Build Trust by Securing Your Small Business Website in 2022

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In today’s era, the internet plays a vital role in almost every industrial sector, large or small enterprises. In the business world, connecting, gaining trust and effectively communicating with existing and new customers or marketers is essential. There are many ways to effectively communicate traits like credibility, trust, and reliability to your potential shoppers. To achieve this, make sure that your site visually, emotionally, and psychologically delivers why a customer would believe and purchase from your business. Earlier, large corporations and government agencies worried about hackers and cybercriminals, but now even small businesses are threatened.

The research study shows that anywhere from nearly one-half to two-thirds of all small business websites are targeted by cyber attacks, as they are the softest targets and easy preferences. According to the market experts, it is time to think about website security for small businesses, as they are a potential target.

Website Security – A Priority for Small Businesses

Web platforms like Drupal and WordPress can simplify managing your website and online content. For a small business, an inactive or outdated site can be a huge liability. However, not having a website security action plan and response strategy in place can cause a dilemma, time, money, customers and even your livelihood. Since every business has its uniqueness and selling point, management issues can range from minor content problems to major security flaws, depending on your experience with web design and development. 

Creating a company website has become easier than ever for business owners, but building a secure site that will protect user data and financial information is not simple. Whether you have created the best website design and development for marketing purposes or e-commerce transactions, prioritizing website security provides secure browsing and a better overall user experience for visitors. It also builds trust, which contributes to a loyal customer relationship. Nowadays, hackers have become more sophisticated in hijacking and infiltrating small business websites using automation tools to highlight which sites are most vulnerable. As a result, with the rise of hacking the website using the list of techniques, hackers are becoming savvier, and it is a call for small business owners to take website security seriously. 

Benefits to Enhance Your Small Business Website Security

As each small business develops their website differently, it is critical for business owners to ensure their website is secure and remains trustworthy for the customers. It is not important to understand every technical aspect that comes in a way to build a secure and the best website design and development. All you need to know is how to protect your website and get it installed or set up. However, if you are operating a small business and think securing your website will be expensive, then here are a few reasons why tech safety for your website is so essential for your business operation.

Protect your data and enhance SEO

A web hosting company plays a vital role in keeping your business website safe and secure, as it adequately maintains your company servers. Another step is adding an SSL certificate that marks your website as secure and improves your SEO. It is one of the factors that Google considers while ranking the website in the search result. Web Application Firewall (WAF) and DDos also help improve your SEO efforts. These security tools prevent malicious bots and swarms from blocking good traffic to your site. One of the most important reasons for adding SSL and DDoS is when a customer sees the padlock symbol in front of your URL. They are confident that any data they enter is protected. As a result, customers are more likely to stay and purchase, resulting in revenue growth.

Update yourself with cybersecurity trends

Whether you are operating a large enterprise or a small business, it is always advised to keep you and your system updated with the latest trends related to technology or cybersecurity. Staying up-to-date with the challenges companies are facing with cybersecurity and technology keeps you a step ahead of your competitors. It also builds trust with your visitors by providing them with a website that’s mindful of the cybersecurity threats and implements ways to fight them. Creating a cybersecurity plan may sound complicated, but having a proactive small business cybersecurity plan is vital for small businesses to protect their website, IT systems, and sensitive information from security threats.

Manage your credentials

For cybercrimes, passwords are one of the easiest ways to decode and hack your and customers’ confidential data. While putting a password, it is always recommended to use a strong password to prevent hackers from holding your customers’ personal information and private business data for web hosting services and website builders. Above all, it urges a combination of numbers, letters, and symbols to craft a unique password every time.

Prioritize Website Security Today  

A secure website experience for your visitors could be the difference between a thriving business operation and one on the verge of closing its doors. Website security has become an essential part of small businesses because hackers have become more sophisticated in their hacking techniques, less concerned with how much money your business is making. They are more concerned with how accessible your business and customer information is to them. 

Do not let a data breach be why you finally prioritize website security. To make your small business website more secure, invest in some of the above cybersecurity solutions and ensure your small business is ready to offer a protected online experience.

6 Important Reasons To Redesign Your Website

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While recently thinking about all of the compelling reasons that a client should redo their website, I came across an article in Forbes that represents our sentiments to a tee.

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Here are six reasons that may help you determine the right time to invest in a redesign of your company’s website:

1. It looks outdated.

Companies go through a redesign process for different reasons, but the main one is the old-looking site. You will not believe how many companies still have websites that look like they were done decades ago. Even people with no experience in web design can tell they’re outdated. This could hurt the business, especially if users are choosing between several competitors. Consumers will most likely go with a company that has a nice-looking, easy-to-use website because it provides the assurance that the company is growing and on top of the latest trends and technologies.

2. It is not responsive and does not provide a seamless experience across all devices.

It was so easy for companies to maintain their desktop-only sites several years ago when people didn’t use their mobile devices to shop, order food, do research and connect with their friends. Nowadays, users may be looking at your site from a desktop, laptop, tablet or many variations of mobile devices. And they expect a seamless experience from all of these entry points. They want to make sure that if they saved the product in their cart on mobile, it is still there when they go to the site on their laptop. They want to be able to do the research on their phones and share the information they’ve found with friends and colleagues. And you may lose these people as customers if your site does not provide a smooth experience across all devices.

3. It has a bad user experience and is hard to navigate.

How often do you check what your competitors are doing? Once a year, once a month, daily? Unfortunately, many companies don’t pay enough attention to their competition until it’s too late. The technology is evolving and changing so fast. Someone who is on top of the latest trends and understands users’ behavior could move far ahead in the game. Always do your research and see what people in your industry are doing on their sites, check the new features they’ve implemented, see what big players are doing and implement that functionality to provide the best experience to your users and convert them into customers. When you create a new site for your company, always make sure to build it so that it can grow with your business and you can add additional features and functionalities without the need to redo the entire site.

4. It does not reflect your latest business and marketing strategy.

There have been many times when I’ve talked to people at companies and learned that their business strategy has changed or they’ve launched new products and services, but none of these things are reflected online. It’s important that your site reflects your current strategy and service offerings so you don’t lose customers to your competitors. This is especially important if you know that your potential clients go to your website before they give you a call or write you an email request. They need to see the current state of your business, and if your online presence is not reflecting that, it’s time to redesign.

5. You cannot update the content.

Good content is something that can set you apart from the competition and deliver the right message to your users. This might be done through text, videos, tutorials, how-to instructions, etc. Content marketing has become very important and can play a huge role in the success of your business. The ability to update and add new content is necessary, and you should be able to easily do this through a content management system. Also, make sure that your website is optimized for SEO, which will help with your marketing efforts.

6. Features on the site don’t work properly.

Design is not the only thing to consider when thinking about website redesign. Good development is also crucial. If you have a great-looking site that doesn’t work properly and users leave because some features are not functioning right, you will lose business. So many times I have heard people complain that their shopping cart is not working or is too complex, and it still takes the company months or even years before it’s fixed. The company may lose more money during that time than what the site upgrade might cost them.

When you are finally ready for a redesign, be prepared and allocate enough resources. This will be an exciting process that will help you and your company look deep inside your business, analyze your goals and strategies, and launch a beautiful, easy-to-navigate site that will help your business grow.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2017/06/13/six-important-reasons-to-redesign-your-website/#4bf98d7a7853

Please contact us with any questions!

Why We Use WordPress

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Why We Use WordPress

About Us: Firm Overview

AS Creative Services is a full-service Internet marketing firm, serving clients Nationwide. We leverage an integrated team of consultants, designers, writers, programmers, and marketing professionals to produce unparalleled results. AS Creative identifies the best way to advance your brand. We create visually and conceptually striking material that engages and expands your audience. AS Creatives’ website and print design work can be tailored to your existing brand or we can redefine your image altogether.

Our team includes experts in every facet of design and development. From start to finish – from stunning website design through mobile app development – AS Creative Services easily navigates even your most complex marketing initiatives providing solutions at an affordable cost.

 

WordPress: Overview

Description: WordPress was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personalpublishing system built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPLv2 (or later). It is the official successor of b2/cafelog. WordPress is fresh software, but its roots and development go back to 2001. It is a mature and stable product. We hope by focusing on user experience and web standards we can create a tool different from anything else out there.

Source: https://wordpress.org/about/

 

WordPress: Security

Description: WordPress Plugin and Theme Security

The Default Theme: WordPress requires a theme to be enabled to render content visible on the frontend. The default theme whichships with core WordPress (currently “Twenty Fifteen”) has been vigorously reviewed and tested for security reasons by both the team of theme developers plus the core development team. The default theme can serve as a starting point for custom theme development, and site developers can create a child theme which includes some customization but falls back on the default theme for most functionality and security. The default theme can be easily removed by an administrator if not needed.

WordPress.org Theme and Plugin Repositories: There are approximately 50,000+ plugins and 4,500+ themes listed on the WordPress.org site. These themes and plugins are submitted for inclusion and are manually reviewed by volunteers before making them available on the repository.

Inclusion of plugins and themes in the repository is not a guarantee that they are free from security vulnerabilities. Guidelines are provided for plugin authors to consult prior to submission for inclusion in the repository17, and extensive documentation about how to do WordPress theme development18 is provided on the WordPress.org site.

Each plugin and theme has the ability to be continually developed by the plugin or theme owner, and any subsequent fixes or feature development can be uploaded to the repository and made available to users with that plugin or theme installed with a description of that change. Site administrators are notified of plugins which need to be updated via their administration dashboard.

When a plugin vulnerability is discovered by the WordPress Security Team, they contact the plugin author and work together to fix and release a secure version of the plugin. If there is a lack of response from the plugin author or if the vulnerability is severe, the plugin/theme is pulled from the public directory, and in some cases, fixed and updated directly by the Security Team.

Source: https://wordpress.org/about/security/Source

 

WordPress: Viability

Description: WordPress CMS Platform Viability

WordPress used to be described as more of a blogging platform in the past. The misconception is that it is not a viable Enterprise level product. However, over the years it has transformed into the most flexible and robust platform on the market.

WordPress: Statistics

Most popular content management systems: Since 1 May 2018

© W3Techs.com usage change since
1 March 2017		 market
share		 change since
1 May 2018
1. WordPress 31.0% +0.3% 59.9%
2. Joomla 3.1% 6.1%
3. Drupal 2.1% 4.0% -0.1%
4. Magento 1.1% +0.1% 2.2% +0.1%
5. Blogger 1.1% 2.2% +0.1%
percentages of sites

 

Most popular server-side programming languages: Since 1 May 2018

© W3Techs.com usage change since
1 May 2018
1. PHP 83.5% +0.1%
2. ASP.NET 13.3% -0.1%
3. Java 2.3%
4. static files 1.9%
5. ColdFusion 0.6%
percentages of sites

 

Fastest growing content management systems: Since 1 May 2018

© W3Techs.com sites
1. WordPress 748
2. WooCommerce 394
3. Squarespace 246
daily number of additional sites
in the top 10 million

 

Find more details in the server-side language surveys

WordPress: Statistics

Usage of content management systems for websites: This diagram shows the percentages of websites using various content management systems. See technologies overview for explanations on the methodologies used in the surveys. Our reports are updated daily. 

How to read the diagram: 48.1% of the websites use none of the content management systems that we monitor. WordPress is used by 31.0% of all the websites, that is a content management system market share of 59.9%.

Source: https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all

 

 

WordPress: Site Examples

 

Source: https://wordpress.org/showcase/

 

WordPress: Multi-Site Examples

Source: https://wordpress.org/showcase/flavor/wordpress-ms/

For more information on WordPress or if you have any questions, call us at 301-476-4128 or Contact Us below

A New Approach to Web Design

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Here at AS we are constantly searching for new ways to approach web design in more effective ways. The newest approach is called Data Driven Design.

Traditionally a web design project has a very distinct approach. 1) Set a discovery/planning phase for strategy, messaging, overall site structure, & look and feel. 2) Create Wireframes 3) Create UI Designs 4) Development 5) Beta 6) QA Testing 7) Deployment

Most people are used to this approach and thus it’s challenging to think about a different way of doing things. Data Driven Design is a much more agile approach that has 3 main tenants

The First tenant is Strategy. You can’t avoid a discussion surrounding this newer approach. You can’t avoid planning and you can’t avoid talking about your goals. This is just a sound way to create a roadmap for a website project. That being said you should not consider your plans set in stone.

The Second tenant is building a scaled back website. Your focus for a new website should be creating a site that looks better than the one you currently have. Obviously there will be very specific needs, but it’s a good rule of thumb to understand there will be time to change following once the website is live.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Third and final tenant is Test and Iterate. Now that you have deployed this new site, you can begin adding, deleting, and changing the site over time. This should all be guided by analytics, and user feedback. Your website is now a living breathing tool to promote your business.

 

So what’s the catch? Truthfully there is no catch. This new approach will just require the vision to rely upon an innovative approach to the redesign process. Instead of applying your budget to a one and done website project, you will have to split your budget between a scaled back website and a period of testing and changes following deployment.

So what’s the benefit? The benefit is, you will have a new website up in half the amount of time and then you’ll have the ability to change your website after it’s deployed and feedback is given. You will have the ability to understand the importance of certain parts of your website and and the lack thereof in others. Finally, you will be able to continue to create the perfect website over time rather than crossing your fingers to hope your best planning has created the website that satisfies all your users needs.

This concept makes a ton of sense, but we understand that it may be a hard pill to swallow and may not work for everyone. We hope this post creates some conversation surrounding this approach and we are happy to discuss at any time.

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