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16 Tips for Promoting Your Small Business Website During the Holidays

Posted on October 22, 2018 by Hosting

The post 16 Tips for Promoting Your Small Business Website During the Holidays appeared first on HostGator Blog . If you’re reading this post, you already know that running a small business is hard work. And it only gets more difficult during the holiday season. As a small business owner, you may feel that each day with an “open” sign is a reason to celebrate. We get it. HostGator is turning 16 years old , but like so many other businesses, HostGator started as a small business with a single client. Our customer base grew quickly from dozens to hundreds, and hundreds to thousands, and so can you!   We may be turning 16, but we’re celebrating you – small businesses – and helping you succeed with a birthday sale and 16 tips to promote your small business website during the holidays. Let’s get started! 1. Determine your holiday marketing budget. Hopefully you have a regular budget set aside for online marketing. If not, it’s likely time to think about a budget, even a small marketing budget, particularly since some social media channels require a small “pay to play” amount. Yes, your Facebook business page is still free, but the Facebook algorithm gives high preference to sponsored posts and ads. As such, it’s harder to be seen in the busy news feed. One solution is to work incredibly hard at organic posts – publishing your posts multiple times or offering giveaways if your fans will share your page. The quickest solution, however, may be to buy small ads or promoted posts to ensure that fans see your posts. If you already have a marketing budget, great! Think about how much additional money you can contribute to your marketing budget during the holiday season. 2. Make a “set it and forget it” plan for social media marketing. In the hustle and bustle of trying to work your business during the holiday season, give yourself a break by planning and pre-scheduling as much as you can. Social media may be the last thing on your mind when the holiday season ramps up, so create a social “set it and forget it” media promotion plan. Creating and scheduling social media posts in advance can save you a ton of time during the busy season, and it will free up your mind to be more creative in the moment. Make a list of at least three posts per week that you can pre schedule. Your scheduled post can be as simple as a reminder of your holiday hours or as detailed as a featured item of the day or a blog post you’ve already written. If social media content seems too overwhelming during the holiday season, consider hiring a freelance social media manager. You can find affordable freelancers on websites such as Fiverr . But hiring a freelancer doesn’t completely eliminate your need to be involved. A freelance social media manager will likely want to schedule a meeting with you to go over ideas, and may even request your approval of the content before posting to social media. A freelancer can certainly be helpful with on-demand needs such as if you expect to get more inbox messages on your page. If you have social media-savvy staff members, consider giving them access to post on your social media accounts during the holiday season. Ultimately, be smart about what will pose the least risk for your business and will also help maximize your time during the holiday season. 3. Be sure that your physical location and office hours are correct and consistent. Be sure that your physical location and office hours are correct and consistent across the internet. Don’t forget to check all mentions on your own website, all ‘about’ sections on social media, your Google My Business listings, and any other local listing websites. In the long run, consistent information will give you credibility with search engines which may, in turn, list your website higher in search results. Take a few minutes to be sure all your information is correct and consistent. If you have special holiday hours, be sure to list them and consider noting that they are, in fact, holiday hours. Customers are more likely to shop with you if they can trust that you’ll be open when your website says you will be open. 4. Offer a holiday coupon. According to a 2016 CouponBox survey , coupons can increase revenue for retailers up to 40 percent. But what type of coupon should you offer? First of all, determine your profit margin and create a coupon that brings revenue without cutting into your profit margin. Create a coupon that will be intriguing for your customers, and share the coupon as often as you want – on social media, in email marketing, or even a traditional printed coupon stuffed into shopping bags for future purchases. Create unique coupon codes for each coupon that you offer in order to track which coupons are most popular. For instance, have a coupon code such as “EMAIL” for email offers and a different code, such as “SHAREME,” to indicate coupons found via social media. At the end of the holiday season, count the coupon codes to know which coupons were most profitable for your business so that planning for next year will be easier. Online coupons are very shareable, which can be in your favor, but keep in mind that online coupons can also be picked up by sites like RetailMeNot. Be sure you are able to sustain a coupon (and orders) on a large scale. 5. Develop an email marketing campaign to promote your sales & holiday promotions. Email marketing is an efficient and cost-effective way to communicate with your customers. As social media feeds continue to limit timely exposure to your fanbase, email marketing allows your customers to see and open your emails on their own schedule. To make it easier on you, set up email automation by scheduling a series of emails to distribute throughout the holiday season. Use your email campaigns to promote the coupons, holiday gift guides, and other holiday sales you have going on during the holiday season. 6. Develop new ideas for your holiday campaigns by reviewing last year’s analytics. You know that statement about learning from your past? You can apply the same concept to your holiday marketing efforts by looking at last year’s data to find ideas you can apply or tweak this year . Create a list of all your data and analytics that could be helpful such as Google Analytics, analytics from your email marketing software, and social media analytics for paid and organic posts. Review your data from October to January, and look for trends such as what your audience reacted to, which posts received the most traffic, and what time of day your website received the most traffic. You can learn a lot from last year’s analytics that can help shape your holiday marketing strategy this year. 7. Build your following by co-sponsoring a giveaway with a complementary brand. Word of mouth still has a strong influence on shoppers. One way you can capitalize on word of mouth is to partner with other small businesses or brands. Look for small businesses that offer products or services that would be of interest to your customers. Consider small businesses with a strong social media following that is larger than yours or has customers that are similar to yours. To double your exposure, both companies should tag the social media promotion. 8. Ask current customers for reviews. Building on the word of mouth concept, customers are highly likely to read online reviews before purchasing. In fact, customers often read product reviews on multiple sites during their decision making process. According to research from BrightLocal, 88% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Online reviews are also important for search engine rankings. Websites may rank higher in search results if the company has reviews, especially positive reviews. If a customer has a positive experience with your business, encourage them to share it on one of the review sites. You can get started easily with reviews on Facebook, Google My Business, Yelp, or even reviews posted on your own website. One thing to note – search engines usually want these reviews to be and feel organic. If you were to run a contest and encourage people to complete a review in order to enter the contest, Google may see this flood of reviews as spammy. Bottom line, keep it organic and honest. 9. Make sure your website is ready to handle the holiday traffic boost. Many businesses start with a small, shared web hosting plan, but eventually reach the point where they need to upgrade. Small businesses may choose to upgrade their website hosting for more server space, more speed, or if they want a more secure server environment. But how do you know if it’s time to upgrade to a dedicated server ? If you’ve experienced slow website performance or if you keep highly sensitive information, it may be time to consider a dedicated server.  During the holiday season, you’re likely to expect more traffic to your website, and upgrading to a dedicated server could the perfect solution to ensure your website is ready to handle the traffic spike. 10. Update your website to a mobile-friendly design template. The rise of website traffic from mobile devices , as compared to desktop computers, continues to grow. Some people who browse the web on their mobile devices don’t mind seeing the full website, but others want to find the information as quickly as possible. You can make your website responsive , meaning the layout adjusts based on the screen size of the user. As your customers are out on the road during the holiday season, they will certainly appreciate being able to access your website from their mobile phone or tablet. Added perk? Google will give higher search engine ranking preference to websites that are responsive. 11. Add social media links and feeds to your website. Social media is a channel that offers high return for sharing content with your fans, but did you know that you can make it easier for your fans to share your content across social media ? Add social share buttons to your website so fans can hit one button and quickly share your content without ever leaving your website. Consider adding a social media feed to your website, either on the sidebar or embedded in a page, so website visitors can easily see the sales or promotions you may have on social media. 12. Offer exclusive events for your members or top customers. Throw a holiday-themed party for your customers to encourage brand loyalty. If you can, time the event with a product preview, product launch, or a “sip and see” for your new product line. Promote the event on your website, in an email invitation, and even on social media. Try to host this party early in the season such as October or November when your customers begin to think about holiday shopping. 13. Create a holiday gift guide. As you know, shopping for everyone on your holiday gift list can be overwhelming. Make shopping easier for your customers by creating a holiday gift guide. A holiday gift guide organizes the best of your products and gifts into categories based on the gift recipient, dollar amount, or by theme. For example, sort products by gifts for her, gifts for him, gifts under $50, gifts for teens, gifts for the home, and more. A guide will highlight your products, make shopping easier for your customers, and will be easy for your customers to share with their friends.  14. Reorganize your website by gift categories or themes. Now that you’ve created a holiday gift guide, consider updating the main navigation of your website to match your holiday shopping categories. Many people visiting your website during November and December will likely be purchasing gifts. Make it easy for them to find your top recommended gifts so they will be more likely to purchase.  15. Bring customers back to your site by remarketing on social media. Have you ever searched for a product online and later saw an ad for the same product on social media? That’s a feature called remarketing that allows you to reconnect with people that have visited your website. You can use remarketing ads on social media platforms, on Google search, and in other websites that support display marketing ads. A remarketing campaign is an effective method to ensure customers keep thinking about your product and have easy access to the link when they are ready to buy. 16. Take website security seriously. Get an SSL certificate. Website security should be a top priority for you year-round, but especially during the holiday season. During the holidays, more people are shopping online, but so are hackers who are shopping for credit card information or personal data. If you haven’t heard, in July 2018, Google Chrome released a security update that will alert your website visitors if your website doesn’t have security measures in place. An SSL certification is meant to create a secure transaction of personal information such as contact information and credit card data. If you don’t have an SSL certificate, your website visitors will receive an alert message discouraging them from checking out on your website. What can you do about it? Many web hosting companies offer SSL certificates for purchase and they are usually a low-cost option to securing your website. If you don’t have an SSL certificate and aren’t sure if you can get one, switch to HostGator where a free SSL certificate comes with all web hosting packages . In conclusion… With 16 tips for how to promote your small business website during the holidays, there’s bound to be a few that would work for your business. Try them out and let us know your results ! What are your “must do” tips for other small businesses? Comment below with your best advice for how to promote a small business website during the holidays!   Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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The Ultimate Guide to Building a Successful Website

Posted on October 18, 2018 by Hosting

The post The Ultimate Guide to Building a Successful Website appeared first on HostGator Blog . You’ve got an idea for a web property – whether it’s for a business, to share your thoughts and ideas with the world, or to simply find and connect with other people who share your passions. The challenge now is to build your website . If you don’t know anything about web design or HTML, then building a website can seem like a daunting prospect. But getting all the elements of a successful website into place is just a matter of knowing the right steps to take and tools to use.   This guide will cover all the main things you need to know to get started. Step 1: Determine Your Website Goals. You’re starting a website for a reason. What is it you want the site to accomplish? Before you actually start working on the website itself, sit down and really work out what you want your website to achieve. If it’s a business website, your main goal will be increasing your business profits, but you’ll want to break that down into more specific and transitional goals as well, such as raising brand awareness or driving traffic into your store. If you’re hoping to write blog posts about what you love and eventually monetize your blog , then your goals will be based on driving traffic and building a community.   Even if you just want to use your website to put your thoughts out into the world or share your creative projects, you probably want other people to find and connect with them. Successful website design depends on what you want to get out of the website. Whether you want visitors, sales, subscribers, fame, community, or something entirely different, you have to start by clearly defining and writing out your website goals.   Step 2: Pick a Domain and Hosting Provider. While you can take each of these steps separately, they’re lumped together here for a reason. Most hosting providers include a domain name (or multiple) in the cost of hosting, so you can save yourself some money by registering a domain through the hosting provider you go with.   Picking Your Domain Name Choosing the right domain name can be challenging. You need to pick something that makes sense for your websites, is easy for your visitors to remember, but that’s still available. With millions of websites already out there, a lot of your options are already taken – especially if you want to use a .com option, which is recommended since it’s what your visitors will automatically type in when looking for you. If you have a business name already, you’ll ideally want to come up with a domain that matches it or is at least similar. If you’re still figuring out what to call your brand or blog, then you have some more room to get creative here.   Brainstorm different keywords and concepts that you like and that are relevant to what you’ll be offering on the site. Put together different combinations of terms that you like the sound of and check the availability with HostGator’s domain name search until you find an option you like that’s available. Some domain registrars, including HostGator, allow you to bundle your domain purchase with your hosting plan. Let’s review how to choose a hosting plan next.   Choosing Your Web Hosting Plan When you start looking at , you may find it all overwhelming at first. The main things you need to cross off your web hosting checklist are: Does the provider have a reliable server? Research a web hosting provider’s uptime to make sure you pick one you can be confident will keep your website consistently active. Can the plan handle your traffic? Unless you have an established brand, your website probably won’t get that much traffic to start. But you want to make sure you choose a plan that can handle the amount you plan on getting. Is the plan compatible with your web design needs? If your website will be on the simpler side, then you don’t have much to worry about here, but if you have a developer that insists on using a specific type of programming language or software, you may need to choose your web hosting plan based on compatibility. A good web hosting provider will have salespeople that can help you navigate the differences between the various plans they offer and customer support that will help you learn the ropes when getting your website set up. If you’re considering HostGator for your provider, our staff can help with any questions you have and most of our plans come with at least one domain name included.   Step 3: Plan Out Your Site Organization. A successful website design requires proper organization. You need the website to be intuitive to users. And if you care about being easy to find, you also need it to be organized well for SEO . Before you work on the website design itself, sit down to figure out the main pages and categories your website will have. The most important pages should go in your main menu, which should be included on every page so it’s easy for visitors to navigate to the most important parts of the site. If your website will just have a few main pages and be pretty basic, figuring out your site organization won’t be too difficult. But if you’ll have a bigger site with a lot of different pages, categories, and subcategories, then it’s even more important to get a plan into place for how it will all be organized now. Think first and foremost when planning out your site’s organization about your future visitors. What are the categories that will make the most sense to them? What site structure will make it easiest for them to find what they’re looking for? You’ll be doing some guesswork at this point (and your analytics after you launch will show you if you got it right or need to make changes later), but do your best to put yourself in their shoes now.   Step 4: Develop a Successful Website Design. Once you know the main pages you’ll be creating and the way you’ll be organizing the site, it’s time to design your website. If you’re not adept at web design yourself, you have two main options here:     Using a website builder     Hiring a professional web designer   Option 1: Using a Website Builder You don’t have to learn coding to build a success website anymore. Now you can turn to website builders that make creating a website on your own much easier. Website builders usually offer a number of templates you can choose from to start with and let you make tweaks to personalize the site from there. You can load your own images and copy, easily change out colors, and drag and drop images and other page elements to where you want them on the page. For someone without coding skills that has a limited budget, sticking with a website builder is worth it to keep things easy, while still producing a website that looks good. And if you chose HostGator to be your web hosting provider in step two, we offer a free website builder with many of our web hosting plans, so you won’t have to spend any additional money to get started. Here are just a few of the websites designed using our free templates: Option 2: Using a Professional Designer For more complicated websites, a website builder may not cut it. If your website will have a lot of pages, include a difficult-to-build feature like creating a forum , or if you have a really specific vision in mind – then you’ll be better off hiring a professional to design your website for you. Research the design firms and freelance web designers in your area and set up interviews with anyone whose style you like. In each interview, make sure you discuss your main goals for the website and clearly describe what you’re looking for. Pay attention to the questions they ask you and the tips or suggestions they provide – that’s how you’ll get a feel for their level of knowledge and whether they’re a good fit. Developing a successful website design with the right professional will ultimately be a collaborative effort, and finding the right person to hire is the most important step of that process.   Step 5: Write Your Website Copy. The design’s important, but one of the other crucial elements of a successful website is good copy. Website copywriting is a skill set in and of itself and, especially for business websites, the words you choose will make a big difference in how successful your website is at achieving your goals. For many websites, your best bet at this step is to hire a professional copywriter who knows what kind of writing works well on the web and can help you clarify your business positioning and messaging so that it resonates with your target audience. If your website is more of a passion project than a business website with a profit goal, then it might not make as much sense to spend money on a professional copywriter. If you’ll be writing your website copy yourself though, take some time to read up on web copywriting best practices .   Step 6: Optimize for SEO. If you want people to find your website, then you need to be thinking about how to design your website for search engines as well as people (although people should always take priority!). That means learning the basics of SEO and optimizing each of the pages on your website before you publish it. Search engine optimization is a big topic, but to give you the short version, it includes: Performing keyword research to learn the terms your audience is using (and how competitive they are) Including relevant keywords in your URL structure , title tags , headings, image meta tags , and copy. Adding meta descriptions for every page on your website. Including natural internal links on your web pages using relevant keywords in the anchor text.   Start doing this before your website goes up on the web and keep doing it for every new page you add over time.   Step 7: Plan for Marketing. A successful website doesn’t start and stop with a good design. You also have to plan on taking steps to promote your website. SEO is one part of that, but you may also want to consider using tactics like paid advertising, social media marketing, and content marketing to get users to your website. New websites often need an extra push to get those first visitors. If gaining an audience is important for you to meet your website goals, then you’ll benefit from creating a marketing plan even before your website launches.   Step 8: Review All Pages for Any Errors. With your web design and website copy in place, you’re so close! Now you just need to make sure everything looks good before you actually put your website out on the wide web. Take time to read over every page and look for any errors. Make sure all your links point to the right place and all the information is accurate. Check how it looks on mobile devices and in different web browsers. This is a good phase to bring in some outside eyes. Have a friend go through the website as well to see if they find it intuitive and everything looks good to them too. You’re so close to it that someone else will have an easier time spotting usability issues than you will.   Step 9: Launch! Once you’re pretty confident that everything looks good and you have exactly the website you want, publish it to the web. Make sure to set up a Google Analytics account and add the tracking code to your website at this point (or before) to help with our last step.   Step 10: Monitor Your Site. No matter how hard you try, you won’t come up with the perfect website design on the first try. To fully understand what works on your website with your audience, you’ll have to wait and see what they do once your website is out in the world. Pay attention to your analytics and use the data to find opportunities to improve your website’s design, your copy, and the marketing tactics you use over time. A successful website is only a little bit about what you do when you’re building it (although all that matters!). It’s much more about what you do after it has launched. Make sure you build the best website you can, but also have a plan for what to do beyond launch day to achieve success. 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Softlayer Tokyo and Sydney 100TB Servers in Very Limited Quantities! Great pricing.

Posted on October 4, 2018 by Hosting

Good Morning, We only have 1 of each available in each location. These are very rare with this traffic and at this price in these areas. … | Read the rest of http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1733176&goto=newpost Continue reading →

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10 Ways to Speed Up Your Website

Posted on October 3, 2018 by Hosting

The post 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Website appeared first on HostGator Blog . There’s no doubt about it – website speed matters. As average internet connection speeds increase around the world and mobile use dominates, web users are becoming less and less tolerant of slow load times.   53% of mobile users will abandon a website that takes longer than three seconds to load, and nearly 10% of web users will bounce after 2 seconds. Clearly, every second counts. At the same time, Google has stated unequivocally that page speed is a ranking factor in search results . In short, a fast site gets better results both from visitors and Google. To take advantage of these dual benefits, you need to make site speed a priority on your site.   Any of the following ten tips will help to get you started on this important path. 1. Optimize Your Images. Every time someone visits a page on your website, their browser has to load every part of the page. On many pages, the parts that take up the most space and therefore take the longest time to load are the images. One of the best and easiest ways to get your pages loading faster is therefore to optimize your images . This quick two-step image optimization process can go a long way to speeding your website up.   Step 1: Re-size your images before uploading them. If you use a content management system (CMS) like WordPress or Joomla , you’ve probably noticed that you can upload images at full size and then adjust their display size within your website’s backend.  That’s convenient, but you may not know that doing so forces web browsers to execute multiple commands each time someone loads the page. They must pull up the initial image and then re-size it on the fly – which slows down your site. To prevent this from occurring, use an image-editing program to adjust images to the correct size yourself before adding them to your site. Most of us will have access to a simple tool like Preview (on Mac) or Microsoft Paint (on Windows). With these programs all you have to do is open up the image and re-size it in your editor of choice.   Step 2: Compress your images. Once you’ve done this you can take your image editing to the next level with a compression tool. Even after re-sizing an image the total file size could be large enough to still slow down your site’s loading speed. One of the best image compression tools available is ImageResize . All you have to do is click the link, upload your re-sized image and this tool will reduce the file size without reducing the resolution. Then, all you have to do is download the image and upload it to your site. Your images will look exactly the same, but will load much faster.     2. Do a Plugin Purge. The huge number of plugins and scripts that available for free makes it tempting for website owners to add more than they truly need. Keep in mind, every plugin you add requires resources to run – and more resources means a slower site. If you notice your site is running slowly, or you believe it could be running much more effectively, perform a plugin review. Go through the list and identify any plugins you aren’t actually using or that don’t seem to be adding anything worthwhile to your site performance. Go ahead and get rid of these. If you still feel your website isn’t loading as quickly as you’d like, do a test to find the culprit. Disable every plugin on your site, one by one. After you disable a plugin, run your site through a tool like GT Metrix to check the speed of your site with it gone. If your site speed increases after deactivating a particular plugin, then you’ve found the problem. If the plug-in in question provides a necessary functionality, experiment until you find another plugin that does the same thing without slowing your site down. To save yourself from this trouble in the future, ask yourself moving forward before adding a new plug-in if the functionality is really worth the trade-off in site speed.   3. Ensure Your Site Scripts Are Up to Date. Depending on the CMS or e-commerce platform your site uses, you may need to check back regularly to determine whether new releases of your site’s scripts are available.   If they are, upgrade your site as soon as possible (making sure that you have a current backup file in place first).  Site script developers are always working on improving their code for future releases, particularly when it comes to site speed.  Updating your scripts to the latest versions could go a long way toward eliminating coded roadblocks that prevent your site from loading quickly. If your site runs on WordPress, then you’ll find these updates within the Updates tab of your WordPress dashboard. Just one click and your site will install the latest software updates. No need for anything else on your end. Admittedly, remembering to check-in and update your website can be tough. Lucky for you this isn’t something you have to do on a daily basis. Once a month is enough to do a simple run-through of your site and install any updates that might be available. Set a recurring event on your calendar and set aside an hour every single month. Usually, it’ll take much less time than this, but it’s important to build the habit of always ensuring your site and plugins are running the latest version. Plus, having all of your software up to date will help to patch up any holes that could lead to your site being hacked .     4. Make Use of CDNs. Content Delivery Networks , or CDNs, are vast networks of servers that are housed around the world. Typically, if you’re not using a CDN, then your site will load from your web hosting server’s central location for every visitor to your site, no matter where they are geographically. This can lead to slow site speeds, especially if your visitors are located far away from the central location of your server. Additionally, if you’re just using a single server, there’s a chance it could get overloaded and cause your site to crash. CDN’s solve both of these problems by letting your users access a cached version of your site from the web host that’s closest to them. Better yet, if one of your server locations is overloaded, they can be switched to a new server location, ensuring faster speeds all around. To get started, look into the CDN services offered by SiteLock TrueSpeed , MaxCDN , or Cloudflare .   5. Enable Browser Caching. Browser caching is a technology that allows a visitor’s browser to store copies of your site’s individual pages so that when the visitor returns in the future, the content can be called up from within the cache rather than reloading the entire page. This saves the number of resources used to display your pages, resulting in faster overall load times for your visitor. If you use WordPress, you can easily enable browser caching with a plug-in like W3 Total Cache .  To install this plugin on your WordPress site, follow the steps below: Navigate to your site’s Dashboard, then Plugins > Add New , and search for W3 Total Cache. Click Install , then Activate . Once the plugin is activated, navigate to the new Performance tab at the top or lefthand side. This is where you’ll control all of the features of the plugin. There are a ton of features that you can turn on or off with this plugin. If you want to fully configure this plugin, then check out  this post by WPMU DEV . Alternatively, talk to your web developer about ways to integrate browser caching into your server-side scripting.     6. Turn On Gzip Compression. Gzip compression is a technology that minimizes the size of browser-based HTTP responses – sometimes by as much as 70%.  If that doesn’t make sense, don’t worry. You don’t need to fully understand how it works to implement it for your site. There are three ways to turn on Gzip compression on your site.  You can: 1. Add the following code to your site’s .htaccess file: # compress text, html, javascript, css, xml: AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript   # Or, compress certain file types by extension:   SetOutputFilter DEFLATE   2. Add the following code to the top of your HTML or PHP page:     3. Install a Gzip compression plugin like the  W3 Total Cache  tool for WordPress (just keep in mind what we said earlier about installing too many unnecessary plugins!).   7. Keep CSS files at the Top and Javascript at the Bottom. Finally, keep your site’s code neat and tidy by adding CSS files to the top of your page’s code and Javascript snippets to the bottom when working with raw HTML pages.   Adding your CSS files to the top of the page prohibits progressive rendering, saving resources that web browsers would otherwise use to load and redraw elements of your pages.   Adding Javascript to the bottom prevents your pages from waiting on full code execution before loading – leading to a faster browsing experience for your visitors.   8. Reduce Http Requests. When someone new visits your website, every single element on the web page has to download for them to view it. That includes images, videos, animations, style sheets, scripts, fonts — you name it. For each element you have on the page, a different http request is made. The more different parts each page on your site is made up of, the more http requests are made each time someone visits your site, and the longer the page will take to load. That doesn’t mean you need to strip your web pages down to a minimalist web design to slow down your loading time. There are tricks you can use to identify and reduce the number and size of http requests on your page without losing out on the style you want your site to have. To start, spot how many http requests are on a page on your website by using your browser tools. The process is similar in different browsers, here are specific steps for the main two: In Chrome:       Right-click on the webpage       Choose Inspect       Click the Network tab       Reload the page In Firefox:       Right-click on the page       Choose Inspect Element       Click on the Network tab       Reload the page This will show you not only how many http requests are required for the page, but also how long each one takes to load. You may be able to spot some items on the list that aren’t worth the time they require that you can remove altogether. Even if you don’t, you have options to speed things up:   Option 1: Reduce file size. Look for opportunities in the list to reduce the file size of different elements. Our section on optimizing images includes some good tips. You can also minify the codes in your HTML, CSS, and Javascript files by removing any unnecessary coding or whitespace. Online tools like Autoptimize (for WordPress) and HTML Minifier can make this step easier.   Option 2: Combine files. If you have more than one Javascript or CSS file for your webpage, combining them will reduce the number of http requests the page has to make. Tools like JCH Optimize and Cloudflare  can help with this.   9. Minimize and Optimize Redirects. Sometimes redirects are necessary, but if they’re used any more than required they can slow down page load times. Regularly check the links on your website to make sure that all your links — internal and external — go directly to the main URL for a page. In the cases where you do need to use redirects , make sure you only use one redirect for a page. You never want a browser to have to do the work of redirecting a visitor from one page to another that redirects it to a third. And avoid having additional URLs that redirect people back to your main site. It can be tempting to buy up all the variations on your URL name and primary keywords you can think of and have them all point page to your website, but that will both slow things down and could cause confusion for your visitors.     10. Upgrade Your Web Hosting. When starting out, you probably selected the cheapest hosting option for your website. That’s normal and usually works well enough for a new website while you’re starting to build visibility and traffic. As your marketing efforts start to pay off and your traffic increases, your hosting needs change. If your website traffic has increased considerably and you haven’t upgraded your hosting plan to match, that’s likely to cause slow or spotty performance issues. Going from shared hosting to cloud hosting , or from shared to a VPS , can make a huge difference to how quickly your website loads for visitors. Check with your web hosting provider to see if it’s time to upgrade, or consider if it might be time to switch to a new provider. HostGator’s known for having a 99.9% uptime guarantee and has representatives that will answer any questions you have about selecting the right web hosting plan to keep your website fast and functional.   Conclusion Although these are only a few of the different techniques that can be used to speed up your site, they’re some of the easiest to implement.  This list is a great place to start if you notice your site slowing down. When every second counts, every step you can take for a faster website is worth it. Having said all of the above, sometimes a slow site is simply caused by inadequate hosting. With HostGator , whether you have a cloud hosting, shared hosting or VPS hosting plan, your site will be served from industry-standard technology and backed by 24/7/365 award-winning technical support via telephone and LiveChat. 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The #1 Way to Prepare Your Website for Holiday Traffic: Upgrade Your Hosting

Posted on September 4, 2018 by Hosting

The post The #1 Way to Prepare Your Website for Holiday Traffic: Upgrade Your Hosting appeared first on HostGator Blog . Is Your Site Prepared For Holiday Traffic? Time To Upgrade Your Hosting When you’re getting your online store ready for the holiday shopping season , there’s a lot to plan, like Black Friday deals, seasonal products, and marketing campaigns. Remember to include the store itself in your holiday prep, too. For customers to find and buy your holiday deals, your site has to stay up and running—no matter how many shoppers show up. It also has to stand up to hackers who try to sneak in with the holiday crowd. Here’s how to prepare your site to handle heavier than normal traffic, give your shoppers a great experience, and keep your store secure.   Can Your Site Handle the Traffic Numbers You Expect? Black Friday isn’t just crowded in brick-and-mortar stores. More than half of US shoppers made at least one purchase on Black Friday in 2017, and the total haul for online Black Friday sales last year was more than $5 billion. That’s a lot of people going online. If your hosting plan includes monthly limits on how many visits your site can have, you could find your site hitting its traffic limit on the biggest shopping weekend of the year. And if you can’t quickly scale up your site’s capacity to serve a throng of shoppers, your site could slow to a crawl or even crash. What to do now: Look for real-time scalability that you can activate with a click to keep your site online and running smoothly even when goods are flying off your virtual shelves. Or look for an upgraded hosting plan that doesn’t cap monthly site visits so you can turn all your attention to your sales over the holidays. Are You Protected Against Downtime? If your site does go offline during holiday sales, shoppers may only come back later if you have products they want and can’t get anywhere else. We’ve blogged about the importance of creating exclusive deals for Black Friday , and we just discussed why hosting scalability matters. But there’s another thing that can lead to site crashes—hardware failure on the host’s end. It’s not common, because web hosts work hard to maintain their equipment, but it can happen. If it happens during peak shopping times, your business could suffer unless your host has a seamless Plan B. What to do now: Find out if your hosting plan includes failover capability . Failover means your host is ready and able to switch your site to another server if there are any issues with your current one so your site doesn’t go offline due to issues on their end. Failover switches from one server to another are usually seamless, but some include a brief downtime during the transition. If your plan doesn’t include failover protection, it may be time to upgrade.   How Fast Do Your Store Pages Load? Page load times are now a real factor in search results , so if you want your store to get found, it needs to get fast. When shoppers arrive, fast page loads can keep them in your store. The Financial Times found that just a one-second increase in page speed boosted engagement by 5% , showing that any improvement in load time is worth the effort. Some page-speed improvements you can do yourself, like optimizing the images on your WordPress-powered site . When you’re planning page-speed improvements, keep in mind that your product pages will be the first place shoppers land in your store if they find you through product search results. But images and videos—the centerpieces of product pages—are often the slowest elements to load, and 40% of shoppers will simply leave if your page takes more than 3 seconds to load. After you optimize your images, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to check your pages’ performance and get more suggestions for improvements. Your site may need more improvements that can only come from upgraded hosting, like proper cache configuration, top-of-the-line hardware, and optimal server density. What to do now: Check your site’s performance on PageSpeed Insights . Use the recommendations Google generates to talk to your hosting service about upgrading for load time improvements.   Does You Have Site Security for Your Online Store? Shoppers aren’t the only ones who flock to online stores during the holidays. Data thieves and other malicious actors know that during the holidays, merchants are so busy filling orders that they don’t notice or don’t have the resources to deal with data theft attempts and malware attacks. The last thing you need during peak sales season is a data breach or denial of service attack that throws your business into chaos when it should be racking up sales. As with page speed, some site security practices are up to you, like ensuring that you’re running the most up-to-date versions of your store platform, plugins, and related software. The devices you use to work on your store should be updated and fully secured, too. And we all know that it’s important to use secure, unique passwords . But there are ways your hosting service can help, too. What to look for: Does your current hosting plan include regular scans to detect and remove malware from your site? Is there an upgrade option that protects your store even further by guarding against DoS attacks that could crash your site?   Does Your Host Provide Website Analytics? Maybe the only thing more important for retailers than strong holiday sales is a serious post-season analysis of holiday sales activity. Much of this will draw on your Google, email, and social media analytics, but some of it should come from your site itself. Is it easy for you to find and monitor your site’s traffic trends, uptime, page load speed, and other performance data? You’ll need it to see what works during this year’s holidays and to plan how you can improve for next year. What to do now: Check your dashboard to see what kind of site data is available to you. If you’re not seeing the type of performance data you’ll need to refine your site, talk to your host about upgrade options. Be Prepared with Upgraded Hosting Make sure your hard work on holiday products and promotions pays off. Get ready now to welcome holiday season shoppers, give them what they want fast, keep your site safe, and gather valuable data. Give yourself the gift of an upgraded hosting plan now, before the holiday rush begins. Learn more about HostGator’s cloud hosting and dedicated server plans . 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