Cedar City Website Design

When a website has a “responsive design” or in other words is “mobile friendly” it is visually appealing and easy to navigate on a mobile device. Having a mobile friendly website is so important to the success of your business’s online presence because around 60% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices.

On top of that statistic, Google says 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead.

With such a high and ever increasing percentage of users browsing the internet for goods and services on their phones, it is imperative for your business that your site functions well across all devices – computers, phones, and tablets.

When someone visits your website, if there is no SSL Certificate they will see “http” at the beginning of your URL. If you have an SSL Certificate, they will see “https”

It’s a form of security for sites that handle sensitive information like a visitor’s personal information and credit card number. But even if you don’t NEED an SSL Certificate… you still need an SSL Certificate.

Here’s why – Chrome and other browsers have begun issuing warnings that non-https sites are “insecure.” Most people see the “insecure” warning and think “virus” and will not end up visiting your website that is not actually filled with viruses.

Google also announced that having an SSL Certificate is a ranking signal. That means without an SSL certificate your site will be harder to find and your site traffic can be impacted negatively.

Most premium hosting includes an SSL certificate. All of the websites we host have an SSL certificate standard to help with security, confidence, and SEO.

Social media is a great tool for your business. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok can be beneficial for interacting with your customers and clients, for marketing, for reputation, and for many other things. Make sure to always link to your social media on your website and vice versa.

An XML Site Map is a file submitted to search engines like Google and Bing that helps them navigate your website more efficiently. This file lists all of your website pages in a format (XML) that is easy for a machine to understand.

Using this map of your website, a search engine is able to “crawl” your site. Which means it can find more content from your website pages, and in turn it will be more likely to show your content in it’s search results.

XML Sitemaps are exceptionally important for both new and well established websites.

If you have a brand new website, you need an XML Sitemap so search engines can discover it. You can’t show up in search results if the search engines don’t know you exist.

If your website has been around a while and is well established, an XML Sitemap will allow you to show search engines which pages on your site are more important than others, which pages are updated more often, and other useful information. The search engines will then know how often and where to crawl your site, keeping their search results accurate and giving your content more potential to be discovered.

By default, a website is not optimized for search engines. In order to develop a website that can actually be found by search engines (brand new or already existing) requires thought, planning, and strategic work to do correctly. This work is called Search Engine Optimization or “SEO”.

Having your website optimized for search engines is one of the most important aspects to focus on for your website. When done correctly, SEO can boost your Google rankings, drive more traffic to your website, and bring more clients and customers straight to you.

Web hosting is where the files and data for your website are stored then shared through an internet browser like Chrome or Safari for viewing. Hosting is what allows someone to see your website. If you want your website to be live on the internet and available for anyone other than yourself to view, then you need to buy some sort of website hosting packing.

Though not all hosting is created equal.

Budget hosting is provided by companies like GoDaddy, HostGator, and Bluehost. They often offer cheaper hosting plans that put your website on a shared server. “Shared” hosting is always cheap because, just as the name says, you are sharing a hosting server with many other websites. Sometimes hundreds! So, if one or more of those other websites has issues or is using all the resources, it will cause your website to be slow and vulnerable.

We do not recommend budget hosting.

We do, however, recommend and also offer Premium Hosting on a Virtual Private Server (VPS). Premium hosting plans, like the ones we offer, are fast, reliable, and secure.

Fast hosting means faster load times of your website, and this is important for a few different reasons. One of those reasons being a user’s experience. No one wants to wait longer than a second or two for a web page to load. If your site is loading slow, your visitors may just hit the back button and see if your competitor’s site loads faster.

Another reason fast hosting is important is for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. Google has admitted that the “User Experience” is a main factor in deciding if it wants to show your website in search results. They have even gone so detailed to let us know that load times is one of the main user experience factors they consider.

Reliability in hosting is important because a web host that goes offline often can affect your website’s SEO negatively. Aside from SEO, your business reputation and revenue can also be seriously affected in negative ways if your site is offline more often than not.

Premium hosting on a VPS as mentioned above, is hosting that isn’t shared with any other websites. This increases the security of your website.