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5 Reasons Why Your Website Needs to be Mobile-Friendly

It’s not news that people spend hours on their smartphones everyday. Consequently, ensuring your business has a mobile-friendly website isn’t just a convenient bonus for your customers—it is essential.

In 2016 alone, mobile commerce transactions totaled $123 billion. You can only imagine how much that number has exponentially increased in the last 5 years. Mobile devices aren’t going anywhere; neither is mobile commerce. At this rate, if your business’s website is not optimized for mobile devices, you are missing out on potential customers and increased profit. Here’s why:

Reach More Customers & Expand Your Audience

Today’s consumers demand mobile access, plain and simple. They automatically expect to find anything on a mobile device that they would on a desktop computer. Even though people are more likely to use a desktop for work purposes or other personal reasons, mobile devices such as phones or tablets are the devices of choice for using search engines and reading online content. As a result, it’s also the device of choice to discover new businesses and brands. It goes without saying that the more people who are able to easily view your website, the more likely they will explore multiple pages, discover and remember your brand, and become a customer.

Stay Competitive

The odds are your top competitors already have mobile-friendly websites. In order to keep up with your competition, your website must be mobile-friendly. If customers cannot easily access and use your website on their mobile device, they will quickly move on and likely not come back. This may seem like a finicky reason to move on from a website, but with so many businesses to choose from, there’s no reason for a customer to stick with a business that is not catering to their experience. Frustrated customers will go to mobile-friendly competitors.

Increase Visibility & Get Discovered

Search engines love mobile-friendly websites. In fact, it is one of the ranking factors that determines where your website will appear in the line-up. One of the best advantages of mobile-friendly websites is that they immediately access a wider audience range. Organic search results are priceless—they are an incredibly cost-effective way to increase your business’s visibility, to get discovered, and to consistently convert leads into sales.

Maintain Your Brand Reputation

Whether your website is mobile or not affects your business’s reputation. It doesn’t send a good first impression to visitors and loyal customers alike if a business doesn’t take the time to create a seamless mobile experience. When pages load quickly on mobile devices, users are not distracted by inconvenience and don’t become frustrated. As a result, they can form their opinion based on all the hard work that went into the website’s design, layout, copy, and offerings.

Create a Better User Experience

More than half of website traffic is completed on mobile devices, which means more than half of your customers use your website on mobile devices. What kind of experience are you giving them? A website that is mobile-friendly gives your customers an enjoyable experience with your business, creating positive associations with your brand. As a result, you will increase customer trust and loyalty, and your customers can feel good about recommending your business to friends and family.

How Can You Optimize Your Website?

Mobile-friendly websites create more opportunities for your business, build better relationships with customers, and open the door to increased revenue. Don’t miss out!

Regularly evaluating your website will keep your business on track to meeting your objectives. Sun Sign Designs offers a free audit of your website’s loading performance and provides the solutions needed to further improve it. Discover how your website is performing and learn ways to optimize it now.

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Website Speed: Why is it Essential for Your Business’s Success?

Website speed is often the last thing on people’s minds when they are designing the perfect website for their business. While page design, layout, content, and imagery play large roles in a website’s success, optimal website speed actually takes precedent. In a world where our search engines often bring up our desired results in less than a second, people today are not willing to wait for slow websites to load—even if the website has attractive design, layout, and content.

Believe it or not, optimal website speed is the solid foundation that makes everything else in a website work. Engaging copy and content becomes functionless if visitors will not stay long enough to read it. Let’s look at the four core areas that website speeds directly affect.

First Impressions

In the world of the web, first impressions are lasting. This critical first look hinges on the time it takes for your page to load.  Someone’s first encounter with your brand is incredibly important because it determines if it will be their only encounter. If your website loads slowly, they will likely move on to competition and not come back.

This may seem fickle, but there is no reason for these customers to stick around when they have so many other choices to explore. Despite quality web design, graphics, or content, slow load speeds can immediately alter a visitor’s perception of the website’s quality and their decision to use its services. When pages load quickly, users are not distracted by inconvenience. As a result, they can form their opinion based on all the hard work that went into the website’s design, layout, copy, and offerings.

User Experience

While it is incredibly important for businesses to attract new traffic, it’s also incredibly important for businesses to retain first-time viewers and repeat customers. New traffic doesn’t always mean better traffic—maintaining the traffic you already have by providing excellent user experience is the key to thriving long-term. Consistently slow page speeds and poor response times deter users from coming back and halt the beginnings of customer loyalty. Retaining loyal customers and regular users of your website is a critical first step to growing your business.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is much more than certain keywords. High search engine rankings are critical for your business to be found organically online, and slow website speed will push any business to the bottom of the list. Websites with better load speeds are prioritized in search engines, particularly websites with excellent mobile performance. Search engines are meant to pull up the best websites that will quickly satisfy the user. If a website is slow and not compatible with mobile devices, the search engine will not suggest it, which is dismal for growing businesses that rely on organic discovery. Mobile speed in particular has now been prioritized by search engines since people are less likely to make searches from their desktop.

Traffic and Conversion Rates

It goes without saying that the more people who are able to easily view your website, the more likely they will explore multiple pages, discover and remember your brand, and become a customer. Of course, high traffic doesn’t always mean quality traffic, but it undoubtedly increases the business’s potential for their return-on-investment. Unhindered by slow speeds, more users can complete the business’s desired action, whether it be reading a blog post, filling in a survey, providing an email for a newsletter, or purchasing a product. As a result, traffic and conversion rates often go hand-in-hand. When there is higher traffic, there is more opportunity for businesses to convert these leads into sales.

Regularly testing your website’s speed is necessary maintenance just like getting an oil change for your car—it ensures your entire website can function and run as best as it can. Don’t let slow website speeds hinder your business’s growth and success.

How’s Your Website Performing? Find Out Where Your Website Stands Today

Regularly evaluating your website will keep your business on track to meeting your objectives. Sun Sign Designs offers a free audit of your website’s loading performance and provides the solutions needed to further improve it. Discover how your website is performing and learn ways to optimize it now.

Check Your Website Speed
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Sun Sign Designs Launches NHA Development’s Website

NHA Development LLC is a fully-licensed and insured development and construction company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They offer full turn-key solutions and services to real estate developers, investors, and homeowners in the greater Philadelphia. They specialize in custom-built, new construction single-family and multi-family residential spaces.

From design to construction, NHA Development’s priority is to achieve their clients’ unique goals for their spaces with attention and consideration to their lifestyle and budgetary needs. NHA Development seeks to bridge the gap between quality craftsmanship and affordability to give Philadelphia homeowners beautifully-built homes at the best prices.

NHA Development recruited Sun Sign Designs to build a high-quality website that could house its extensive portfolio. Sun Sign Designs started with building a strong foundation by writing the relevant website copy needed to increase SEO, engage online visitors, tell NHA Development’s story and mission, and explain the company’s services.

The copy created a strong foundation to build a website design around. Sun Sign Designs designed NHA Development’s homepage to open with moving, panoramic views of their recent developments to give online visitors a virtual tour, indoor and outdoor, of NHA’s homes. As visitors scroll down the homepage, Sun Sign Designs achieves the perfect balance between beautiful visuals and relevant copy to keep people both engaged and informed.

Sun Sign Designs created a separate page for visitors to easily explore NHA Development’s entire portfolio. Visitors can simply select the property they are interested in viewing and then scroll through the relevant pictures. Sun Sign Designs reliable hosting services allow NHA Development to house as many pictures as they want without affecting their website’s load time and speeds. In addition, Sun Sign Designs created the ability for visitors to easily request a quote and to view the typical lifecycle of a new construction development.

Sun Sign Designs knows a strong and professional online presence is essential for businesses to convert leads into sales. We have all the tools you need for the perfect website—get started with us today!

 

Visit NHA Development’s website at https://nhabuilders.com/and let us know what you think in the comments below!

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Sun Sign Designs Launches Via Roma’s Website

For over 50 years, Via Roma Italian Restaurant & Sports Bar has proudly served Eagleville, Pennsylvania. Since opening in 1969, they have been committed to serving up the most authentic Italian cooking for their community to enjoy. They prioritize great service, hot, made-to-order cooking, and outstanding value for the best possible dining experience. All of their dishes are original family recipes that have been passed down from generation-to-generation and lovingly preserved. When they serve you, they are serving family!

With over 50 years of excellent service, Via Roma knew their website also needed to be first-rate, so they turned to Sun Sign Designs to cook up an amazing website!

Sun Sign Designs understood Via Roma needed reliable e-commerce solutions for their new website, so they could cut out expensive delivery apps that took commissions from their sales. With a complete online menu available, Sun Sign Designs gives customers a taste of what Via Roma has to offer with easy-to-use menu navigation.

Via Roma’s customers can now easily navigate through appetizers, entrees, pizzas, salads, subs, and more. With an easy-to-navigate online menu and secure check-out options, Via Roma’s customers can effortlessly order and complete their meal purchase online and pick-up in person. Sun Sign Designs also ensured Via Roma’s website is mobile-friendly, so customers can view and order from the website no matter what device they use.

In addition to adding an online menu and e-commerce solutions, Sun Sign Designs also cooked up an appetizing homepage that features a colorful and visually-appealing gallery of Via Roma’s delicious dishes. To complement the visuals, Sun Sign Designs wrote new engaging copy that shares Via Roma’s offerings, events, story, and mission. Relevant website copy and content building drives successful SEO results and helps get more customers ordering online and coming in the door.

Sun Sign Designs knows a strong and professional online presence is essential for restaurants to get customers coming in, ordering online, and sharing their experience with others. We have all the ingredients for the perfect website—get started with us today!

Visit Via Roma’s new website at https://viaromapizzasb.com/ and let us know what you think in the comments below!

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Why Your Business Needs to Evaluate its Website Performance

How’s your website performing? And why do you need to know?

Regularly evaluating the performance of your website is critical to the success of online businesses. Online businesses spend large amounts of time and money designing a website that attracts their audience, building functional online stores, creating marketing materials, and writing savvy content to draw in visitors. All of this work is meant to boost engagement and encourage quality traffic that turns leads into sales. Yet they aren’t receiving the conversion rates they expected, even if they have high traffic.

Without measurement and evaluations, determining what’s hindering your website’s success becomes a guessing game. Businesses won’t know how well or how badly their website is performing, but most importantly, they won’t know how to fix it. By running analytics on your website, it becomes much easier to determine which areas of your website are performing better than others.

Often, the root of poor website performance lies in an inefficient server, which dramatically affects page loading speeds and response times. Numerous studies have shown that even a few tenths of a second start decreasing a visitor’s desire to use a website. Despite quality web design, graphics, or content, slow load speeds can immediately alter a visitor’s perception of the website’s quality and their decision to use its services. In addition, page load speeds also determine where a website will rank in search engine results, majorly affecting a business’s SEO.

Page speed is often neglected in many businesses website planning processes. Overly enlarged images, unoptimized images, many different plugins or customizations, and inefficient coding can all bloat and slow down a website. However, a website’s hosting services and its server also have a major impact on speed and response times. Depending on a business’s hosting services, a crowded shared server could dramatically slow a website’s speed since it forces users to compete for resources. As a result, another website’s high traffic could slow down and even crash other websites on the same server. Though shared servers are cost efficient for many businesses, its instability can lead to lost sales.

Depending on the business’s size and budget, switching to a more powerful server may be the answer. But running regular evaluations and analytics on a website’s performance shows owners where they can optimize their current server and make the changes needed to improve its overall performance. Fast response and loading times have been proven to increase positive performance results and conversion rates, leading to higher quality traffic, increased sales, and higher search engine rankings.

Find Out Where Your Website Stands

Regularly evaluating your website will keep your business on track to meeting your objectives. Sun Sign Designs offers a free audit of your website’s loading performance and provides solutions to further improve it. Discover how your website is performing and learn ways to optimize it now.

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VPS, VMS, and Dedicated Hosting: What’s the Difference?

The type of hosting your website uses plays a critical role in how your online content is viewed and distributed. If a business chooses a hosting service that doesn’t fit its needs, the business’s ability to effectively reach its audience is impacted.

Just like local businesses will contemplate location, size, and ease-of-access when leasing physical spaces for its in-person store, online businesses need to evaluate their own pros and cons when “leasing” virtual space for people to visit their website and online shop. Web hosting essentially gives people the server space for websites to become visible on the Internet. In our digital age, virtual storefronts are becoming just as plentiful as physical ones.

When looking to build a website for their business, people need to make sure their website and ecommerce solutions can effectively perform business operations without downtime or interruptions. In order to do so, people will need to consider and definitively know their business’s needs before choosing a hosting server that will best serve them. Let’s explore the main differences between VPS, VMS, and dedicated hosting servers.

Virtual Private Server (VPS)

A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a physical server that is divided into several smaller virtual servers, in which multiple users share an operating system. A VPS is often likened to a large apartment complex in which each person has their own apartment. Everyone has their own space they can customize and control, but they are housed in the same building and share some basic resources. VPS is essentially a hybrid of shared hosting and dedicated hosting. It gives users the minimum amount of resources they need without overwhelming them with resources their business has not yet grown into.

VPS offers users a private operating system, storage, and bandwidth that is allocated and shared between users on the server. VPS also offers a high degree of control and customization, allowing users to easily change server settings, add software, add users, and turn the server on and off as needed. In addition, VPS hosting is incredibly cost-effective compared to a dedicated server and is an affordable option for small-to-medium sized businesses.

However, with many partitions and users on one operating system, it has the potential to cause increased strain on the server. As a result, VPS users may suffer from reduced uptime and increased disruptions. For example, if a VPS receives high, unexpected levels of traffic, it will use the entirety of the server’s CPU, or operating abilities. Consequently, one user’s traffic on a VPS could affect the performance of another user’s website.

VPS hosting is suitable for small-to-medium sized businesses, personal pages, or bloggers who do not receive high levels of traffic but still want basic security and reliability on a budget. For businesses that have outgrown shared hosting but cannot afford dedicated hosting, VPS is an affordable in-between.

Virtual Machine Server (VMS)

Similar to a VPS, a Virtual Machine Server (VMS) splits the physical server into many individual, virtual servers. However, instead of sharing the resources across all the servers, each partitioned server receives its own dedicated resources. VMS hosting is specifically designed to host numerous users so performance doesn’t become an issue. In comparison to a VPS, a VMS offers improved security and performance. In terms of storage, disk space, memory, and bandwidth, a VMS caters to small-to-medium sized businesses with an increased hosting budget for better performance and security. However, if a business needs low-cost hosting, VPS might be preferred.

Dedicated Hosting

A dedicated server means a user will get the entire physical server for their website along with increased storage, memory, disk space, and speed. As a result, a user’s website is physically isolated from other accounts, not just virtually isolated, which means increased security and reliability. The main advantage to dedicated servers in addition to increased space is that users have full control over their resources—no one else’s website will affect their own. However, dedicated servers are far more expensive and more complex to manage; essentially, they are not user-friendly. Dedicated services are suitable for high-traffic sites that have very specific hosting needs. For most people, VPS or VMS hosting are more affordable and flexible options.

 

Which hosting solution best fits your business? It’s important to keep in mind that the hosting solution you select could potentially be a long-term solution, one that will affect your business way into the future. Take your time and make an educated decision when choosing between a VPS, VMS, or dedicated server.

Got more hosting questions? Drop a comment below!

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Sun Sign Designs Grows Tampa Succulents’ Website

Tampa Succulents is a succulent greenhouse and shop based in the Seminole Heights neighborhood of Tampa, Florida. Owner Lisa Kimball’s love for succulents and gardening bloomed at a young age. She was continually fascinated by plant propagation and creating new succulents from fallen scraps. She now helps others discover the joys of planting succulents and cultivating greater community connection!

With Tampa Succulents, she has the pleasure of sharing and teaching the art of gardening and succulent therapy! Through fun virtual DIY events, pop-up markets, and collaborations with local businesses, Tampa Succulents shares the process of potting, arranging, and growing your own succulent planters or living wreaths. Tampa Succulents also ships their DIY succulent kits nationwide, so anyone can build and design the perfect planters for their home or garden.

Tampa Succulents knows growth is key, so they turned to Sun Sign Designs to help their website thrive! Tampa Succulents switched to Sun Sign Designs’ reliable hosting services, which boast high loading speeds, minimal downtime, and secure encryption. Sun Sign Designs ensures that all their clients’ websites are fast and user-friendly for their customers in order to quickly convert leads into sales.

Sun Sign Designs enhanced Tampa Succulents online platform and marketplace with new website design and copy. With the endless varieties of shapes, sizes, colors, and textures of succulents, Sun Sign Designs made sure Tampa Succulents’ website was bursting with the same color and greenery to engage site visitors. Similarly, Sun Sign Designs revitalized Tampa Succulents’ online shop, so customers can easily sort through DIY kits, succulent favors, living wreaths, and more. Finally, Sun Sign Designs is boosting Tampa Succulents’ SEO and creating new points of entry to their website by writing engaging blog content. Websites that are regularly updated with fresh content stay relevant in search engines and climb higher in search results, bringing more business to the website.

We think strong website design and digital marketing strategies are essential for businesses to grow and thrive for the long-term.

Check out Tampa Succulents at https://tampasucculents.com/

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Sun Sign Designs Launches PEAQ Procurement’s Website

PEAQ Procurement is a strategic advisory firm focused on helping mid-sized companies grow and perform by delivering value through procurement. Through its name, PEAQ promises Procurement Excellence Achieved Quickly and bringing their clients to the pinnacle, or “peak,” of success through strategic procurement.

PEAQ is action-oriented and focused on accelerated savings and results for their clients. They intimately understand what mid-sized companies need at each stage of the procurement process having walked in their clients’ shoes and faced the same challenges. With PEAQ’s down-to-earth, action-oriented approach to procurement, Sun Sign Designs designed their website to visually convey this message and approach.

PEAQ’s homepage opens with a paneled slideshow that immediately engages and hooks visitors of the website. The images feature breathtaking, rugged views of mountains, deep valleys, forests, and rivers—but these are not uninhabited, empty stills. They present adventurers hiking trails, climbing uphill, and scaling craggy rocks. By showcasing individuals who are physically ascending rough terrains, Sun Sign Designs infuses PEAQ’s website aesthetic with advancement and achievement in the face of adversity—or in the face of an intimidating procurement process.

Sun Sign Designs visually helps push PEAQ’s action-based mission to keep their clients moving forward and reach their procurement goals with the carefully-selected storyboard of images. Sun Sign Designs makes the majestic imagery approachable by inhabiting it with successful, hardworking individuals. As a result, Sun Sign Designs makes PEAQ’s procurement process appear more accessible and approachable for the mid-sized companies PEAQ works for.

With several images of individuals standing at great heights, or peaks, looking down below, Sun Sign Designs emphasizes PEAQ’s promise to guide their clients through difficult obstacles to reach the summit of their procurement goals.

At Sun Sign Designs, we believe strategic visual communication and quality website design are essential for speaking directly to your target audience and strengthening your business’s brand and core mission.

Check out PEAQ Procurement’s new website at https://peaqprocurement.com.

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Blue Rooster Web | Domain Name

Once a business has decided to build a website, it has an important decision to make before even thinking of the design process: choosing a name.

In our digital age, domain names have become online property. It is the virtual storefront where owners conduct business and where potential customers will browse and shop.

Domain names provide identifiable addresses for Internet users to easily locate a business’s website rather than using a string of numbers, or the IP address. No two domain names are ever the same, so staking your business’s claim can be a daunting process and, inevitably, many questions arise:

“Do I have to buy the same domain name as my registered business name?”

“Which domain extension would be best for me?”

“Will the choice of my domain name affect SEO?”

Blue Rooster Web answers all of these questions and streamlines that process for businesses through creative consultations to problem-solve, create, and secure a business’s unique, brand-driven domain name with Search Engine Optimization in the forefront.

Already included in Blue Rooster Web’s comprehensive and affordable web design and marketing subscription, businesses don’t have to worry about annual fees for domain name upkeep.

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Blue Rooster Web | Secure Website Hosting and SSL Certification

In order for a business to have an accessible website, it first requires a website hosting service. Website hosting is a service that allocates organizations, businesses, and individuals the virtual space to post a website to the Internet. The web host, or the web hosting provider, offers the technologies needed for the website to be viewed on the Internet and show up in searches. The files that comprise the website are subsequently stored on the host’s server, which Internet users will then access by typing in the domain name.

For a business’s strong online presence, reliable and secure website hosting is key.

Blue Rooster Web affordably bundles its professional, high-speed website hosting service with its comprehensive web design and marketing subscription, so businesses have a website that is always running smoothly and never littered with pop-up ads. It ensures that business owners never waste their own time trouble-shooting or worrying about losing online visitors. At no additional cost, Blue Rooster Web offers its customers unlimited data on its VMS software system because the last thing anyone should worry about is running out of storage.

Blue Rooster Web also installs the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate onto the business’s web server to establish a secure connection between browsers and ensure all web traffic is protected. SSL Certificates shields users’ sensitive information, such as credit card information, usernames, and passwords and keeps data secure between servers.  SSL Certification also increases customer trust, improves rankings on search engines, and ensures the business passes payment card industry (PCI) requirements in order to continue selling online.

Check out Blue Rooster Web today!