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Why Isn’t My Website Making Money? (And How Do I Fix It?)

Today, users can access more than 1.5 billion websites, which means you have a tremendous amount of competition in the online marketplace, even if you operate in a niche industry. Competition isn’t the only reason for low site sales, however. A variety of factors can impact your revenue and traffic.

That’s why it’s common for companies to ask this question: Why isn’t my website making money?

This post answers that question and provides an overview of how your business can fix these problems, which range from a slow site to a nonexistent search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Get started on solving your site’s issues now or connect with our team online to see how we can help!

1.     Your website isn’t responsive

Did you know that more than 50 percent of the world’s Internet traffic comes from mobile devices? It’s true, and it demonstrates a growing trend. People are relying more on their smartphones and tablets to access the Internet, rather than their laptops or desktops.

That’s why a responsive design, which adapts to a user’s device, is essential.

Why an unresponsive website costs you money

An unresponsive design costs your site money for a few reasons, including:

Mobile-first index

Google is one of the world’s largest search engines, claiming more than 75 percent of the global search market share. This fact is important because Google follows a mobile-first approach to its crawling and indexing process.

That means Google crawls your website and indexes it for search results from a mobile perspective. If you don’t have a responsive website, Google will know. As a responsive website is critical to the user experience, non-responsive sites will (usually) rank lower in search results.

A lower ranking translates to less traffic, as 75 percent of users stick to the first page of search results.

User experience

When it comes to web design, the user experience is crucial. You need to provide the best possible experience for your website visitors. If you don’t, they will leave your site, which can result in fewer purchases and less money for your business.

As more than 40 percent of online transactions happen on mobile devices, your company needs a responsive website if you want to make money. Otherwise, you’re giving away valuable customers (and revenue) to your competitors.

In short, an unresponsive website isn’t good for your bottom line.

How to fix an unresponsive website

A responsive site design or redesign is the solution to an unresponsive website.

In most cases, a responsive design costs around $3000.

This amount can vary, depending on your site’s size, content management system, and any other site features. If you want your website to make money, however, it’s a necessary investment and one that offers a substantial return on investment (ROI).

Additional reading: Responsive design

Why Is Responsive Design So Important for Businesses?

10 Infographics for Learning About Responsive Web Design

6 Must-Follow Tips for Making a Responsive Website

2.     Your website isn’t fast enough

Users today expect sites to load in two seconds or less. That’s why boosting your website’s speed by one second can increase your conversions by seven percent, which means more revenue for your company. Check the speed of your site, and see if it costs your business money.

Got a sluggish website? Learn why that’s a problem and how to fix it now.

Why a slow website costs your business money

No matter your industry, your company can’t afford a slow website. It doesn’t matter who your target audience is, from business buyers in manufacturing to early adopters in the tech sector, you need a fast site to earn their attention and their money.

Studies show that people won’t wait for websites anymore.

That’s why websites that load in five seconds maintain a 35 percent lower bounce rate. For reference, bounce rate describes the percentage of single-page sessions, which highlights whether a user stays on your website or leaves without visiting any other pages.

A high bounce rate can cause your site to lose traffic (and money) by earning lower rankings in search results. Again, a lower ranking in search results translates to decreased visibility, which can eradicate your online sales, leads, and more.

How to fix a slow website

Depending on your website, it’s a fast fix to improve your site speed. For example, if you have multiple videos on a page, removing a few can boost your page speed. Compressing your website’s images can also increase your site’s load time.

Additional fixes, like the following, will require the expertise of a developer:

• Reduce the number of redirects on your website
• Optimize your site’s HTML code
• Decrease your CSS and JavaScript
• Review your hosting option

You can also invest in page speed optimization services, which take care of the entire process.

Additional reading: Page speed

Why Faster Websites Make More Money

What Is a Good Bounce Rate?

26 Tools for Improving Your Website’s Page Speed

3.     Your website isn’t optimized for SEO

With 75 percent of businesses investing in SEO, you can bet there is a reason why. SEO helps your website become a lead- and revenue-generating machine by improving your visibility in valuable search results.

If your company doesn’t use SEO, it’s one possible reason why your website isn’t making money.

Why an optimized website loses money

In today’s digital landscape, users rely on search engines like Google and Bing to find their next purchase. Studies show that 80 percent of consumers and 71 percent of business buyers start their product research with search engines.

If your company doesn’t optimize your website for search engines (and users), you miss a significant amount of traffic and lose a substantial amount of money. Your audience doesn’t even have a chance to discover your business and its products or services.

Instead, they find your competitors because those businesses optimize their websites for SEO.

For an example of why SEO matters to your site’s bottom line, look at Reynolds Building Solutions.

When they partnered with WebFX and invested in SEO, their website’s year-over-year organic traffic increased by 43 percent. Even better, their year-over-year organic contact form submissions improved by more than 70 percent.

With the potential impact of SEO on your company’s revenue, you can’t afford to overlook SEO.

How to fix an unoptimized website

Optimizing your website for SEO doesn’t happen overnight or in a week. It’s an ongoing process, which means your business needs to commit to SEO and make it a part of your strategy. Even if you invest in SEO services, it will still take time to optimize your site and generate revenue from it.

Companies that already use SEO should consider a professional SEO audit. If you already have a fast website and responsive design, missteps in your strategy could result in decreased traffic and online revenue. With an SEO audit, you can receive third-party insight into your approach.

If you’re ready to optimize your website for SEO, you can expect to tackle the following tasks:

• Researching keywords related to your audience, industry, and services
• Optimizing your website content with keywords
• Creating fresh content on a routine basis for your site
• Improving your meta descriptions and title tags for users and search engines
• Completing outreach to share your content with influencers in your industry

Depending on your business and team size, SEO may require time that your company doesn’t have to give. If that’s the case, it’s worth considering the value of an SEO agency and professional SEO services. With SEO services, you can get the full benefits of SEO, minus the time- and resource-commitments.

Keep in mind, however, the risk of cheap SEO services.

Additional reading: SEO

3 Crucial Elements of SEO That Increase Your Website Traffic

Your Complete Guide to SEO

Is SEO Worth It? 3 Powerful Case Studies

Start earning money from your site with WebFX

Your website is one of your company’s most valuable assets. A lot of businesses, however, overlook the potential of their site to generate revenue, leads, store visits, and more. For your organization, this misstep is the perfect opportunity.

Turn your website into a revenue-generating platform with the above recommendations today.

Or, get professional assistance from our award-winning team by contacting us online or calling us at 888-601-5953. As a full-service agency, we provide all the services necessary to maximize your site’s ability to make money and generate real growth for your company.

The post Why Isn’t My Website Making Money? (And How Do I Fix It?) appeared first on WebFX Blog.

symfony Project Blog: New in Symfony 4.3: HttpClient component

        Contributed by Nicolas Grekas  
        in #30413. 
     
 
 

Making HTTP requests (e.g. to third-party APIs) is a frequent need for developers working on web applications. In Symfony 4.3 we'll make this simpler with...

Péhápkaři Blog: Single Responsibility Principle: Back to basics or over-engineering?

We'll focus on responsibility by answering the question What is it responsible for? or What should it do? I find this question one of the most important for software development as it makes easier to decide where should a part of software be. We'll cover methods, classes and even modules by the si...

Top 15 Tools and Resources for Web Designers and Agencies Sponsored

Design trends come and go. This makes it imperative for web designers and design agencies to keep a close watch. They need to know the tools and resources they’re using to make certain everything is up to date.

Your tools and resources might appear to be keeping up with changing technologies. Yet, improved tools and more suitable resources keep popping up. So many, in fact, that it can at times become downright annoying trying to decide which tools to keep. and which to replace with something newer.

We can’t stop the flood of new tools and improved resources, nor would we want to. We can, however, make life a little easier for you. We are recommending several of the best tools, apps, and resources out there.

Elementor

Elementor is the ultimate & free WordPress page builder. With over 2M active installs, it’s the most advanced drag & drop editor out there, used by professionals worldwide to create high-end designs in no time, without coding. Elementor comes with many built-in widgets to help you quickly build any part of your website: images, text, sliders, icons, testimonials, social media, animation and more.

Elementor works perfectly with almost any theme and plugin and will not slow down your existing website. You can start from a blank canvas or choose from over one hundred pre-designed templates that can be inserted to any page. The Pro version comes with super cool features like pop-ups, forms and theme builder which lets you design the header, footer and archive pages of your site.

AND CO from Fiverr

The average freelancer spends almost one day per week on non-billable work—like invoices, expenses, tracking payments, and following up clients whenever a payment is overdue. But when you’re paid for your expertise, time really is money. If you can save time by automating the running your business, you can spend more time doing the work that puts money in your pocket.

That’s where an invoicing software like AND CO from Fiverr comes in. AND CO automatically generates invoices based on your contracts, proposals, and time tracking—all of which are available in the one platform.

Get reminders when it’s time to invoice again, receive alerts when your client views your invoice, and accept online payments directly through your personal PayMe page. Set up recurring invoices so you can invoice clients with subscriptions without lifting a finger.

Say goodbye to manual invoicing. With AND CO, you don’t need to spend more than 20 seconds sending an invoice, so you’ll have more time to do the work you love.

Houzez

Houzez has been on the market for some time and has gained a solid reputation for providing realtors and real estate agencies with the tools they need to conduct business, both in the office and while on the go.

Advanced property search features, listings options, and Houzez’ property management system are user’s favorites, along with the fact that Houzez is drag and drop based which makes modification and customization easy.

Just when it was beginning to look like everything a user needed had already been invented and installed, the Houzez design team came up with a host of new features. While there are too many to list here, a Custom Fields Builder, multi-currency features, multiple show scheduling and luxury home show scheduling, listings sort options, and a variety of property display gallery formats are among the new features.

Uncode

This powerful, user-friendly creative multiuse theme has all the functionality needed to create a breathtaking portfolio to showcase your work in a few brief hours. With Uncode, there’s no need to worry about coding, nor do you need to start from scratch.

The best way to see what Uncode can do for you is to browse their collection of user-created websites. You’ll be impressed and inspired by what you see.

TheGem – Creative Multi-Purpose High-Performance WordPress Theme

TheGem was designed and developed to be the ultimate toolbox of web design styles, features and elements, and its authors appear to have hit it right on the mark. With TheGem you won’t waste time coding. You can spend that time exploring your creativity.

This flexible website building tool features an abundance of multi-purpose design concepts, flexible page layouts, demo pages, and includes a multitude of ready-to-go WooCommerce stores!

Amelia

This user-friendly and powerful plugin was designed and developed for businesses that rely heavily on accepting and managing client and customer appointments and bookings. Everything is automatic and everything is done online (human intervention is of course allowed).

Amelia will make appointments 24/7, match customer requests to employee availability, manage changes and cancellations, send reminders, and collect payments. For the less than a year, Amelia has 2000+ active users and 4.8+ user rating.

Mobirise

Some web designers prefer online builders, and some prefer offline builders. If you belong to the latter group, you’ll love the way Mobirise gives you total control over your projects. Drag and drop only means that you won’t have to concern yourself with coding.

Since Mobirise is based on Bootstrap4 or Google AMP, your websites and apps will be super-fast and 100% mobile friendly. Mobirise is free for both personal and commercial uses.

wpDataTables

There are over 21,000+ users out there who won’t hesitate to tell you they’ve found the best all-in-one solution for working with large amounts of data and presenting it in colorful, informative, and editable tables and charts.

With the wpDataTables plugin, you can manage thousands or even millions of rows of data in seconds; including MySQL, MS SQL, and PostgreSQL database queries. wpDataTables integrates with the leading form builder plugins.

Logic Hop – Personalized Marketing for WordPress

Any website that does a great job of delivering a message is almost certain to perform well. Statistics show that personalized messages based on visitors’ actions will do at least twice as well.

Logic Hop for WordPress makes it easy to personalize messages based on UTM codes, geolocation, on-site actions, and more. By using Logic Hop your clients will see higher conversions and have a better ROI. Make your clients happy with personalization.

Round Icons Bundle – 38,000 icons and illustrations

Roundicons’ Bundle places 38,000 premium royalty-free icons at your fingertips. They are yours to download for a one-time fee, and the number will just keep growing (the estimate is 10,000 new icons per year).

This icon bundle comes with a commercial use license. If you believe the world’s largest icon bundle would be a great resource to have, use coupon code “GETBIG” when you order for a 20% discount.

Goodie

With Goodie, end-clients can skip the usual design-build-launch steps and deal directly with the developers. If your small business in need of a website, or a web designer that’s particularly fussy about careful coding, all you need to do is give Goodie your design, and Goodie will to the rest.

Goodie will keep the lines of communication open to ensure you’ll get exactly what you want and expect.

8b Website Builder

8b is about as new as a website builder can be (January 2019 launch). It’s futuristic and super simple in its design, and it’s super simple to use. You’re not stuck on one computer platform either.

With 8b, you can do some of your website design at home or at work on your desktop, some on a laptop, and some on a mobile device when you’re out and about. Check 8b out while it’s still free.

Savah App

The Savah App is an advanced prototyping tool that gives you a powerful cross-company collaboration platform at the same time. Savah features a built-in design workflow and approval system, and it allows you to get visual feedback from team members and project stakeholders for all of your web and mobile app projects.

Affordable monthly paid plans are available, and you can also purchase an annual plan at a 30% discount.

WhatFontIs.com

You’ve come across the ideal font for use in your design. Problem is; you don’t know its name, so you don’t know how to search for it. When you’re facing a needle in a haystack situation, it’s time to call on an artificial intelligence system for help; which is precisely what www.WhatFontIs.com is all about.

Upload your mystery font image, and WhatFontIs will search its database of 550,000 commercial and free fonts and answer your query in seconds.

HelpJet

HelpJet translates to lightning fast customer service. HelpJet gives you a self-service knowledge base you can install that’s designed to drastically reduce the number of customer support tickets and customer wait times while helping you keep your support team small in size.

The HelpJet knowledge base has the answers to the most common questions, or answers to any questions you care to input. No coding is required.

Conclusion

15 great tools and resources. You obviously don’t need them all. Even one could make your day and transform a good website design into something awesome.

Whichever tools or resources you choose; you can rest assured they follow the latest design trends. They will keep you up with or ahead of the pack.

The post Top 15 Tools and Resources for Web Designers and Agencies <span class="sponsored_text">Sponsored</span> appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

My Bref Makefile

In order to use Bref efficiently, I've developed a Makefile so that I don't have to remember all the various commands required. In particular, looking up the correct parameters to sam package & sam deploy is a pain and it's much easier to type make deploy and it all works as I expect.

It looks like this:

Makefile:

# vim: noexpandtab tabstop=4 filetype=make
.PHONY: list invoke invoke-local deploy outputs lastlog clean clean-all setup

REGION := eu-west-2
PROJECT_NAME := hello-world
UNIQUE_KEY := 1557903576

BUCKET_NAME := $(PROJECT_NAME)-$(UNIQUE_KEY)-brefapp
STACK_NAME := $(PROJECT_NAME)-$(UNIQUE_KEY)-brefapp

# default function to invoke. To override: make invoke FUNCTION=foo
FUNCTION ?= my-function

list:
	@$(MAKE) -pRrq -f $(lastword $(MAKEFILE_LIST)) : 2>/dev/null | awk -v RS= -F: '/^# File/,/^# Finished Make data base/ {if ($$1 !~ "^[#.]") {print $$1}}' | sort | egrep -v -e '^[^[:alnum:]]' -e '^$@$$'

invoke:
	vendor/bin/bref --region=$(REGION) invoke $(FUNCTION)

invoke-local:
	sam local invoke $(FUNCTION) --no-event

deploy:
	sam package \
		--region $(REGION) \
		--template-file template.yaml \
		--output-template-file .stack-template.yaml \
		--s3-bucket $(BUCKET_NAME)
	-sam deploy \
		--region $(REGION) \
		--template-file .stack-template.yaml \
		--stack-name $(STACK_NAME) \
		 --capabilities CAPABILITY_IAM
	vendor/bin/bref deployment --region $(REGION) $(STACK_NAME)

outputs:
	aws --region $(REGION) cloudformation describe-stacks --stack-name $(STACK_NAME) | jq '.Stacks[0]["Outputs"]'

lastlog:
	sam logs --region $(REGION) --name $(FUNCTION)

geterror:
	vendor/bin/bref deployment --region $(REGION) $(STACK_NAME)

clean:
	aws --region $(REGION) cloudformation delete-stack --stack-name $(STACK_NAME)

clean-all: clean
	aws --region $(REGION) s3 rb s3://$(BUCKET_NAME) --force

setup:
	aws --region $(REGION) s3 mb s3://$(BUCKET_NAME)

There's three variables that I need to set at the top:

• REGION – The AWS region. This has to match the Bref layer used in template.yaml.
• PROJECT_NAME – The name of the project. This is used as part of the S3 bucket and CloudFormation stack names
• UNIQUE_KEY – A random string to ensure uniqueness for bucket and stack names. I tend to use the current time to the ms, but any string.

I've included a full-cycle set of targets so make setup will create the initial S3 bucket that's required for the project and then make deploy is used to deploy my project.

If I want to start again, make clean will remove the CloudFormation stack and make clean-all will remove the stack and the bucket.

I've also included a few utility targets:

• make invoke FUNCTION=foo invokes the function foo on AWS.
• make invoke-local FUNCTION=foo invokes the function foo on sam-local.
• make outputs displays the outputs of the CloudFormation stack. This is useful for picking up the API Gateway URL for instance, if you set it up in your template.yaml.
• make lastlog FUNCTION=foo displays the logs for the last invocation of the function foo.

Parameters for template.yaml

I pass the PROJECT_NAME and UNIQUE_KEY through to the template as the parameters ProjectName and UniqueKey respectively. These are then set in the Parameters section of the template:

template.yaml:

Parameters:
    ProjectName:
        Type: String
    UniqueKey:
        Type: String

I then use them in the template when I need uniqueness, such as when creating an S3 bucket:

template.yaml:

Resources:
    ImagesBucket:
        Type: AWS::S3::Bucket
        Properties:
            BucketName: !Join [ '-', [!Ref "ProjectName", !Ref "UniqueKey", "files" ] ]

Which creates a bucket named "hello-world-1557903576-files" which nicely complements "hello-world-1557903576-brefapp".

Sorting select fields in EasyAdminBundle

I'm currently working on an application using Symfony and their EasyAdminBundle. The experience has been great overall, although there are lots of details and specific usecases that are hard to figure out.

For instance when using relations in your entities and creating the related forms. Select fields for related entities are by default sorted by the key (usually the ID of the related entity), however you'd usually want to sort it alphabetically by the name of the entity. My initial thought was to use the @OrderBy annotation, however that only works for the actual OneToMany relations on the other side of the relation, not on the selectbox for the ManyToOne side of the relation. So that was quickly discarded.

Next up I found that you can do it in Symfony by specifying a query_builder parameter to your form configuration. The downside here is that by default, EasyAdminBundle works with a yaml configuration for your form so that makes it a lot harder to do this. I could do this in an extended AdminController, but that would mess with my form field order.

Eventually, however, I found this comment on Github that gave me the solution. Instead of specifying an anonymous function, you can also specify a static method to be called to fetch the values. And so, my solution was now easily implemented.

In my YAML file, I could now specify the query_builder parameter:

- { property: supplier, label: 'Leverancier', type_options: { 'query_builder': 'App\Repository\SupplierRepository::getSuppliersForSelect' } }

In said repository, I added the specified static method:

    static public function getSuppliersForSelect(EntityRepository $entityRepository)
    {
        return $entityRepository
            ->createQueryBuilder('s')
            ->orderBy('s.name', 'ASC');
    }

and now my select field has a nicely alphabetically sorted list of suppliers.