintaining your website you could be on your way to an increase in your organic rankings in a legitimate way.