WordPress has a large ecosystem of plugins, themes, and services that help people run websites. This ecosystem has everything you need to run, customize, and optimize websites. At the time of writing, there are around 8,000 themes and 58,000 plugins available. 

The WordPress Marketplace has plugins that are free and also premium plugins that can be costly depending on the customization offered. With Google’s dominance of the web analytics market, WordPress has an opportunity to eat into that market share. To this end, WordPress has a developer community of people that creates and improves plugins. Part of this includes developing plugins that improve website performance, a task Google has down to a science.

Astonishingly, WordPress has an estimated 64.8% market share placing it as a significant player in the website specialization market. To accommodate this dominance, WordPress focused on presenting tools that help its users with e-commerce needs. An early result is a Performance Lab plugin that could rival Google’s hold on the web analytics market.

WordPress Performance Lab 

In the fall of 2021, WordPress announced the kickoff of a Performance Team. The team’s first deliverable is the Performance Lab, meant to one day be available in the WordPress Marketplace. The goal is to speed up the internal working of WordPress’ core functions to give users better internet experiences. The latest deliverable from the Team is the Performance Lab plugin, giving users the power of data analytics inside their WordPress Dashboards.

WordPress will make the plugin modular, meaning users can pick which modules they want to plug into their websites. The plugin modules included are listed below.

WebP Uploads and WebP Support 

This new format for converting jpegs to the new WebP format brings greater control of network protocols. The WebP Uploads plugin module converts the files while the WebP Support module examines the network to see if it is compatible with the new format. If not, the module shows a warning if there is an issue. 

Persistent Object Cache Health Check

Object caching stores some data locally, so the server doesn’t need to take requests for data. This plugin module checks for object cache issues from the perspective of site performance. The faster a site loads, the better the user experience. 

From an online marketing perspective, this module helps with site performance. This also leads to increased web traffic and PPC. These are the specific details the experts at Web Rocket Media will use to help your WordPress website perform at its best.

Audit Enqueued Assets (experimental)

Unnecessary CSS and JavaScript files can drastically decrease website performance. In the worst-case scenarios, these leftover files could lead to malware. This experimental module audits these files for potential issues that slow down website performance. 

WordPress is Tapping Into the Developer Community

WordPress notes the experimental label comes from the fact that WordPress will improve the module’s performance in the coming weeks and months. It has plans for the performance lab plugin to be part of its core offering, bringing better tools for improving website performance. For example, the module doesn’t yet tell users which CSS and JavaScript files influence website performance at a given time. 

WordPress marketplace upgrades are necessary to compete with modern web surfing trends. By releasing performance plugins in the experimental stage, those that manage WordPress websites have the opportunity to provide feedback that improves the plugins. Unpacking ways to improve website performance is the only way to compete in today’s website-rich internet.

In Closing

The WordPress Marketplace has thousands of plugins that help websites do what they were intended to do–attract visitors. To compete with other website analytics tools, WordPress developed plugins that help improve website performance. 

If your WordPress website is running slow and you need to enhance your advertising profile, give Web Rocket Media a call. They’ll audit your WordPress website and suggest ways to improve its performance. 

If you want integrated content-producing services, call for a discussion. The experts at Web Rocket Media will give your WordPress website a boost. Call today to feel the Rocket Power!

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Broadly, GA is a web analytics tool that singles out specific data about website traffic. The data is presented to the user in easy-to-read and understandable reports. There are various types of reports that present visual representations of the data. Visual data lets us gain greater insights into those who visit our websites. 

The Importance of GA Metrics to Marketing Insights

From an eCommerce perspective, gaining insight into who visits your website is a question of understanding where a potential customer is in the purchasing journey. When someone uses a web browser to research the purchase of a specific product, the browser (usually Google Chrome), presents the user with search results. Hopefully, the user chooses your website because you’ve done the necessary marketing techniques to get listed on the result page.  

Once a user gets to your website, there are numerous possible outcomes at this point. The visitor might leave after a few seconds or visit a product page or any number of different actions. GA helps online marketers nudge those visitors at different spots in the purchasing journey into a shopping cart and eventual purchase. 

Keep in mind, GA does not identify individuals. The best it can do is report data that supports (or doesn’t support) something you did to get people to visit your website. Online marketing experts like those at Web Rocket Media use techniques that increase your web traffic then analyze data to find ways to get visitors into the final part of the purchasing journey. 

The 10 Most Commonly Used GA Metrics

Active Users–This metric reports the number of people currently viewing a website. If your website has multiple pages, you can find out which pages get the most visits. You can also find out which pages users spend the most time on. If you want to launch a marketing campaign with expert content, you can gain insights into information in the content from page visits.  

Demographics–Related specifically to marketing to a target market or sector, you can find out if the marketing techniques are attracting the correct audience. In other words, content marketed to ten-year-olds should only attract adults with credit cards ready to buy for that ten-year-old.

Geographic Location–This metric does not give specific locations of individual users. Rather, it groups users into regions. This helps those eCommerce businesses that sell products across international borders where different languages are used. You can also tell if a user changed what language they viewed your page with. This metric could also help refine local traffic results for a lawyer or doctor’s office. 

Smartphone or Desktop–With much of the online world using smartphones to browse the web and purchase things, knowing if someone is browsing with a smartphone or a computer desktop can be helpful for those in eCommerce that target one or the other. Given the difference in viewing conditions, a marketing plan based on this metric could make or break sales goals.

Traffic Origin and Destination–GA lets users know where users were before they came to your website and where they go after they leave. Marketers want to know this number because it lets them know what acquisition channels are bringing traffic to the website. Knowing this data helps marketers like those at Web Rocket Media drive traffic to your website with things like social media advertising and pay-per-click pages.     

User LTV–This stands for user lifetime value. You can track users based on what they did on your website then use this data to target repeat customers. When combined with things like promotions, an eCommerce store can maximize customer loyalty. This metric works well for tracking potential contacts in a contact list after they’ve signed up for something.

New or Returning Visitor–eCommerce businesses need new and returning customers to maintain a stable profit margin. Consequently, this metric is crucial for market segmentation. When combined with User LTV, you can target specific segments of your market with specific advertising campaigns. For example, offering a free trial to someone who signs up for a newsletter. 

Session Tracking–The amount of time a user spends on your website is called a session and it’s an important aspect of an online advertising campaign that uses social media to get people to visit your website. You want to know if traffic is coming directly from a platform such as Facebook so you can measure the effectiveness of a Facebook advertising campaign.

Bounce Rate—This metric reports on the number of website visitors who came then left quickly without doing anything else. A high bounce rate could mean the website had technical issues. Or it could mean people don’t want to stay and you need to work out ways to keep users’ attention. 

Page Load Time—One thing the cyber age has done to consumerism is interject impatience into the buying experience. If it takes longer than a fracture of a second for a page to load in a web browser, users are likely to go somewhere else. Thus, page load times give insights into the user’s need for a quick response.

Closing Thoughts

Understanding how to use Google Analytics to gain insights into your website traffic is an essential aspect of effective online marketing. When you hire Web Rocket Media for your online advertising, you need your new partners that know how to use Google Analytics to drive traffic to your website. The team at Web Rocket Media specializes in eCommerce advertising. From social media to email marketing, the analytics team works with you to get results.

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The Importance of Good SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) involves specific techniques, strategies, and tactics to place a law firm at the top of the SERP. SEO best practices maximize the potential web traffic that visits a specific law firm’s website. Law firms look for local clients. Thus, SEO best practices help pinpoint where those potential clients are via web optimization. Keywords are important; however, they must be used in a balanced manner, i.e., headings, title tag, and meta attributions, that helps the search engine’s algorithms understand what local results go onto the SERP.  SEO is a long-term marketing strategy, which means law firms must commit to seeing SEO as an ROI over several months.  

The potential for good and bad SEO always exists, which is why law firms need to do their due diligence when looking for an online advertising agency. Law firms need experts that specialize in law firm SEO. For example, the online advertising agency should not be a one-size-fits-all agency that does a wide variety of industry SEO. Instead, a law firm should choose an agency that understands the local connection between SEO best practices and the law firm’s website.

The Connection Between a Law Firm’s Website and its SEO

Most businesses these days have a website, and this is also true for law firms. As such, the online advertising agency should understand the connection between law firm website design and SEO. Remember, good SEO puts a specific law firm’s web presence at the top of a SERP. It will not do a law firm any good if potential clients go to its website and find it’s poorly constructed. Nothing is more frustrating than a slow website.

A law firm must have a professionally designed website that wows potential clients and influences them to call the law firm for more information. Don’t waste your time with those sites that self-build a website for you. Because SEO is tied directly to web optimization, the website must be designed and maintained at the community level. 

Conclusion

For a law firm, SEO is one of the most important aspects of online advertising because it drives traffic to a specific website. However, if it is a poorly constructed website, potential clients won’t stick around. There are too many other choices out there in the cyberworld. The online advertising experts at Web Rocket Media specialize in connecting SEO best practices to professionally constructed law firm websites. We tailor your needs specifically for your clients. Call us today and discover what Web Rocket Media can do to help your firm!

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What is Browser Caching?

In layman’s terms, browser caching is a feature that allows an internet browser to save data from a website in order to use it again for future visits. No matter what internet browser you’re using, you can be sure that all of them will use a web cache to collect data from any website that you’ve visited. In doing so, your browser will save both time and bandwidth the next time you decide to visit any particular website, because it will already have much of that data available in the cache. This prevents your browser from downloading an excessive amount of data when you’re returning to sites that you’ve visited already. Things such as images, Javascript and CSS are all examples of data that can be stored in a browser cache.

How Does That Relate to Web Design?

Understanding the function of a browser cache and utilizing it effectively can lead to improved performance for your website overall. The most obvious reason is that a good caching strategy leads to faster load times for your potential customers. This is essential as many consumers have confirmed that a slow loading website usually results in them abandoning the page altogether. Additionally, optimizing your browser cache settings can reduce heavy network congestion, creating a better browsing experience for users and helping you cut costs associated with your network.

How Can I Take Advantage of Browser Caching?

Although caching happens via the internet browser, you can create and customize a browser caching policy for your website by adjusting these settings in your Etag Header or Cache-Control. This allows you to specify the data you want to be saved in a cache, the expiration dates of those items and set up a cache clearing plan. For example, you can opt to cache large and less frequently updated items like images, logos, and Javascript, while selecting no-cache for data that is subject to change like HTML code. Another great option is to set expiration dates for your cached items, ensuring that your users aren’t seeing any outdated web elements. These are just a few of the multitude of options you can utilize when planning your website’s browser caching strategy. By wielding the power of this often-overlooked feature, you can maximize your website performance and keep your customers coming back again and again. 

Web Rocket Media can help you adjust your browser caching settings for your website to optimize its performance and enhance your user experience. Contact us today!

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Responsive Web Design

A website that is built with responsive web design means that the website’s layout will change based on the screen size of the user. The content is more dynamic with images that are optimized and is reliant on a mobile device’s operating system to function. When your website is built with responsive web design, you can view the website on a desktop, tablet, or mobile device and everything will stay cohesive. For example, if on a desktop, you have three columns of text, on mobile, it will be one column that is easy for the user to read. If you want to know if your website is a responsive web design, pull it up in your browser, and adjust the size of the window. If your content moves around so it fits the window size, then it’s responsive. responsive web design will react with the user’s experience in mind, and enhances the usability of your website, no matter what the device you’re using is.

Mobile Friendly Website

Mobile friendly websites function the same way across all platforms (desktop, tablet, mobile), despite the device being used. Mobile friendly websites do not change in terms of layout, only in scale of the website. Features like dropdown boxes can be difficult to use on mobile friendly sites.

Which One Should You Choose for Your Business?

As more and more people look to their phones on the go, or sitting on their couch, you’ll want a website that works to reach them on their phones. An important factor to consider is that Google will rank desktop sites below mobile sites when ranking for SEO purposes. This means that Google will show a user mobile friendly sites that are optimized for viewing on mobile devices ranking higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) than those that aren’t. When deciding how you want to build your website, you should ask yourself a few questions:

1. What is my website’s purpose?
2. What do I want the end goal of my visitors to my website to be?
3. Which device do I expect visitors to my website to use?

We, at Web Rocket Media, feel that developing a responsive web design for your website is the way to go. While a large percentage of the traffic to your website is coming from mobile devices, mobile friendly websites aren’t very user friendly at all, despite the name. Contact Web Rocket Media today to go over your options for how to design your website and see how we can help you meet your goals.

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While building a website is becoming much easier in today’s society, it’s also becoming much more difficult to get that website to perform well. Your website should be a lead-generating machine that properly resembles everything your brand stands behind, but most websites just sit there with a limited amount of visitors every day. 

What Is SEO?

SEO, also known as search engine optimization, is one of the essential keys to having a powerful website that continues to provide a return on investment well after you’re finished building — and even when you’re not marketing it!

When you build a website, you have to give Google and other search engines a way of finding you. Although most people are stuck on the “if you build it, they’ll come” statement, it’s simply not true in today’s world. 

By properly optimizing your website for search engines, you’re adding the necessary meta titles, meta descriptions, and keywords to everything you implement on your site. That will include pages, posts, images, videos, and much more! These keywords, titles, and descriptions are what Google will use to index your site and show it to potential leads.

When you think about all the different pages and posts you have on your website, optimizing your website for search engines might seem like a tedious task. Well, that’s because it is and it’s also the main reason why people like you are always in need of a quality web design & SEO company in NYC.

What Does Web Design Have To Do With It?

While that might seem easy enough, SEO is much more complicated and has a ton of other moving parts involved that many people will skip through. Practicing good SEO has more to do than just keywords, every bit of content on your website will play a role — even the web design!

It’s well-known that web design and search engine optimization go hand-in-hand. The design of your website will play a major role in how well your website functions because Google will look at much more than just keywords. 

Some of the main factors at play here are having a mobile-friendly site since most visitors will be on a smartphone or tablet, having a website that’s easy to read or follow, having a website that works fast, utilizing site maps, and providing a simple or clean design for people to enjoy.

When you take these things into consideration, you’ll be providing a much better experience for your visitors. And believe it or not, Google cares about that. If you’re interested in a web design & SEO company in NYC, you’ve come to the right place. 

We take pride in helping businesses take control of their presence on the web and turn their website into something they can be proud of. Contact us today to learn more about our services. 

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One thing I recommend doing is having a checklist. This list will act as your project management document that you can share with your team and agency. I also recommend using a Google doc that will allow for real time edits and note to take place, as well as easy sharability among all stakeholders.

Where Do It Start?
Think of your metrics. Ask yourself, What am I trying to accomplish? Is it more subscribers signing up? Is it more calls? Conversions? Leads? Form fills? Opt-ins? We can sit here all day listing every metric in the world, but the only ones that matter are the ones that are going to make you money. At the end of the day generating more, viable traffic to your site that encourages calls and converts is a win-win. Form fills aren’t bad, but calls usually convert better. One of the ways you can figure that out is test it. Try removing your form from the homepage and bolding your 800 number. Heck, put your 800 number all over the dang page. If people don’t have a hard time seeing it,chances are they’ll pick up the hone and call!

Do you know your brand? Well if you don’t, you better start identifying one. Get in a room with your team and start white boarding! Be cohesive, simple and direct. Customers don’t like complex. Make sure your website matches your collateral and messaging across the board. Remember, wishy-washy doesn’t work either.
Incorporate a user-friendly navigation with top functionality and SEO in mind. Your customers need to have a good user experience, and so do the search engines.

Forget Pretty, Be Practical! Don’t worry how pretty your site will look, just get the content down and the rest will fall into place.

Get Your Shit Together! Organize your information and don’t use too much text. Customers don’t like to read novels when they land on a homepage, they just want quick and easy.

Use clear calls-to-action! You must grab consumers’ attention and convert them!

Don’t forget mobile. Yes! You need a mobile site and it must be optimized for all devices.

Timeliness is key. You can roll your website launch out in phases, it doesn’t have to all be done in fell swoop.

Don’t forget your analytics! Be sure sure to connect your analytics to your website so you can continue to track your data and progress.

Be dynamic! Make sure you have moving parts. Consumers love dynamic sites, not flat, static, boring ones. Remember, you should aim to keep them engaged and help them find the info they need in only a few seconds.

Don’t panic. Websites are fun projects and they are exciting when you see the increase in your web traffic and leads flooding in.

Let us know how we can help you at WRM.

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