Gone are the days when having a store with a large sign out front was enough to let people know you were there. For most consumers, the internet is where they find businesses they want to buy from. That means it’s imperative for all small businesses to have a great website to attract customers.
Getting a professional website made can be a big outlay for a lot of businesses, but there are upsides. Having a correctly optimized site can help you keep your customers and boost your organic search results. Here are the top 5 reasons you need a website with responsive design:
5. Browsing and shopping via mobile devices is on the rise
According to the most recent research, over 57% of all web traffic is coming from mobile devices. That includes both on smartphones and on tablets. You can no longer rely on on your desktop site to work across multiple platforms, as screen sizes can vary widely from device to device. The best way to cater to your customers, no matter how they come to you, is to use responsive design. That gives them a tailored experience no matter what.
4. Responsive site provides a better user experience
There are multiple ways to create a mobile version of your site. The most common until recently is the “Mobile Friendly” site. It means the site will display accurately on a phone or tablet, though it will look small. This can be a frustrating experience for people with a small phone screen as they’ll lose a lot of details. The more advanced version of this is a “Mobile Optimized” website. This is a specific mobile experience that offers larger navigation buttons, reformatted content and optimized images. However, most of these sites offer to let you still view the desktop version. This is typically because the mobile version only offers a fraction of the content of the larger site. With a responsive design, it doesn’t matter what size the device is, your website will display perfectly. No clicking to another site, no zooming in to click on a menu.
3. 39% of people will close your site if your images won’t load or your page is slow
We’re spoiled for choice on the internet. Not only can you buy just about anything you can think of, you can buy it from multiple places. That means if the site you’re on isn’t delivering, you have other options. For many businesses, the images on their site are everything. It shows items for sale, work they’ve done, or they keep your site from looking like something from the early 90s. It doesn’t matter if you have one image or hundreds, with a responsive design you can be sure they’ll load correctly. And that means your customer won’t click away.
2. Having multiple versions of your site is terrible for SEO
Remember earlier when we described the different kinds of mobile friendly sites. Anytime you’re on a site and you’re offered a mobile experience or a “full” or “desktop” site, it means that company is running multiple versions of their website. This means that search engines don’t know which version of your site to rank, and they typically won’t show different versions of the same content in search results. This can damage your site’s rankings and can affect the amount of organic traffic driven to your site.
1. Google recommends it
Probably the most important reason to use responsive design is because it’s the preferred method according to Google. Their algorithm now gives preference to websites that provide a good user experience. They also prefer sites that use one URL instead of multiple (which will happen when you’re running both a web and mobile version). That means if you’ve done everything on your site right, except use responsive design, you could still rank below your competitors in basic Google search.
While building a responsive website will most likely be more money out of pocket, it will create value through search and should also require less upkeep. Talk to your bookkeeper to find out if redoing your website fits in your budget.
Ready to learn more? Chat with one of our friendly industry experts today: call us at 844-629-8797 or click below to request your free consultation.
Parties and other events are a great way to engage and reward employees and customers, and it’s also an opportunity to find tax deductions. But the tax rules for such events are strict and require careful planning and navigation to ensure you can claim your deductions with confidence.
Read on how to deduct the cost of a business party while also being conscious of potential tax deductions.
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The various taxes that small businesses have to pay out each year are significant, so it’s important to be aware of every opportunity the tax man gives you to reduce your bill. So be sure to consider whether any or all of the items in this checklist apply to your business and discuss them with your bookkeeper and accountant to ensure you are documenting and claiming every deduction available to you.
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With tax season approaching, you will want to take advantage of any and all deductions legally available to you. And if you aren’t satisfied with this year’s write-offs, you’ll want to start looking ahead next year to ensure you are aware of and actively documenting everything you could be deducting.
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Financial fraud is the number one consumer complaint in the United States, and it can have devastating consequences for victims.
But by being proactive and following some simple steps, you can make it much more difficult for criminals to steal your money or your identity. Read about implementing some measures to protect you!
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Now is the time to start thinking about the coming year, and what changes you could make to reduce your bill next time the taxman comes around.
Take a look at several ways businesses are reducing their tax burden.
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Good financial reporting can help a business track what is really important for profitability and guide good decision-making for the future. Many small businesses struggle to really take full advantage of their financial reporting.
Take a look at five tips that could make the difference in whether your financial reports tick boxes or truly help drive growth.
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Accounting and invoicing for general contractors have always been a paperwork-intensive process, tracking various construction-specific tasks like estimates, sourcing subcontractors, handling change orders, and partial-completion invoicing.
Let’s take a closer look at what makes construction invoicing different – and difficult – and consider a few highly-regarded apps that are worth considering, not only for invoicing but potentially for the entire end-to-end construction process, from submitting bids to paying contractors to customer relations.
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Filing as an S Corp eliminates the self-employment tax on all income that many small businesses pay, while at the same time keeping some income out of reach of things like Medicare and Social Security taxes. It offers you the opportunity to take part of your income as a W-2 salary, with the associated federal program taxes, and the rest of it as distributions that are not subject to those taxes.
As with most “great deals,” though, there are potential pitfalls. It’s important to take the process seriously and abide by the rules in order to reap the benefits while avoiding some very serious penalties.
Let’s take a look at the benefits and potential pitfalls of filing as an S Corp, and how you can pay yourself in a way that maximizes your tax benefits while minimizing your compliance risks.
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Filing as an S Corp eliminates the self-employment tax on all income that many small businesses pay, while at the same time keeping some income out of reach of things like Medicare and Social Security taxes. It offers you the opportunity to take part of your income as a W-2 salary, with the associated federal program taxes, and the rest of it as distributions that are not subject to those taxes.
As with most “great deals,” though, there are potential pitfalls. It’s important to take the process seriously and abide by the rules in order to reap the benefits while avoiding some very serious penalties.
Let’s take a look at the benefits and potential pitfalls of filing as an S Corp, and how you can pay yourself in a way that maximizes your tax benefits while minimizing your compliance risks.
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