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The true cost of hosting - Part 1 of 2

Richard Fagan • Aug 16, 2018

If I were to quote you a monthly hosting fee of $39 per month, would you be inclined to ask if that included automatic backup? How about an SSL Certificate? Would you care if the hosting is on a shared server? If you are like most small business owners, you wouldn’t know to ask these questions. You would most likely be wondering why you should pay $39 per month for hosting when your current hosting is only costing you $7.99. Do you really know what your website hosting is costing you? Yes – this is a trick question.

Hosting services that offer the low $7.99 type rates wait until you start having issues before pointing out that you may want to purchase an ‘add-on.’ These hosting plans charge you an additional fee for items like ‘automatic site backup,’ ‘malware protection,’ 'search engine visibility,' and ‘SSL certificate.’ As an example, GoDaddy charges an additional $23.96 to add these items. That brings the cost of the low budget hosting plan to $31.95. Doesn’t sound so inexpensive anymore, does it?

Why are these add-ons essential? Well if ranking well with the major search engines or getting more traffic to your website is vital to you then the answer should be YES they are essential. Starting last month (July 2018), Chrome is marking all non-SSL protected sites as ‘NOT Secure.’ I’m guessing people will avoid going to websites with that type of label. Moreover, if that’s not reason enough, search engines like Google and Bing are prioritizing secure sites over non-secure sites in their search rankings. Add-ons like automatic backup, malware protection, and search engine visibility speak for themselves. Who wants to find out that malware has infected their website? Worse yet, finding out and then realizing you don’t have a clean backup. What would the cost of reconstructing your site be? Moreover, why wouldn't you want basic search engine optimization services? If your site doesn't rank well with search engines, then what's the point of having a website?

So the comparison between the hosting your website gets with our service and the 'low cost' hosting services comes down to $7.95. What do we provide for that additional $7.95? If you were to host your website on another service, you would be responsible for installing security updates for your website's plugins and compatibility updates, so your website displays properly when Google, Bing, or Yahoo updates their browsers. Last year (2017) alone, Wordpress released 21 updates. That doesn't include updates released by plugin vendors. What's the cost of taking the time out monthly to log in to your hosting account and installing security and maintenance releases? We handle security and maintenance releases - so you don't have too. Assuming it takes an average of 30 minutes to install an update, we save you 7 hours per year. Unless your time or your webmasters time is worth less than $9.08 per hour, your 'low cost' hosting', will cost you much more than $39 per month.

If your website performance is vital to you, don't be lured into a false sense of 'value' when going with a 'low cost' hosting service. Skip dealing with all the necessary add-ons and go with the business class hosting service from the beginning. Who needs to learn the hard way when you are busy focusing on running your business?

Is your website evolving with modern design?

By Richard Fagan • 26 Apr, 2024
Modern web design has undergone significant transformations in recent years, with several key changes reshaping the digital landscape. These changes reflect evolving user expectations, technological advancements, and design trends. Here are some of the biggest design changes in modern web design: Responsive Design: One of the most significant shifts has been towards responsive design. With the proliferation of mobile devices, websites must adapt seamlessly to various screen sizes and resolutions. Responsive design ensures optimal viewing experiences across desktops, tablets, and smartphones, improving accessibility and user engagement. Minimalist Aesthetics: Clean, minimalist design has become increasingly popular. This approach emphasizes simplicity, with a focus on clear typography, ample white space, and minimalist navigation menus. Minimalist aesthetics enhance user focus, readability, and visual appeal while reducing clutter and distractions. Typography Emphasis: Typography plays a crucial role in modern web design. Designers are experimenting with bold, expressive typography to create memorable brand identities and enhance content hierarchy. Custom fonts, variable fonts, and creative typography treatments are gaining traction, adding personality and character to websites. Microinteractions: Microinteractions are subtle, interactive elements that enhance user experience and engagement. From hover animations and button feedback to scroll-triggered effects, microinteractions add depth and interactivity, making websites more intuitive and enjoyable to navigate. Accessibility Focus: Designers are placing greater emphasis on accessibility, ensuring that websites are inclusive and user-friendly for people with disabilities. This includes implementing accessible color contrasts, keyboard navigation support, screen reader compatibility, and other accessibility best practices to improve usability for all users. Illustrations and Animations: Visual storytelling through illustrations and animations has gained momentum in modern web design. Custom illustrations and animated graphics add personality, convey brand messages, and create immersive experiences that captivate and engage users. Scroll-based Navigation: Long-scrolling websites with scroll-based navigation have become prevalent, offering seamless transitions between sections and enhancing storytelling capabilities. Scroll-triggered animations, parallax effects, and fixed headers optimize the scrolling experience, making content more engaging and interactive. Video Backgrounds: Incorporating video backgrounds has become a popular design trend, adding dynamic visual elements that capture attention and convey brand narratives effectively. Video backgrounds can create immersive experiences, set the tone for websites, and increase user engagement. User-Centric Design: Overall, modern web design is increasingly focused on user-centric principles. Designers prioritize user experience (UX) research, usability testing, and iterative design processes to create intuitive, enjoyable, and meaningful digital experiences that resonate with users and drive results. These design changes reflect the dynamic nature of web design, driven by technological innovation, user behavior trends, and evolving design aesthetics. Embracing these trends and best practices can help designers create impactful and user-friendly websites in today's digital landscape.

Unlocking the Secret to Exceptional Web Content: What Defines 'High-Caliber' Website Material?

By Richard Fagan • 20 Mar, 2024
High-quality content on a website refers to content that is valuable, relevant, accurate, and engaging for the target audience. It is content that serves the purpose of meeting the needs, interests, and expectations of visitors while also aligning with the goals and objectives of the website owner. Here's a detailed explanation of what constitutes high-quality content: Relevance : High-quality content is directly relevant to the audience it serves. It addresses topics, questions, and concerns that are pertinent to the target audience's interests, needs, and pain points. Understanding your audience and their motivations is crucial for creating relevant content that resonates with them. Accuracy and Credibility : High-quality content is accurate, reliable, and backed by credible sources whenever possible. It is factually correct and free from errors, misleading information, or outdated data. Providing accurate information helps build trust and credibility with your audience. Value-Driven : High-quality content provides value to the audience by offering useful insights, actionable tips, practical advice, or entertaining stories. It educates, informs, inspires, or entertains the audience, helping them solve problems, make informed decisions, or achieve their goals. Uniqueness and Originality : High-quality content is original and stands out from the crowd. It offers a unique perspective, fresh ideas, or innovative solutions that differentiate it from similar content available elsewhere. Original content helps capture the attention of the audience and establishes your authority in your niche. Clarity and Readability : High-quality content is easy to understand, well-organized, and presented in a clear and concise manner. It uses plain language, avoids jargon or overly technical terms, and breaks down complex concepts into digestible chunks. Clear and readable content ensures that the audience can quickly grasp the message and absorb the information presented. Engagement Potential : High-quality content is engaging and captures the audience's attention from the outset. It sparks curiosity, evokes emotions, or prompts action, encouraging visitors to explore further, share the content with others, or interact with the website in meaningful ways. Engaging content may include storytelling, interactive elements, multimedia assets, or compelling visuals. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) : High-quality content is optimized for search engines to improve visibility and ranking in search results. It incorporates relevant keywords, meta tags, and descriptive titles and headings to make it easier for search engines to understand and index the content. SEO-friendly content helps attract organic traffic and increase the website's online presence.  Overall, high-quality content is the cornerstone of a successful website. It serves as the bridge between the website owner and the audience, fostering meaningful connections, driving engagement, and ultimately contributing to the achievement of business goals and objectives.

Crafting Value-Driven Content: A Guide to Creating High-Quality Content That Delights Your Audience

By Richard Fagan • 11 Mar, 2024
In today's digital age, creating content that truly resonates with your audience is essential for building a loyal following and driving engagement on your website, blog, or social media channels. Value-driven content goes beyond mere information-sharing; it provides actionable insights, practical advice, and inspiring stories that enrich the lives of your audience members. In this blog post, we'll explore how to create value-driven content that educates, informs, inspires, and entertains your audience while helping them solve problems and achieve their goals. Understand Your Audience Before you start creating content, it's crucial to understand your audience's needs, preferences, and pain points. Conduct audience research, gather feedback, and analyze data to gain insights into what matters most to your target audience. What are their challenges? What questions do they have? What are their aspirations and goals? By understanding your audience deeply, you can tailor your content to address their specific needs and interests. Provide Actionable Tips and Practical Advice One of the hallmarks of value-driven content is its practicality. Offer actionable tips, step-by-step guides, and practical advice that your audience can implement in their lives or businesses right away. Whether it's a tutorial on mastering a new skill, a checklist for improving productivity, or a recipe for a healthy meal, make sure your content provides tangible value and helps your audience achieve real results. Tell Inspiring Stories Storytelling is a powerful tool for connecting with your audience on an emotional level and inspiring them to take action. Share personal anecdotes, case studies, or success stories that illustrate key concepts or lessons. Use storytelling to humanize your brand, showcase your expertise, and demonstrate how your products or services have made a positive impact on people's lives. Inspiring stories have the ability to captivate and motivate your audience, making your content more memorable and impactful. Educate and Inform In today's information-saturated world, people crave knowledge and insights that can help them navigate complex issues and make informed decisions. Position yourself as a trusted authority in your niche by creating content that educates and informs your audience. Dive deep into topics relevant to your industry or area of expertise, provide in-depth analysis and commentary, and offer valuable resources and recommendations that empower your audience to expand their knowledge and skills. Entertain and Delight While providing valuable information is important, don't forget the power of entertainment in capturing and holding your audience's attention. Incorporate elements of humor, storytelling, or visual appeal to make your content more engaging and enjoyable to consume. Infuse your content with personality and authenticity, and don't be afraid to inject a bit of fun or levity into your messaging. By entertaining and delighting your audience, you create a positive and memorable experience that keeps them coming back for more. Creating value-driven content is the key to building meaningful connections with your audience and driving long-term engagement and loyalty. By understanding your audience, providing actionable tips and practical advice, telling inspiring stories, educating and informing, and entertaining and delighting your audience, you can create content that truly resonates and adds value to their lives. So, roll up your sleeves, get creative, and start crafting content that makes a difference! Remember, the more value you provide to your audience, the more they'll appreciate and engage with your content, ultimately leading to greater success for your brand or business.
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