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Free Redesign SEO Promo TCs

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Free redesign for it’seeze customers to refresh and optimise your it’seeze website. Our terms & conditions for the promotion.

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SEO for Small Businesses: How to Compete with Big Brands Online

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Learn how small businesses can boost their online presence and compete with big brands using effective SEO strategies like website metadata and keyword LSI.

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Web Design Blog – Creative Web Design Company UK – it’seeze

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Read all the latest from the it’seeze web design blog to learn about our latest developments, website advice, marketing tips, industry news and much more.

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Why choose it’seeze as your web design agency

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Why choose it’seeze as your web design agency? Well, the clue is in our name. We empower businesses to grow through exceptional web design and lifetime support.

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Brilliant Accountants Case Study

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Brilliant Accountants Case Study

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Four things to do BEFORE starting SEO on your website

The #1 thing I get asked about is SEO or Search Engine Optimization. “How do I get to the top of the search engine results?” If I had the surefire answer to this, I’d be rich and probably wouldn’t bother writing this blog post. But, I do have some ideas. And the first thing you should do when starting seo is not look for keywords, write a blog, or type up your meta data.

1. Create your Google Business Listing

A Google Business Listing is essentially an online profile for your business, managed through Google My Business (GMB), a free tool. It acts like a digital storefront, appearing on Google Search and Maps whenever someone searches for your business name or similar products or services in your area. This makes it vital for local businesses to have a Google Business Listing, as it increases your online visibility and helps potential customers find you easily.

Setting up your GMB listing is straightforward. Head to Google Business Profile and follow the steps to create a profile. You’ll provide essential details like your business address, phone number, website (if you have one), and opening hours. GMB also lets you upload photos, manage reviews from customers, and even showcase what makes your business unique. With a complete and optimized GMB listing, you’re well on your way to attracting more local customers through Google searches. If you’re an established business, you may already have one that was pulled from other directories, and you’ll just need to claim it and verify it in order to make changes and manage it.

This listing is especially important for local businesses, because when someone is searching for something locally the first results are the map results, and you won’t be on the map if you don’t have this listing.

What if you don’t have a storefront?
Have no fear, you can still have a listing if you don’t have a storefront. Many businesses serve customers at their locations but are still real businesses that deserve to have a listing. When entering your information, you can choose to not show your address, and that you service customers at their location.

2. Set up Google Analytics

You would be surprised how many people come to me for SEO, and claim their website isn’t getting found, but have never installed Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free tool offered by Google that helps website owners understand how people find and use their site. It tracks visitor traffic and activity, providing insights into things like where visitors come from, what pages they view, and how long they stay. This data is important because it allows businesses to make data-driven decisions about their online presence. By understanding how users interact with their website, businesses can improve the user experience, identify areas for improvement, and track the success of marketing campaigns. If you don’t know the data about the traffic to your website, you can’t really make any meaningful decisions about SEO.

3. Set up Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is another free tool from Google, but with a different focus than Analytics. While Analytics looks at how visitors behave on your site, GSC specifically concentrates on how Google sees your site in search results. It acts as a bridge between you and Google’s search engine. GSC offers a variety of features to help you improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You can see which keywords people are using to find your site, how your pages rank in search results, and identify any technical issues that might prevent Google from properly indexing your site. GSC also alerts you to potential problems and helps you fix them, ultimately making your website more discoverable in search engines. This can lead to increased organic traffic, a key factor for any website aiming for online success.

Not only does Search Console give you information about how your site is performing in the search results, but it also gives Google the information it needs to properly index your site. Google has powerful bots that are always scanning the web, looking for new pages to index, but that doesn’t mean it’ll find yours right away. By setting up search console and adding your XML sitemap, you are ensuring Google knows where all your pages are.

What is an XML Sitemap?

An XML sitemap is a file in a special format (Extensible Markup Language) that tells search engines like Google about all the important pages on your website. It basically acts as a roadmap for search engine crawlers, helping them discover and index your content efficiently.

Here’s what an XML sitemap can include:

  • URLs of all your webpages
  • When each page was last updated
  • How often a page changes (daily, weekly, etc.)
  • The relative importance of a page on your website

Having an XML sitemap doesn’t guarantee that all your submitted URLs will be indexed by Google, but it definitely helps search engines understand your website structure and prioritize crawling important content.

Here’s how to submit your XML sitemap to Google Search Console:

  1. Sign in to Google Search Console.
  2. Select your website in the sidebar.
  3. Click on “Index” in the left menu and then “Sitemaps”.
  4. Click “Add a new sitemap” and enter the location of your sitemap file. This could be something like “sitemap.xml” or the full URL if it’s hosted elsewhere.
  5. Click “Submit” and Google will try to process your sitemap.

Guess what, Google isn’t the only search engine in town. While it does dominate, there’s still traffic to be had on other search engines. Bing gets about a 9% market share. Would you intentionally dismiss 9% of traffic to your website? Of course not. Bing Webmaster Tools, similar to Google Search Console, is a free service offered by Microsoft’s Bing search engine. It provides website owners and administrators with a suite of tools to improve their website’s visibility and performance in Bing search results.

Here’s how to set up Bing Webmaster Tools:

  1. Create an Account: Head over to Bing Webmaster Tools sign-in or sign-up and create a free account. You can use your existing Microsoft, Google, or Facebook account to sign up quickly. [Bing Webmaster Tools sign-in or sign-up]
  2. Add and Verify Your Website: Once you’re signed in, you can add your website to your account. Bing Webmaster Tools requires verification to prove you own the site. There are four ways to verify ownership:
    • DNS auto verification: This is the simplest method if your domain registrar supports Domain Connect. Bing will automatically detect your DNS provider and add a CNAME record to verify ownership.
    • HTML meta tag: Bing provides a meta tag that you can add to the head section of your website’s homepage.
    • Upload a file: You can upload a specific verification file to the root directory of your website.
    • CNAME record: You can manually add a CNAME record to your domain name system (DNS) settings.
  3. Submit Your Sitemap: A sitemap helps search engines discover all the pages on your website. You can create and submit your sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools. This ensures Bing is aware of all your website’s content.

These steps are going to ensure that your site can be found in the search engines and that you can monitor the traffic coming to your site. Optimizing your site is important, but Google has to know where those pages are, has to know your business exists, and you need to know who is coming to your site and all that needs to happen right away.

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Zenovo Case Study

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Zenovo Case Study

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Online Booking System for Small Business

Thinking about having online booking, and don’t know where to begin? There’s a lot to think about! And I have a lot of opinions, but first, you need to ask yourself a LOT of questions to figure out exactly what you’ll need to make this work. Here are are question to help you decide on an online booking system for small business.

What are you booking?

This may sound like a weird question at first, but it’s so important because different types of bookings will be different. Are you booking appointments for online meetings? Appointments for in-person meetings? Those are easy. But what if you want to book an apartment? A vacation rental? Or equipment? That’s an entirely different ballgame. And of course you might want to book services, like salon and spa services, massages, personal training, etc.

What you are booking is important because it dictates a lot of the needs you are going to have. If you are booking equipment rental, for example, you may have a limited number of each item on hand, and you might book rentals by the day or the by week, whereas if you are booking Zoom appointments you can probably do several of those per day, and you won’t need to include possible delivery of items.

And salon services can be complicated because there are different services that can take different amounts of time, and your salon may have a large team that can all accommodate different types of services on different days and different times.

And what about services that you offer in people’s homes, like carpet cleaning? That adds a new level of difficulty, because you may have to plan for travel between service locations, as well as different sizes of homes or locations that may require more or less time.

See how fast it can get complicated?

Do you want to charge deposits or fees for the booking?

You need to consider whether you want to charge people at the time of booking or not. Lots of places do and lots of places don’t. For example, I recently booked an eye exam online, and I didn’t have to pay anything, but when I scheduled a hair appointment, I didn’t. Some hotels charge a deposit to book, or the full amount, and some do not. When I book an AirBNB, sometimes I have to pay the full amount, and sometimes I have to pay just a minimal deposit. Adding the ability to take a payment adds another feature whatever booking plugin you use has. Many don’t even come with the ability to take payments, and that would rule that plugin out completely. You don’t want to get halfway through the set up and realize it doesn’t have the feature you need.

How long are the bookings for?

Is your booking for 15 minutes? Is it for one day? One week? And do you need to schedule padding between appointments to keep things running smoothly?

Do you need to include travel time for in-person services?

Do you need a phone app?

If your entire business is based on your bookings, then having an app on your phone is probably pretty important for managing your bookings, and not all booking options will include this.


Does it have to be a WordPress plugin?

As a WordPress expert and WordPress-only agency, we love WordPress. BUT, you don’t always have to use a WordPress plugin to get the functionality you need. There are lots of third-party applications that might do what you need, that we can incorporate or integrate without it being WordPress specific software.

Booking Options

There are a lot of booking options out there, so I’m going to rundown a few that I’ve used for various sites over the years, both WP specific and third-party apps.

‘https://calendly.comCalendly:

Calendly is a software program that helps people schedule meetings and appointments more easily. It eliminates the back-and-forth emails that can often happen when trying to find a time that works for everyone. It syncs with your existing calendar (like Google or Outlook) and knows your availability and has many additional features such as the ability to add padding between appointments, limit the appointments in the day, the ability to take payments for bookings, etc.

We use Calendly for our own appointment scheduling and it works great. It does exactly what we need it to. However, if you have a big team or want to rent equipment or off-site services, it may not be the best option for you.

WooCommerce Bookings

WooCommerce Bookings is a plugin for the WooCommerce e-commerce platform that allows businesses to offer appointment-based services, rentals, and reservations directly on their website. It provides features like defining availability rules, setting flexible pricing, and managing bookings through a user-friendly interface. This streamlines the booking process for both customers, who can easily schedule their desired time, and business owners, who can efficiently manage their resources and bookings.

This may be a good option for a vacation rental, equipment rentals, or other services. We used it for a business that was offering painting parties and it allowed people to book an artist to teach a group painting lesson.

Square

Square Appointments is a scheduling system designed to streamline appointment booking for both businesses and their clients. Here’s a breakdown of its features:

For Businesses:

  • Manage Appointments: Create a central calendar to view and manage appointments, including filtering by staff, location, or time frame. It also integrates with Google Calendar for centralized scheduling.
  • Online Booking: Provide clients with a self-service booking option through a free Square Appointments website or a booking button embedded on your existing website.
  • Mobile App: Manage your schedule and bookings from anywhere using the Square Appointments mobile app for iOS and Android.
  • Additional Features:
    • Client management with appointment history.
    • Automated appointment reminders via email and SMS.
    • Recurring appointments.
    • Support for multiple staff and locations.
    • Integration with Square Point of Sale for in-person payments.
    • Waitlist management to fill scheduling gaps.

For Clients:

  • Easy Booking: Clients can view available appointment slots and book appointments directly through your website or the Square Appointments website.
  • Appointment Reminders: Receive automated reminders to reduce no-shows.
  • Online Booking Management: Clients can reschedule or cancel appointments online.

Square Appointments offers a free plan with basic features, and Plus and Premium plans with additional features like staff permissions and marketing tools.

A lot of stylists are using Square these days for their online booking, and it seems to work pretty well. It gives you options for salon hours, different service types that take different amounts of time, etc.

Some other salon booking options include: SpaBooker, Vagaro, and Booksy.

ZenBooker

ZenBooker is an online booking system designed specifically for home service businesses. It allows customers to schedule appointments, see real-time availability of service providers, and even get price quotes directly through a business’s website.

Here are some key features of ZenBooker:

  • Online booking: Customers can conveniently book appointments directly through a business’s website without needing to call.
  • Real-time availability: ZenBooker shows customers the service provider’s availability in real-time, ensuring they can schedule appointments for times that work for both parties.
  • Dynamic pricing: Customers can see estimated prices for services based on their selections, allowing them to make informed decisions.
  • Service territories: Businesses can define the areas they service and prevent bookings from outside those zones.
  • Mobile access: ZenBooker has a mobile web app for service providers, allowing them to manage their schedules and bookings while on the go.

This is a particularly good option if you are scheduling in-home services, and need to keep your appointments in roughly the same area so you aren’t wasting a ton of time driving.

Event Tickets

Event Tickets Plus is a premium add-on for the Events Calendar plugin by Modern Tribe. It expands on the functionality of the free Events Calendar plugin by offering features specifically designed for managing ticket sales on your WordPress website.

Here are some key features of Event Tickets Plus:

  • Sell tickets directly on your website: You can create and sell tickets for events without relying on a third-party ticketing platform. This eliminates extra fees associated with those services.
  • Works with popular e-commerce platforms: Integrate ticket sales with WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads for a seamless checkout experience.
  • Advanced ticket management: Create different ticket tiers with varying prices, stock levels, and unique SKUs. You can also control when ticket sales open and close.
  • QR code check-in: Simplify event entry with a mobile app for iOS and Android that allows scanning QR codes on tickets. This eliminates the need for physical tickets.
  • Sell tickets for virtual events: Integrate Zoom with your events using an additional add-on and provide attendees with a link upon purchase.
  • Detailed ticket information: Customize ticket fields to capture additional information from attendees, such as dietary restrictions or emergency contact details.

Many of these options include the ability to integrate into your website if they aren’t WordPress specific. Calendly has some great embed options, some offer the ability just to link to your branded scheduling page, and of course, some are specifically WordPress plugins.


Can you manage it?

The final question you need to ask yourself when setting up online booking for whatever option you choose is – can you manage it? The truth is, I can set up any of these options for you and make them work. But at the end of the day, you’ll be the one that has to manage your appointments, be able to see your schedule, communicate with customers, and make changes as needed. And if you aren’t comfortable using the system, then it’s not going to work for you.

The most important question to ask yourself and honestly answer is if you think you can manage the bookings yourself once the setup is done. Because if you find yourself without much time to get online, or not very good at computers or apps, then it may not be the best choice for you. I highly recommend schedule a demo with some of these companies to see exactly how it works before you jump in with both feet.

The best online booking system is the one that does what you need it to do, and that you can manage without getting a headache. 🙂

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Flixton Case Study

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Flixton Case Study

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User Experience Tips for Your Website

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A seamless user experience (UX) is the cornerstone of a successful website. It’s what keeps visitors engaged, converts them into customers, and ultimately drives business growth. And sadly, it’s where a lot of people who are designing their website miss the ball. So today, let’s chat about user-experience, and go over five simple things you can do today to make a better user-experience for your website visitors.

Intuitive Navigation

Intuitive navigation refers to website design that aligns with users’ natural browsing behaviors, making it easy for them to find information without confusion. You may not know it, but there are basic navigation menu standards that can make it easier for people to find your content when they land on your site.

  • Home: The first link in your navigation menu should be Home. I’ve had plenty of people say “We don’t need home, they can click on the logo.” And that’s true, the logo should be present and clickable. But that isn’t always obvious to people.
  • Contact: The last link in your navigation menu should be contact. That is just where people look for it. Some people want to add it as a button on the page, or hide it in the footer. Best practice is to keep it in the navigation as the last item, unless you really, really don’t want anyone to contact you.
  • Logical Organization: The rest of your navigation should be simple, uncluttered, and cohesive. Don’t hide your contact link in a drop down. Group things appropriately so they make sense to the user. If you have five services, then those can be listed under Services in a dropdown menu.
  • Readable: Don’t use fancy fonts that are hard to read. Make sure your color contrast is strong. Always make sure that your navigation links are big enough to read, and use short, concise words that reveal what’s on that page. Don’t use full sentences or long phrases in your navigation.
  • Be Consistent: Have the same navigation menu on every page of your site. Remember that not everyone will enter your website on the homepage. Some may get served up your about page, a blog post, or another page when they are searching. No matter what page they land on, they should get the same menu.

When it comes to navigation, your main menu is only one aspect of it. One thing to keep in mind is that different people navigate sites in different ways. Don’t assume that all your users are going to scroll to the bottom of your site and see the footer. Many won’t. In fact, most won’t make it that far. In general, people land on your site with a purpose in mind, and they are going to click on the right links until they find what they need. Make it super easy for find what they need.

Be consistent in your design and branding

A big turnoff for your website visitor is if each page of your website looks like a new website. Sure, it can be fun to experiment with different design choices, fonts, colors, and imagery, but it makes for a poor user experience. Humans desire consistency. Consistency creates a professional and cohesive user experience. Often times if the theme of the website changes, people will think they’ve landed on a new website.

Consistency is also important for branding. Using the same fonts, colors, and styles across all pages creates a clear definition of your brand and will create a connection with your brand and those styles that will start to be identifiable with your name. Want to know more about brand guidelines? We wrote a blog post about that.

User Friendly Forms

Guess what, your website should have at least one form. This form lets people contact you. I routinely have people come to me and say, “I hate filling out forms, I don’t want one.” And that’s your right to have an opinion about forms. But just because you hate them, doesn’t mean other people do too. In fact, some people prefer to use a form. Some prefer to email. Some prefer to call. Some prefer to chat. My advice is to give people as many of those options as possible. If you don’t want people to call you, then obviously don’t include a phone number, but any type of communication you are willing to engage in should be included.

Man submitting contact form on website

So let’s talk about that form. If you have a form, it needs to be easy to read, make sense, collect only the information you need. Here are a few tips:

  • Limit the number of required fields. Did you know that making a phone number field optional will increase your submissions by 5%? The less fields you require, the more likely you are to get that form filled out. Now, there are times when you want to be restrictive in your forms, when you need more information to complete a request, etc. Just remember less fields equals more submissions.
  • Have clear labels. Make sure it makes sense what goes in each field.
  • Make it readable. The fonts shouldn’t be too small, they should be easy to read, and the placeholder font shouldn’t be so light gray you can’t read it.
  • Don’t use captchas. I know, we all hate spam, but those captchas are very hard to complete for a lot of people Don’t even get me started on the ones that make me identify all the bicycles or stoplights. The bane of my existence. If spam is an issue, you can add an invisible recaptcha that checks spam without the user having to do anything.

Triple check your mobile friendliness

As we are about to enter 2025, if your website isn’t mobile friendly, you are in big trouble. Not only is that a ranking factor for SEO, but it’s a huge liability for your users. Now, people will come onto the Internet and throw out figures like “90% of your website visitors are on mobile!” And, well, that’s likely just not true. The truth is that this number varies significantly by industry. I have one client who has 80% of their users visiting on desktop computers. This site actually has 75% of users visiting on desktop. Another client has 63% mobile visitors. So much depends on industry and demographic when it comes to devices, but one thing is for sure, you must be mobile friendly!

Check these key things:

  • Are your font sizes readable on mobile?
  • Is your navigation menu easy to use?
  • Are buttons big enough for fingers to tap?
  • Are your images properly resized?
  • Do your columns shift in an order that makes sense?
  • Are your form fields big enough for a finger to tap?

Check your load times

Patience for website loading is non-existent. If your website takes too long, people are going to give and move on. Don’t neglect your website speed. Nothing can fix poor hosting, so make sure you are on a reliable, speedy hosting service. If you are looking for the cheapest hosting, you are likely going to get a slower hosting service. Other items to check include image optimization, how many plugins you are using (that you really need) and make sure everything you are including in your site is really needed. Guess what you don’t really need? Extra animations that serve no purpose other than looking cool. If you feel like your site needs an animation, add just one. Nobody needs to see every content box on your site fade in. It’s obnoxious and it makes your site load slower.


Any website can be enhanced by going through a few extra steps to make sure that it’s easy for your users to find what they are looking for.

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