Yet, when you find yourself staring a new year in the face, it can be tough to decide on a resolution (much less multiple resolutions.) Should this be the year you take up yoga or kickboxing? Have you been meaning to get into meditation? After 2020, we could all use some TLC.

If you’re like most of the people we’ve talked to, you’re focusing on personal health and improvement. But why stop there?

This year, why don’t you resolve to improve your website? Whether it’s for a passion project, hobby, or small business, your website could use a little TLC too. Use the following suggestions to improve your site and attract more visitors.

A New Year’s Website Checklist

1 – Contact Information

You want your customers to trust you. If they don’t, do you honestly think they’ll do business with you?

What kind of image are you projecting if you don’t provide any contact information so they can reach out to you with questions? Contact information provides security for potential customers — it lets them know that you’re available if they have any concerns.

There are many ways to include your information on your site. Consider adding it to the footer of each web page, creating a dedicated “Contact Us” page, or creating a pop-up form where people can submit questions.

2 – Security

People will be alerted if your website isn’t secure and that leads to a loss of trust. Would you feel comfortable providing your personal or financial information to a site that’s been flagged as “Not Secure”?

Websites that don’t have SSL enabled are marked as “Not Secure” across many browsers. If that’s not the first thing you want people to see when they type your domain name into their browser bar, invest in SSL.

3 – Call-to-Actions

Attention spans aren’t quite what they used to be. Instead of making site visitors guess and figure out what they need to do on your site, tell them what to do.

Want someone to sign up for your email list? Ask them via a signup form. Want them to purchase your goods? Include a “Buy Now” button with your product descriptions.

4 – Domain Name

Having the right domain name can make a world of difference for your website and your business.

Make sure your domain name is easy to understand and avoid hyphens and creative spellings. If someone were to hear your domain name on the radio and not see it written out, could they make it to your site? If your domain name doesn’t pass the “radio test” consider updating it to something better.

5 – Content

Content is essential to websites and the Internet as we know it.

If you want to sell your goods, connect with your customers, and rank higher in search engine results then your website needs content. This can include a blog, notices and updates about your business, new product listings, and more.  

What makes for good website content? We go into detail on that in this post.

6 – SEO

Don’t let the name fool you, search engine optimization isn’t about optimizing search engines at all. SEO is all about optimizing your website so that it appears higher up in search engine results.

Wouldn’t it be nice to see your site listed as the first result to a Google query versus having your site stuck on the third page of the results?

Our beginner’s guide to SEO is perfect for getting started quickly.

7 – Reliable Hosting

If your website is down you’re not doing business. It’s that simple.

Don’t settle for a mediocre website host. You can’t afford to take hosting for granted if your business depends on online transactions.

Do your research to find the best hosting package and website host for your needs.

Domain.com offers a variety of web hosting plans to fit your needs, all of which include the features seen below.

8 – Social media

How many people do you know of that aren’t on social media? Likely, very few.

Everyone is on social media these days and they’re connecting with brands and businesses through these platforms. Make sure your website includes social media buttons so that your visitors can connect with you after they’ve left your site, ensuring that you stay top of mind.

9 – Mobile Friendly

Mobile traffic has increased by 222% in the last 5 years. Mobile internet users outnumber desktop internet users, and this is something you must account for when creating and designing your website.

Good website builders offer mobile friendly website templates that you can use and modify to create your site.

10 – Internal Links

Internal linking is part of a well-developed SEO strategy, but we thought it was important enough to single out. An internal link connects one page of your domain, or website, with another page of your domain, or site.

Internal linking helps with the navigation of your website, gently pointing people to related content. It helps with your page authority and ranking power on search engines, too.

If you’ve noticed, we’ve linked other relevant blog posts and website pages throughout this article and that’s what internal linking is all about.

Make Sure Your Site is Ready for 2021

Whether you’re just starting your first website or are a website pro, Domain.com has the tools you need to get online quickly and easily.

Our AI-powered WebsiteBuilder takes the stress out of website creation — just answer a few questions and our intelligent builder starts the design for you.

Need an extra hand with getting online? Our experts are here to help you build a beautiful site from start to finish.

A large part of that success consists in understanding the performance of your cumulative digital efforts. You have to take stock of everything you’ve done, and beyond that, your total digital presence.

You may think that means reviewing the actions and things you directly control online, like your website, your social media profiles, and your on-page SEO. And you’d be correct… to an extent.

Don’t forget that you can’t control the entirety of the conversation around your business on the Internet. If you want to audit your total online presence, look to the areas you can’t directly manage, too.

We’re going to discuss the various parts of a total online audit in this post, and we’ll point you in the direction of some tools that can help you accomplish the task. A comprehensive audit takes time, but is vital to your business’ online success, so if you can’t dedicate any time to an audit, consider hiring an expert who can help.

Performing a Complete Online Audit of Your Web Presence.

You should go into your audit with a plan, and you should be able to put one together using this guide. So let’s get to it.

We’ll be learning a lot about performing a web presence audit today, like:

• The issues it can help you uncover and solve.
• The items and areas to be reviewed in your audit.
• The insights you’ll gain into your online presence [Office1] and business post-audit.

Why You Should Perform a Total Online Presence Audit.

There seems to be this recurring trope in Hollywood — the one about someone who’s born lucky, or has some magical event befall them, and then everything they do works out in their favor. Do you know the one?

Somehow, that mentality has gotten into entrepreneurship. We hate to break it to you, but that happens in the movies and only in the movies.

If you’re an entrepreneur, business owner, blogger, or side-hustler, you’re going to have to make your own luck. And fair warning: It’s going to look a lot less like luck and a lot more like dedication and hard work. But the end result — success on your own merit, is so worth it.

The first step to success is understanding your business.  

Do you know who your ideal customer is? Can you describe your marketing funnel(s)? Wondering why some competitors perform better than you do for certain keywords in SERPs? Or why certain pages of your site have high bounce rates?

These are all questions you need to know the answers to, and your audit will help you gain these crucial insights.

Tracking Your Audit Findings.

Before getting started, make sure you have a way to track and record your audit and your findings.  

If you use a cloud-based solution for record-keeping, then you can quickly and easily share your findings with anyone who needs to access them.

Depending on your preference, we offer and recommend both GSuite, which comes with all the Google tools you know and love, like Gmail, Sheets, and Docs, and Office 365, that offers all the familiarity of Outlook, Excel, and Word plus a host of other features.  

Parts of a Complete Online Presence Audit.

Now that you have your tracking tools at hand it’s time to plan your audit. It will consist of reviewing the following areas:

• Website
  • SEO analysis, both on and off-page
  • Content
  • Analytics
• Marketing and digital campaigns
• Social media platforms and profiles
• Local directories
• Review sites
• Google My Business Listing

As we move through each section we’ll tell you what to look for and provide you with a set of questions to guide you. Feel free to add your own as you go.

How to Audit Your Website.

Your website is your home base online. It’s where you drive customers and generate business, so you need to treat it well.

We really like that John Jantsch, of Duct Tape Marketing, recommends starting website audits with your homepage. He writes that, “If you find issues on your homepage, odds are you’ll find issues throughout the rest of your website as well.”

When you review your site, you’ll discovers answers to things like:

• What actions are your site visitors taking?
• Where are people clicking on your homepage?
• What landing pages receive the most traffic?
• How long are people staying on site?

And all of these insights can be used to further refine your site and improve your marketing funnel.

A website audit, in and of itself, is a large but fruitful task, so don’t hesitate to ask for help from a professional if you need it. We wrote an entire guide dedicated to auditing your website, and it includes tips and the tools you’ll need to accomplish it. Check it out here. This guide also includes the instructions for performing your on-page SEO reviews. In the next section, we’ll cover how to review your off-page SEO, or SEO factors that aren’t on your website.

How to Audit Off-Page SEO.

If you haven’t heard of SEO yet, let us explain. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Don’t let the name fool you though, when performing SEO tasks you won’t be directly affecting any search engines. Instead, you’ll be optimizing different factors on your site so that they rank higher in search engine result pages, or SERPs.

Along with those website SEO factors, referred to as on-page SEO, there’s also off-page SEO.

Off-page SEO mainly consists of building back links to your site from other online sources. That could mean a variety of things, like linking back to your site from social media or other blogs and sites. In fact, backlinks can be bucketed into three general groups:

• Natural Links
  • Links made to your site organically by others. Like if someone were to link off to your site in a blog post they write without you having to ask them to do it.
• Manually Built Links
  • These are links that appear on 3^rd party sites or platforms, but you’ve had a hand in getting them there. This could mean you’ve asked a customer or friend to share it, or maybe you hired an influencer to do a social media campaign that links back to your site.
• Self-created Links
  • These are the bad boys of backlinks, and we recommend you use caution before plastering your site links all over the Internet. Search engines don’t look fondly on spammy links, so if you’ve inserted them where they don’t belong — like random blogs and websites that don’t relate to you in some meaningful way — you could be doing yourself a disservice. Only post your links where it’s appropriate and makes sense.

You can use Google Search Console, a free tool, to audit your links. Use Google’s instructions to start your free account and then you can download a list of all your backlinks. Then, if you can, remove any that fall into “spammy” territory.

How to Audit Social Media.

Your social media profiles comprise a good portion of your total online presence. Social media is a place to connect with and grow an audience, identify new business opportunities, and tell your story the way you want it told.

Auditing your social media can help you find new audiences, improve relationships with existing ones, direct people to your site to transact, and more.

You’re going to want to start your social media audit by tracking down all your social media profiles. In your Google Doc or Excel Spreadsheet, record the platform (like Instagram, Facebook, etc.) and the link to your profiles. Also include:

• Your social media username, or handle.
• What your goals are for the channel.
• How frequently you post to support those goals.
• Top performing content.
• Information on your audience or demographic.

Then, stop and reflect on the different social media platforms and channels. Are they supporting your goals as-is? What needs to be refined? Are there any you don’t need to be on?

Remember, it’s not about being everywhere, it’s about being where it counts, or where your audience is.

How to Audit Marketing and Digital Campaigns.

Are you running any marketing or digital campaigns?

Those should be part of your complete web presence audit, too. As you compile your different campaigns, make sure you’re clear on their goals. Create S.M.A.R.T. goals for each of your campaigns.

Once you know the goals of your campaigns, you’ll want to review their looks to make sure they’re on-brand. Is your type consistent? Are your logos the same?

Check out this thorough guide from FlypChart to help you analyze the headlines and copy of your campaigns to make sure everything is support of your goals.

How to Audit Online Reviews.

When it comes to online reviews, there’s not much that can be done to change any that exist, but it’s a good idea to audit them anyway.

Auditing your online reviews, on sites like Yelp or Facebook, can help you keep your finger on the pulse of what people are saying regarding your business.

Lots of positive feedback? You must be doing something right.

Too much negative feedback? Use the critiques and criticism you see to improve your business and after doing so, encourage people to leave new, positive reviews if they’d had a good experience.

No reviews at all? That doesn’t mean people don’t like your business, but it may mean that you’re not exactly memorable enough. You can work to implement a word-of-mouth-marketing strategy that can help increase what people say about you — online and off.

How to Audit a Google My Business Listing.

Have you set up a Google My Business Listing (GMBL) for your business?

If not, you’re missing out. Google is by far the most popular search engine, so it’s good to have a GMBL. These listings have all of your important business information like your hours of operation, contact information, and website links, along with the ability for customers to leave reviews on your listing.

We recommend using Google’s guide to setting it up, or making sure yours it set up correctly, as part of your audit.

Audit Your Web Presence to Better Your Business.

Total online audits have a lot of parts to them, it’s true. We don’t expect that you’ll be able to complete your audit in one day, and that’s ok.

Break your audit down into manageable chunks and record your findings and results as you go so that you don’t forget where you left off.

If you need help, don’t hesitate to contact an expert.

So, are you taking advantage of that fact to get in front of your audience?

We hate to break it to you, but if you’re not, you’re at a disadvantage. 

In this post, we’ll explain how your eCommerce efforts can benefit from email marketing. We’ll provide some tips on growing and segmenting your email lists, give a few pointers on email design, and briefly discuss your email cadence.

Using Email Marketing to Support eCommerce

Are you finding that despite your best efforts you aren’t making the profits that you’d like from your website?

It’s a tough reality that many business and website owners face. And it’s understandable considering you probably don’t have a six or seven-figure marketing budget. How are you supposed to compete with the big guys?

We recommend using email marketing and adding a sign-up form on your website. According to MarketingSherpa, “More than seven in 10 (72 percent) U.S. adults indicate a preference for companies to communicate with them via email.” There’s a lot of opportunity in that number, so don’t miss out.

Why use email marketing?

Let’s consider why people are visiting your website in the first place. 

To start, they have to be interested in you, which is great. They’re visiting your site because they want to learn more about you or they want to purchase from you. By providing an email sign-up form on site you’re giving them an opportunity to stay connected with you after they leave. 

You’re also giving them an easy way to keep you top-of-mind so they can come back to your site in the future.

Oh, and did we mention that email marketing has a return of $38 for every dollar that you spend on it?

How to Use Email Marketing on Your Site

Here are two things you must do if you want to make the most of email marketing on your site.

1. Make your sign up form easily accessible.
   1. Having a sign-up form for your email list on your homepage is great. But having it available across all the pages of your website is even better. Many people arrive at websites after finding them in an online search. Oftentimes, these people aren’t taken to your home page, but land deeper within your site, like on a blog post. Don’t miss out on capturing their email addresses by only providing a sign-up form on one page of your website.
2. Communicate value.
   1. Big, blocky letters that scream, “Sign up for my list!” aren’t cutting it anymore. By providing more context and value in your call-to-action (CTA) for people to join your list, you better the chances that they’ll be interested and driven to sign up. Wouldn’t you be more inclined to sign up for a list that promised, “Discounts, deals, and insider info — for subscribers only!”?

Designing Your Emails

Take a second to think of some well-known businesses and brands, like McDonald’s or Coca-Cola. Mickey D’s golden arches and Coke’s red colors are instantly recognizable. 

If you were to get an email from one of those businesses in a blue and gold color and written in Comic Sans, would you open it? Probably not, because that doesn’t match the idea we have of those brands and you might think they’re spam emails. 

Spam emails are a huge issue that people deal with every day, and you don’t want them to think your emails are spam, too. 

To avoid that, try doing the following:

• Use a template.
  • Consistency is key. You want your subscribers to immediately recognize your emails and know who they’ve come from. Don’t change your colors, logo, and branding on each and every email as your customers won’t know what to expect and may unsubscribe from your emails thinking they’re spam.
• Pro-tip: Make sure your website name and domain name match, too! When they see your domain name in their inbox, they’ll recognize your trusted business. 

Your key takeaway should be that the more consistency you can provide for your customers the better they’ll remember you.

What should I include in my emails?

If you’re wondering what to put in your emails to drive sales, we can help with that.

Here are some ideas that you can use to help strengthen your relationship with your email subscribers so that they’ll be more invested in you and your site.

• Coupons and offers
  • Everyone loves to feel special. Let your subscribers know that they made the right decision to let you into their inbox by giving them a special discount or coupon to use on your site.
• Expertise and know-how
  • Are you the expert in your field or about what you sell? Show off those smarts! Use your email to convey interesting, valuable information about your products or services to capture your audience’s attention and inspire trust in you.
• Images
  • Use images in your emails to help convey what words can’t. If you’re selling products and talking about them in your emails then showcase a few.
• Clear CTA
  • Use buttons in your emails to provide clear, distinct call-to-actions. Want someone to purchase a product through a link in your email? Label it “Buy Now” so there’s no confusion on their part about what you’d like for them to do.

How Frequently and When Should I Email?

Some days and times are better for sending email marketing campaigns than others. However, finding the times that are best for you involves some trial and error. 

Your audience may prefer to open emails after work hours or before they start their day. If you’re using an email marketing service, you’ll have an opportunity to review your email performance and stats, and can determine when most people are opening your emails. Use this data to inform your future email campaigns. 

When it comes to email cadence, or the frequency at which you send email newsletters, there’s one rule you need to follow: Don’t inundate your subscribers. Start slow, emailing them weekly or bi-weekly and you can increase your cadence from there. 

As you change your email cadence, keep an eye on your stats and reporting. Look for patterns in the data — do people stop opening your emails when you send more often or do they mark them as spam? Those are big indicators that you need to send less frequently. 

Email Marketing and Websites Work Together to Boost eCommerce

When it comes to business, you need to be where your customers are. Meet them in their inbox and provide them with information and links back to your site. 

Email marketing helps you build a rapport with your customers (and potential customers) and can bring them back to your site to transact. 

Do you use email marketing as part of your eCommerce strategy? What does or doesn’t work for you? We’d love to know, so comment below!

Have you started making your lists and checking them twice? Nailing down who gets what, whether they’ve been naughty or nice?

You’re probably planning to spend time with family and maybe you’re this year’s host.

What does it take to be a host for the holidays? Quite a bit!

You should be able to provide food and drink and most importantly, have a place that can accommodate all the friends and family coming over to celebrate. No one wants to have Thanksgiving at Uncle Jimmy’s house where there’s standing room only (but no one has the heart to tell Uncle Jimmy.)

Why are we discussing website hosting this holiday season?

Well, website hosting is a lot like regular hosting. We’ll explain.

Your web host is the physical location where your website lives and your domain name is the address that leads to that location.

When people visit your site it’s just like people visiting your home. If they can’t all fit inside then some will end up waiting, others will leave instead of uncomfortably waiting, and they’ll have a bad overall experience.

So this holiday season, if you’re planning on running sales and offers to attract more customers, consider reviewing your hosting package first. Make sure all the extra visitors can “fit” into your site to ensure that your website doesn’t go down during this critical time.

Domain.com’s hosting packages

Here at Domain.com, we offer multiple hosting packages to make sure you have the best fit for your site. Our hosting is powerful and reliable (over 99.9% uptime!) and the plans are scalable so they can grow with you and your site traffic.

Our Basic Hosting plan is perfect for a simple website and one domain name. If you’re not expecting much traffic to your site this holiday season and don’t run an e-commerce site, this plan is a good fit for you. You’ll still receive unlimited storage, free SSL, and more.

If you have multiple sites or are planning on creating multiple sites as you grow your business then you shouldn’t settle for anything less than our Deluxe Hosting plan. This hosting plan also comes with free SSL, unlimited storage, 25 databases, and 25 FTP logins.

Are you a web pro or are your sites heavily trafficked? Our Ultra Hosting plan is the best solution for you. You’ll receive an unlimited amount of websites, storage, scalable bandwidth, free SSL, and more. Check it out on our site today.

What if I prefer WordPress hosting?

You’re in luck because we offer that, too.

You can create your site with WordPress and enjoy unparalleled speed, security, and support with Domain.com.

When you choose one of our WordPress hosting packages you’re choosing to make life easier on yourself. That’s because you can select from any of our curated selections of mobile-friendly themes, pre-installed plugins, and a customized user-friendly control panel.

Our WP Starter plan offers unlimited storage and bandwidth, a customized control panel, and the aforementioned themes and plugins. When you choose our WP Essential plan you’ll also receive maximized site speeds, SiteLock professional security, automatic malware removal, and WordPress expert support.

Make sure everyone has a seat at the table

Optimizing your website hosting for the holidays ensures that everyone has a seat at your holiday table, or in this case, website. You don’t want your site to come crashing down during the busiest sales season all because too many people were trying to enter it at once.

So get your domain name and website hosting from Domain.com today, and be the talk of this year’s holiday season.

As the air gets chilly and the year draws to a close, people look to complete their holiday shopping.

How can you take advantage of the season and convince more people to purchase from your e-commerce site versus a competitor’s?

In this post, we’re going to cover 3 ways to make your site more cheerful and less bah-humbug so you can generate more sales this year.

3 ways to ready your site for the holiday season

Be a trusted resource for your site visitors.

How often have you heard someone say that the person they’re shopping for “already has everything they need” or is “impossible to shop for”?

Take the guesswork out of shopping for your customers by compiling a gift guide (or a few) for your site visitors. By doing this, you can direct them to the products that are the best fit for their needs or highlight the products that you most want to sell.

Your gift guides should be clearly titled. There should be no confusion as to whether your gift guide is best suited for someone’s grandmother or great-nephew. Make sure to use keywords and details in your product descriptions to give people enough information to make an informed decision.

And remember that appearances matter! It’s not 1997 anymore — so as much as you might want to throw together a list of goods in a Word doc then post it to your site, don’t do it. There are so many retailers clamoring for attention and sales that you need to stand out.

There are many free graphic design sites and tools that can help you craft a good-looking gift guide. Check out Canva or do a quick internet search to find the tool you like best.

Give your site a festive facelift.

When was the last time your website got a little TLC?

People don’t keep the same clothing or hairstyles forever, and there’s no time like the holidays for updating your site, too.

You don’t have to overhaul your website, but consider updating your main banner image to something better suited to the holiday season. Coca-Cola is a great example of a company that updates its look and feel for the holidays. Before the holidays last year, they updated their site to highlight a seasonal product, Coca-Cola Cinnamon, and their banner image had also been updated to support that.

If you’re thinking, “I can’t afford a photographer or new graphic designer just for this!” then we have good news. The days when you’d need to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for good photography and imagery to use on your site are long gone, so don’t let that be a concern of yours. When creating your new banner image, consider adding a highly-visible coupon code to attract holiday shoppers.

Check out this article for free image resources you can use to spruce up your site.

Be a little less Scrooge and a little more Santa

We’ve talked a lot about shopping this holiday season but that’s not entirely what it’s about. Your customers are looking to purchase gifts for the people they care for as an act of consideration and love.

Help them know that you’re on the same page by dedicating a certain percentage of your holiday sales to charity or a non-profit organization. Even a very small amount, like 1-2% of your profits this time of year, can add up to make a big difference in someone’s life.

Don’t be shy about letting your customers know that part of their purchase is going towards a good cause. It could be the differentiator you need to stand out from the crowd and convince someone to purchase from you instead of your competitor.  

Happy holidays to you and your site

The holiday season is a great time to update your site. Give your visitors what they’re looking for with gift guides, updated seasonal imagery, and another reason to feel good about themselves with a donation to charity.

Do you have other ideas for giving your website a holiday look and feel? Share them with the rest of us in the comments below. 

When you sit down to create a website you face a world of potential.

There’s so much your website can do for you: Increase your sales, grow your customer base, help you network, assist you in your job search, or even build your blog’s readership. And that doesn’t even begin to cover all the benefits of having a website.

But if you want to make the most of your site and reap those rewards, you need to put care and consideration into the planning, design, and creation of it.

Many things go into crafting a beautiful, and most importantly, effective website. It can be hard to see beyond the excitement of finding the perfect domain name and choosing the right website builder, we get it. That’s why today, we’re looking at an oft-overlooked site design feature: typography and font.

How to Choose the Perfect Font for Your Website

Typography and font may not seem like influential web design elements — after all, as long as your site visitors are getting the information they need, who cares what the letters look like and how they’re presented, right? Wrong.

The devil is in the details, dear reader. And these two seemingly small details, typography and font, can make or break your user experience.

What is a font? 

Fonts are “graphical representation[s] of text that may include a different typeface, point size, weight, color, or design.”

Have you heard of Times New Roman or Arial? How about Calibri and Comic Sans MS? Even if you didn’t know them by name, we bet you recognize them by sight. These are all examples of different fonts.

Why do font types matter?

Successful businesses know that different fonts communicate different messages to their audiences. This is why they have to be carefully chosen, no one wants to accidentally send the wrong message to their customer base. We’d be willing to bet that there isn’t a Fortune 100 company out there that hasn’t painstakingly decided on the font they use to communicate with customers.

Did you know that Steve Jobs is often called the “Grandfather of Typography?” While creating his first Mac he also designed and created ten different fonts. He understood the visual power of the written word, and sought to maximize it with newer, better fonts.

While Steve Jobs didn’t invent typefaces (that was more Johannes Gutenberg and his good ol’ printing press) he did revolutionize the world of digital typography by giving us a variety of fonts that allowed us to visually express ourselves. Before he came along, one of the more ubiquitous fonts was Digi Grotesk. Here’s an example from Fonts geek of what it looks like.

Could you imagine a world where the Internet largely used only one font? It’d be a pretty boring place, in our opinion.

Types of Fonts

There are thousands upon thousands of different fonts, but that doesn’t mean that they’re all suitable for web design. In fact, you’re going to want to make sure the font you choose for your website is web safe.

Web safe fonts are easily read by a variety of different Internet browsers. If you’re not using a web safe font, chances are it could display very differently on someone else’s browser as compared to your own.

Different fonts convey different feelings to the reader, so let’s take a look at some common font families that you’ll likely recognize. We don’t recommend using too many different fonts on your site as that could end up looking busy and messy.

Serif Fonts

Serif fonts or typefaces are distinguished by a decorative stroke at the end of the letters (both horizontal and vertical end.)

Popular fonts like Georgia, Century, and Times New Roman are Serif. These are two very well known fonts, and you can’t really go wrong using them. They’re both web safe and easily readable.

Serif fonts are generally used to give an elevated, formal tone to your website.

Sans Fonts

Sans fonts differ from serifs in that the letters have no serifs, or decorative strokes, on them. Did you know that “sans” means without in French?

These letters are without decoration, so they’re legible, modern, and clean. You’ll likely recognize fonts like Helvetica, Verdana, or Lucida Sans.

If your site aims to be modern and straight-forward, try using a Sans font instead of Serif.

Choosing fonts for your website.

Now that you know what fonts you should use for your website, and why they’re important, it’s time to consider the number of fonts you should use on your site.

We recommend choosing three fonts to start with: A primary font, a secondary font, and a tertiary font.

The primary font should be used the majority of the time. The secondary and tertiary fonts are supporting, and there to enhance or call-out specific things on your site.

Check out this visual guide to typography from Canva to see what your fonts can really look on like on your site, and let us know what fonts you chose to use in the comments!

What if we were to tell you that most of that information is incorrect?

Back away from those infographics and stick with us as we explore the psychology of color and how it can affect your website and your brand. 

In this post we’re discussing the following:

• What is color psychology?
• The relationship between humans and color.
• Why color choice is vital to your website and your brand.
• How to decide on the right colors for your site and brand.
• The juxtaposition of colors: how they can work together to achieve your desired effect.

Color Psychology and Your Website

What is color psychology?

“Color psychology is the study of hues as a determinant of human behavior,” says Wikipedia.

Unlike what a lot of online information would have you believe, color psychology is not a science. The color red doesn’t always fill us with passion just as yellow isn’t the universal color of happiness.

However, colors definitely influence us: Our moods, our preferences, and our actions can all be impacted by color.

The Relationship Between Humans and Color 

When light hits our eyes it’s passed through our retinas and understood as color. Our retinas have two kinds of photoreceptors: rods and cones. “Rods work at very low levels of light. … Rods don’t help with color vision, which is why at night, we see everything in a gray scale.” And “cones require a lot more light and they are used to see color.”

There’s no doubt that “…colors are psychological experiences.” When light hits your eye, these waves are “converted into electrical impulses which pass to the brain—eventually to the hypothalamus, which governs the endocrine glands, which in turn produce and secrete our hormones.” Pretty interesting, isn’t it?

What makes a person feel a certain way about a color?

Diversity is real — look around you. Considering how widely people can differ, is there any surprise that colors don’t have the same effects on everyone?   

Keep this in mind when choosing the colors for your website. In order to select the most effective ones, you’ll need to start by identifying and understanding your audience. Here are three things that can influence how your audience feels about different colors.

Age

Did you know that people’s preference for certain colors changes as they age?

Joe Hallock performed a study on color psychology and in it he quotes another scientist named Birren. Birren noted that, “With maturity comes a greater liking for hues of shorter wave length … than for hues of longer wave length.” This means people tend to prefer colors like blue or purple more than colors like red or orange as they age.

Gender

Are boys born inherently preferring the color blue? Are girls naturally drawn to the color pink? Hardly!

According to Smithsonianmag.com, “Pink and blue arrived, along with other pastels, as colors for babies in the mid-19^th century, yet the two colors were not promoted as gender signifiers until just before World War I.” And at first, there was no common consensus on what color was better suited for what gender — many publications listed pink as the manlier color since it derived from red.

“Our preference for a specific color can be related to how we feel in any situation, how we want to feel, and even how we remember certain experiences (to name a few),” says Hallock.

Here are the findings from Hallock’s study relating to color and gender.

Looking at the chart we can see that blue is a favorite color among both males and females. However, take a look at purple, a color that only the females preferred.  

Culture

Does a person’s cultural background inform their color preferences and associations? Absolutely.

For example, in Western cultures, white is a color symbolizing purity or cleanliness. In some Eastern cultures, it’s the color of mourning. Depending on your audience and where your customers are located, you’ll want to be mindful of your color choices. Research the cultural associations of the specific colors you’re interested in using for your brand or site before choosing something simply because it looks good to you.

How to Identify Your Website Audience

We hope that you took the time to work on your ideal customer persona and ideal audience before launching your website. If not, there’s always time to refine and do it now, but don’t delay.

We also recommend using Google Analytics to learn about where your site visitors are geographically located, what devices they use to enter your site, and a variety of other information. Analytics gives you a great amount of insight into the people who traffic your site.

Never used Google Analytics before and don’t have it set up on your website? That’s ok, use this guide and get started with Google Analytics in under a day.

Choosing Colors for Your Website

Now that we understand different factors affecting people’s perception and feelings regarding color, we can start talking about choosing colors for your site and your brand.

Can you answer the following questions?

• Where is my desired audience located?
• What age group am I targeting?
• Am I targeting website visitors or shoppers of a certain gender?

The answers to these questions should help you choose your site colors.

If you are designing a website that sells clothes to kids and pre-teens, opt for brighter colors and a more engaging design. In youth, humans tend to prefer bright colors and this could help you sell more products on your site. This color preference is vastly different from older generations that prefer more subdued blues and softer colors. If you’re in the life insurance business, it doesn’t seem like yellow, orange, or red are the best colors for your website. Choosing colors that your audience isn’t attracted to can lead to lower engagement on your site and fewer clicks.

Test Colors on Your Website

One of the nicest things about websites is that they’re easy to edit and work on nowadays. You don’t need years of schooling under your belt to change a few colors on your site. Any good WebsiteBuilder will give you the option to update colors, usually with just the click of a button.

And chances are, your website won’t be perfectly optimized when it goes live for the first time. This is why we encourage you to perform audits and tests on your website. You always want to know what’s working and what isn’t so you can make any necessary adjustments and get ahead of your competitors.

Here’s a simple test you can run on your website: Updating your button colors.

What’s a button? A website button is usually an HTML element on your website, directly on the user interface, that aims to influence and impact the user experience. Or in other words, they’re the Call-to-Actions you hope your visitors click on. Take a look at a button on Domain.com’s website below, circled in blue.

Pro tip: Want to know where people are clicking most on your site? Try heatmapping!

There are various free and paid heatmapping solutions that you can find by running a quick online search. Heatmapping, quite literally, allows you to see where users are clicking most on your site or how far they’re scrolling by “color coding” your site. It’s a tool that analyzes and visualizes data and layers it over your site (not visible to your visitors) so you can tell what the most important or engaging content on your site is. Keep an eye on your heatmap after updating and testing your button colors so you know which ones work best.

Choosing Colors That Work Together on Your Website

Not all colors play well together. Some colors are complementary, while others don’t bring out the best in one another.

Human brains, interesting things that they are, perceive colors differently based on the colors they’re around. You can dive into that in this article by Canva, where they discuss Henry Matisse, who understood the power and impact colors could have when used together.

Choose The Best, Most Effective Colors for Your Website

Don’t choose the colors for your site based on what you find most attractive and appealing. Chances are, that might not be the same way your audience thinks.

To understand what colors work best on your site, it’s vital that you know your audience and the audience you want to attract.

Use the tips above to create a well-designed site that drives action and performance through use of color.

No website? No problem. Get started with your site today by trying Domain.com’s easy to use WebsiteBuilder.

If you’re like most people, you’re no stranger to online shopping. Each year the number of online shoppers climbs higher and higher, and we don’t see that trend declining any time soon. According to Statista, “Retail e-commerce sales worldwide are forecast to more than double between 2018 and 2023, surpassing 6.5 trillion U.S. dollars in 2023.”

Those statistics make starting an e-commerce website pretty appealing, don’t they? And if you need any extra motivation, think about how nice it’ll be to be your own boss, make your own hours, and be able to work from anywhere in the world.

Starting an e-commerce website

How do you start planning for your online business and creating your e-commerce site?

Before we discuss the elements every e-commerce site should have, let’s talk about getting your other ducks in a row. In order to build the best e-commerce website you can, you’ll need to consider:

• Your ideal customer.
• Your products or services.
• Your differentiator, or what sets you apart from the competition and makes people choose you over them.
• Sourcing your products.
• Inventory.
• Shipping.
• What you’ll name your business and online store (hint: it should match your domain name for consistent branding.)

Once you’ve spent some time on those items, you can get down to business creating a website to sell your goods and services so you don’t miss your piece of the e-commerce sales pie.

First impressions matter

Have you ever landed on a website to browse and do some shopping only to scan it and think, “This doesn’t look legitimate,” and then exited the site? What gave you the impression that the website wasn’t genuine or could be a scam?

Typos and bad grammar, no product descriptions or photos, a lack of contact information, an unsecure website connection, and cluttered design are all reasons we’ve heard for people leaving a website without making a purchase.

Elements every e-commerce website needs

When someone lands on your website, they shouldn’t be driven away by any of the reasons we mentioned above. You want to inspire trust in your site visitors and help them through your marketing funnel so they’ll become customers.

What elements does your e-commerce website need to inspire confidence in your site visitors?

• Security
  • The threat of having your personal and financial information exposed or hacked is real. With SSL, a secure connection is established between your site visitor and your website. That means any information passed from their end to yours (like billing details) is encrypted and kept safe from prying eyes.
• Cluttered design
  • Websites are visual things and humans are visual creatures. You can try creating your own website with code, or make life a little easier on yourself by using a website builder.
  • Domain.com’s WebsiteBuilder offers specific themes already optimized for e-commerce and you can drag and drop elements within these themes to customize your site.
• Product photos and product information
  • Again, humans are visual creatures. You need clear photos that accurately represent your products. You also need a clear description of what you’re selling. If not, you risk people not purchasing or purchasing, being disappointed, and leaving bad reviews for your new online store.
  • Here are some tips on how to photograph the products for your e-commerce store.
• Typos and bad grammar
  • If your online site is full of typos and errant punctuation, you run the risk of someone thinking it’s a fake site that’s set up to phish for your personal or financial information.  
  • There are many free online tools, like Grammarly, that can help you perfect the spelling and grammar for the writing and copy on your e-commerce website.
• Contact Information
  • We know you’re doing your best. Even so, mistakes can happen. On the off chance that there’s an error in an order, your customers will want to know how to contact you. Make sure that information is apparent and available from the moment you launch your site.

From a consumer perspective, your e-commerce site needs these things. Without them, you’re doing yourself and your online business a disservice.

Are you ready to start building your online store?

Check out Domain.com’s Website Builder today!

With WebsiteBuilder, you don’t just get highly-customizable templates. With our business plan you’ll receive dedicated e-commerce features in your builder like:

• E-commerce shopping cart
  • Sell your products across web and mobile devices.
• Inventory management
  • Track your inventory and stock.
• Payment processing
  • Choose from Stripe or PayPal.
• Coupon codes
  • You’ll have the ability to offer coupon codes to your visitors and customers to drive more sales.

So what are you waiting for? Get your domain name and start your online store today!

Each has its benefits and drawbacks, and that’s what we’ll discuss in this post. So stick around and let’s explore your options for website creation together.

Website Creation: DIY or outsource?

That’s a great question and we’re glad you’re asking it. It shows you understand how valuable your website is and that you want to create it the best way possible, and rightfully so. Your website is the hub of your digital presence, it’s where customers go to find you, interact with you, and hopefully, convert. (That means they take whatever action you’d like for them to take on your site, like making a purchase or signing up for the email list on your blog)

If your website is slow, clunky, or hard to navigate then your website visitors won’t be making any purchases or signing up for any lists; instead, they’ll bounce. If you have a high bounce rate, search engines will take note, and your website won’t show up as high in search results moving forward. So it pays to create a good site with your visitors’ preferences and needs in mind and to maintain your website. If you don’t, your site can get buried in the depths of the Internet.

Let’s consider the following points to help determine whether you should DIY or outsource the creation of your website.

What’s the goal of your website?

Have you stopped to consider your website goals? Now is definitely the time. If you don’t consider your goals, how can you create a plan for success?

If you’re a blogger your goal might be to increase the number of visitors to your site and the number of subscribers to your email newsletter. Why? Because those two things can help influence your bottom line by attracting advertisers or companies who’d like to work with you.

If you aren’t sure what your goals are, or how to achieve them, you may want to consider outsourcing your website to someone with experience building similar sites so they can guide you.

Or do you have clear-cut goals and understand how the layout and build of a website can influence them? If so, it sounds like you’re ready to DIY your own site.

Have you created a website before?

Creating websites isn’t as difficult as it was 5, 10, or 15 years ago. You don’t need a 4-year degree and a thorough understanding of JavaScript or any other programming language.

If you’ve created a website before then we have faith that you can do it again! And if you haven’t, we have faith in you, too!

Nowadays, there exists these handy tools called website builders. Website builders, like ours, turn website creation into a quick and painless process. Once you have your domain name and hosting, you can choose a theme for your site. The themes are varied and highly customizable, so you don’t have to worry about your site looking exactly like every other Dick and Jane’s site. You can customize themes by dragging and dropping different elements (like call-to-action buttons or about pages) exactly where you want them. What you see as you build your site is what you’ll get for a finished product.

Are you nervous about creating a website? Don’t be. You can practice by using our free website builder that allows you to create a 6-page site (it’s free with every domain name purchase.)

If after some practice you decide that you’re a website-building rockstar then good for you! As your business grows you may find that you need a larger site, so you can always upgrade your builder and hosting package and continue rocking those site creation skills.

What if you decide that website creation isn’t for you? That’s ok, we can help with our full-service offerings. We understand you may not have the time to devote to a website, so we provide a service that encompasses the following.

Professional Website Services

• Custom 5-page website including content creation for up to 3 pages.
• Drag & drop site builder so you can make changes to the site if you’d like.
• Professional branding because you deserve to look like the pro you are.
• Full website functionality including blog setup, photo gallery, and contact form.

And if that’s not enough, we’ll even help with your marketing.

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Managed Local Lift — working with online listing publishers like Yahoo! to make sure local customers are finding you.
• Content marketing. We’ll write articles and create content to support your organic search rank on major search engines.
• Monthly consultations with an expert because we’re here to help you succeed.

Do you understand the time investment and maintenance a website requires?

As much as we wish websites were set-it-and-forget-it, they’re not. (Although it’d be great, wouldn’t it — having one less thing to worry about?)

Alas, we can’t change the way websites and the Internet work for you, but we do our best to make it easier by providing all the options you’ll need to secure and maintain not just your site, but your domain name, too.

There are some bad people and automated programs online and you need to guard your website against them. You can run manual scans and attack the threats one-by-one, but the fact is, there are a lot more automated bots and programs than there are of you. If you’re new to building websites, you might not realize how essential domain privacy and site security are.

Domain.com offers SiteLock Security products, domain privacy + protection, and more so that you can keep your site free from danger without needing expert advice. But if you’d rather not take any chances and have someone else worry about it, then outsourcing your website is a good option. A 3rd party can help you to build your site, maintain it as needed, and advise you as to the best security options and plans for your site.

If I choose to outsource or purchase a DIFM (do-it-for-me) website package, am I stuck with it forever?

It’s a valid question, and we don’t blame you for wondering.

No, you won’t be.

If you need help getting started with your website, don’t have the time to devote to a website right now, or would prefer someone else maintain your site, then outsourcing is the best solution for you right now. But that doesn’t mean things won’t change.

Maybe you’ll hire some new people soon and have more time available to focus on your website and marketing; in that case, you can take ownership over your site again. You can switch plans with us at Domain.com for a self-managed site or make sure to ask any 3^rd parties about future arrangements prior to outsourcing your site.

There are many ways to build a website

With so many options at your disposal, you really don’t have an excuse for not having a site in this day and age.

Your website is the heart of your digital presence and your domain name is what leads people there. So don’t delay, get started today! 

Hardly.

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, and you need it if you want your website visitors and potential customers to trust you and your site. Stick around as we dive into the details regarding SSL — you’ll learn what it does, how it can affect your SEO efforts, and how it influences people’s trust in your site. 

What is SSL and how does it work?

What exactly is a Secure Sockets Layer? Dictionary.com defines SSL as “… a protocol that uses encryption to ensure the secure transfer of data over the Internet.”

In a nutshell, SSL is a technology that keeps your website visitors’ personal information private (and away from hackers) when they submit it on your website. 

Fun fact: The original SSL technology has since been replaced by an updated version, called TLS or Transport Layer Security, but the collective Internet is so used to the term SSL that we keep using it.

Think of it this way: Whenever someone fills out a form or submits information on a website their information has to digitally travel from point A (where they submitted it) to point B (where it’s stored).

If the website they’re using isn’t secure, or doesn’t use SSL, then hackers can intercept and read the information being transmitted. This is called a man-in-the-middle attack and you won’t know it’s happened until it’s too late. 

Secure websites, or those that have an SSL certificate, are less likely to fall prey to any MITM attacks. When SSL is used, the connection between your computer and the other site is secured and heavily encrypted, making it nearly impossible for hackers to snag any information being passed back and forth. 

Put yourself in your site visitors’ shoes. If you like to do online shopping or banking, wouldn’t you feel better knowing your information is transmitted via a secure connection? We sure would. And a survey by GlobalSign found that “85% of online shoppers avoid unsecure websites.” That’s a lot of business you could be missing out on. 

How to identify a secure site. 

Websites can’t hide their security status. In fact, most browsers will alert you to a site’s security status in the URL bar. 

How do you know if a site isn’t secure?

If you use Chrome, you’ll see an alert that looks like this:

If you click on the information icon, you’ll get the following message:

What will you see on a site that has SSL enabled?

On Chrome, you’ll see a little padlock icon to indicate a secure site. 

If you click on the padlock icon, you’ll receive the following message:

Alternately, you can look to the website’s full URL in the browser’s address bar to find out whether or not it uses SSL.

• Not secure websites: URLs will start with “HTTP://…”
• Secure websites: URLs start with “HTTPS://…,” where the S stands for secure.

Secure websites perform better in search engine results

Since 2014, Google has said that they use HTTPS as a ranking signal in search results. 

What does that mean for you?

If your website has SSL then it’s more likely to show up higher in SERPs (search engine result pages) than a site that isn’t secure. Even if you’re not collecting visitors’ information on your website, you need SSL so you aren’t penalized in search results. 

Google has pledged to “continue working towards a web that’s secure by default,” so we don’t think HTTPS importance will decrease any time soon. 

How can you add SSL to your site?

It’s easy with Domain.com — we offer a variety of SSL certificates to fit your needs. Here are the plans and details so you can identify the best option for your site. 

LetsEncrypt Free SSL – If you have a basic website and don’t collect any sensitive information from your visitors, then this option should suffice. Search engines and visitors will see that your site is secure and that will increase their trust in you.

Before getting SSL for your site, you’ll need to make sure you have your domain name and hosting. Then, you can log into your account to turn on your free LetsEncrypt SSL. 

If you actively collect customer information (even if it’s just an email address) on your site or manage an e-commerce site then consider purchasing a more advanced SSL offering, like one of the following, all powered by Comodo SSL.

Domain Validated SSL – Secure your customer information, help boost your Google search rankings, and receive the TrustLogo® Site Seal to display on your site. You’ll also be backed by a warranty from Comodo SSL for up to $10,000 to protect the end user.

Wildcard SSL – Our Wildcard offering will give you all the features of the previous plan along with the ability to protect multiple subdomains. You’ll receive a warranty of up to $250,000 to protect the end user with this plan.

E-Commerce SSL – This is our best SSL plan and is ideal for those with e-commerce websites, and offers a green “trust” visual bar for your site, like you see in the image below, and up to a $1,750,000 warranty for the end user. 

Rest easy knowing you’re secure with SSL

The importance of having SSL on your website is only going to increase. 

Google is without a doubt the most popular search engine, and they aren’t pulling any punches when it comes to making the Internet a safer place for all of us.

If you don’t have SSL you risk having your site pushed down in search engine results and losing your site visitors’ trust. Get SSL today, and turn your site into a trusted resource.