Why You Shouldn’t DIY your Website

Solutions By Design

Everything in 2020 is digitally-driven and branded. From food to transportation to connecting with friends, everything is within the reach of our pockets and instantly recognizable through branding. Websites are the extension to what we offer, whether it is a service, e-commerce or a small business, professionally designed websites are a standard in any industry.

Website aesthetics, branding, functionality, and the user's experience all contribute towards how your website is received. On the customer service end, a website can be the deciding factor whether a potential visitor turns into a customer. On the technical side, a poorly designed website can rank well below search engines, making it difficult for people to find your website in the first place. While there a different website design and hosting services, to fully obtain your website’s potential, here are reasons why you shouldn’t do your own website.

• Branding: If you have a brand identity, it is important that it becomes part of your website as well. Your website is an extension of your business. DIY your own website can cause a mismatch on your digital brand and cause inconsistencies in your website. Design consistency matters more than most people give credit. We offer a unique combination of design, marketing, programming, SEO, social media, and clinical knowledge necessary to create effective and functional websites.
  

• No Cookie Cutter Templates: One thing all website hostings and building software services offer is the same types of templates across the board. Your website will likely have the same design and navigation as your competitor. Our services offer custom website development. No templates and no "canned" content. If you are DIY-ing your own website, you run into the challenge of overly complex templates that have unnecessary content and navigation and the same cookie-cutter design as your competitor. All this contributes towards unnecessary functionalities, empty pages and a slow loading time which can all cause a negative search engine optimization and most importantly, a negative user experience. Our clients choose us for the creation of their custom website after evaluating their other options and realizing that we are one of the few firms that truly offer a unique combination of design, marketing, programming, search engine optimization, and social media services necessary to create effective and leading-edge websites.
  

• Responsive and Mobile Friendly: Millennials and Gen Z’ers are now becoming the top consumers, all discovering and purchasing products from their phones. It is essential to meet the customer where they’re at, and with multiple pieces of technology such as tablets, phones, laptops, and wearable technology, your website and content should function across all platforms, different browsers and screen sizes. A responsive website looks good no matter whether you're looking at it on a phone, tablet, or desktop. Responsive sites have quickly become the single, most important external marketing tool available for your business. It is all about online communications that translate well across numerous platforms. If you DIY your website, you could miss a thorough quality assurance across all the multiple different browsers,  devices, and screen sizes, to ensure all content is being served no matter where a customer may discover your website.
  

• Easy Maintenance Your website is up and running, your business is growing, so what’s next? While you are busy running your day to day life, choosing Solutions by Design to manage your website will help keep your site up to date with the latest search engine optimization updates and be an extension of your marketing team.
  

While a DIY project is great for home improvements and renovations, when it comes to technology and websites, with the ever-changing technology, it is important to leave it to marketing experts.

The Future Is Voice Search

A Burger King commercial caused a bit of controversy recently, not for anything racy or disturbing, but for being too invasive. The 15-second ad starts with a Burger King employee holding up the sandwich saying, “You’re watching a 15-second Burger King ad, which is unfortunately not enough time to explain all the fresh ingredients in the Whopper sandwich. But I’ve got an idea. OK, Google, what is the Whopper burger?”

If a viewer has the Google Home assistant or an Android phone with voice search enabled within listening range of the TV, that last phrase - “Hello Google, what is the Whopper burger?” - is intended to trigger the device to search for Whopper on Google and read out the finding from Wikipedia. Admittedly, it’s a clever marketing campaign and the first one to make use of what’s fast becoming a standard in many homes - the personal voice assistant.

Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home assistants sold at a rapid pace last year, and this year the sales are expected to grow even more. With both assistants able to do everything from record notes to control lights and appliances by simply speaking to them, people are discovering the value in owning these assistants. And one of the biggest uses of these devices is the ability to search for information or businesses simply by speaking.

Moms can look up recipes and have the assistant read them back as she’s making dinner. Dads can ask the assistant for the nearest automotive store. The kids can ask about upcoming concerts or video game releases. The possibilities are endless - and convenient. All you do is simply speak.

And it’s not just these assistants that are becoming the go-to devices for voice search. Smartphones are now a big part of the voice search landscape. Voice search can be enabled on both Android and Apple smartphones, and Samsung is releasing their Bixby voice assistant with the new Galaxy S8 this month. Even Microsoft is entering the game with their Cortana voice assistant which can be enabled on computers and tablets.

What does this mean for your business? First of all, it’s important to have a solid SEO strategy in place that can capitalize on this emerging search arena. When people type a search phrase into their browsers, most of the time they use simple truncated phrases to save on typing. For example, if someone is searching for an orthodontist in Dallas they may simply enter, “orthodontists Dallas.” This is especially true on a mobile device where typing can be tedious.

But a voice search uses more natural language, and most people aren’t concerned about truncation. The same person searching for an orthodontist may say, “What is the closest orthodontist to Jefferson Elementary?”, or “What are the top five orthodontists nearest to my home?” Natural language searches like these open up new challenges for SEO.

Here at Solutions by Design, we are fully aware of this new future in search, and are positioning our SEO efforts to meet this new challenge. Part of our SEO strategy will be to make use of this new “natural language” search in our optimization efforts and guide our clients in understanding the implications and benefits. It’s an exciting transition in the world of search and we want our clients to be prepared.

Google’s New Mobile Index Split | How It Will Effect Your SEO

Due to the fact that the majority of searches are now conducted on mobile devices, Google has decided to split their index into mobile-specific and desktop-specific versions.

What is the Google index? Every day, Google’s search engine “bots” crawl through websites and index the contents so that results can be presented to searchers. Until now there has been one unified index for both desktop and mobile searches, so no matter what device you were searching from, the results would be basically the same.

Google’s plan is to provide results optimized for mobile users, and they will be updating and focusing on the mobile index to a greater degree than the desktop index. When a search is conducted from a desktop computer, Google will present results from the desktop index. Alternately, when a search is conducted on a mobile device, Google will present results from the mobile index.

Effect on Websites
If a website is responsive, very little will change. The main criteria will be the speed of the website. If the website is slow to load then it will suffer in the rankings compared to faster sites.

• This will be especially important going forward with new websites we build, and the designers and developers will need to be aware of these issues:
• All sites will need to be run through Google’s website speed tester prior to launch. If the site scores lower than 90 out of 100, adjustments will need to be made following Google’s suggestions.
• Images and other design elements will need to be optimized to enhance the speed of the site. These design considerations will need to be made during the initial concept phase to avoid any potential speed issues.
• Scripts and other files necessary to the site will need to be “minified” and placed in the optimal load order. Google has good documentation on this and it should be followed by the developers. In addition, no supporting files should be loaded from external sites wherever possible. This includes jQuery base files and jQuery app files. Wherever possible, font files should be loaded locally.

For SEO clients who already have responsive sites, the same issues above will apply and some modifications will need to be made.

For those clients with separate mobile sites there will be more issues to consider. The main issue will be content. Since most mobile sites contain only an abbreviated portion of the content of the main website, the reduction in content (because Google is now keeping a separate mobile index) will definitely affect the site’s rankings.

To correct this, the same content that exists on the desktop version of the site will need to be present in the mobile version. This ensures that Google will have enough content to index in order to rank the site effectively. Obviously, this presents challenges when it comes to showing interactive content (Choose Your Look, Terms, etc), and a solid development plan will need to be in place to address these challenges.

Also, Google’s focus is moving increasingly toward their AMP (accelerated mobile pages) technology and soon will play a major role in rankings. It is highly recommended that we begin exploring this technology in order to stay in the game.

Effect on SEO Efforts
For existing responsive sites, the main thing to consider is optimizing the site for speed. This will involve a combination of work from the designers and the developers. The designers will need to develop routines for optimizing the images and graphical elements, and the developers will need to concentrate on optimizing the code and supporting files.

For new responsive sites, it will be important to follow the guidelines above during the entire development process.

In terms of additional time needed for SEO purposes, there should be no additional efforts other than a possible change to the monthly reporting. I’m still waiting to see if the SEO reporting software will change to accommodate the index split. But once the site is optimized for speed, monthly on-site SEO efforts should remain the same. For sites with separate mobile versions, a little additional time will be required in order to make sure the desktop and mobile versions are in sync, with attention being paid to the differences needed in order to affect rankings. The additional time needed will have little impact overall.

Conclusion
Unless more changes are revealed by Google, this announced change to Google’s index will have little impact in terms of monthly SEO work required. The primary consideration will be developing responsive sites for optimal speed, developing new techniques and requirements to achieve this, and exploring new technologies such as AMP. The burden will rest on the designers and developers to produce sites that meet Google’s optimization guidelines.

We #MannequinChallenge You

The latest internet craze is the Mannequin Challenge! The #MannequinChallenge involves a group of people to strike a pose while being filmed to hip hop artist Rae Sremmurd’s newly released song “Black Beatles” in the background.

The first viral video of the Mannequin Challenge surfaced in October 2016, and it's now trending all across the net. There are currently more than 56,000 posts with the hashtag #MannequinChallenge and the number rises every day. Now, it’s our turn!

Just a typical day at Solutions by design…#MannequinChallenge



The Mannequin Challenge is easy to create and fun to participate in! It’s so fun, we’re challenging YOU to create your own clip! It may seem a little odd, but trust us, it’s a powerful form of social media marketing and branding. Many brands have received amazing results while posting viral videos such as this, so join us and take on our challenge!

Tag Us! 

Don’t forget to tag us in your mannequin challenge videos! Use #SBDMadeMeDoIt so we can LIKE & SHARE your video!

Google’s War Against Pop-Ups

Last month Google announced that they would begin penalizing websites that display content-blocking pop-ups. These are called “interstitial ads,” you can find these all over the Internet as you try to browse certain websites. This is how they work: you navigate to an article that you want to read and as you are just starting with the first paragraph, a pop-up appears that blocks the content. These pop-ups usually want you to sign up for their newsletter, purchase a subscription, or will display an advertisement for a product or service.

Sometimes it is hard to find the button to close the pop-up, and some even prevent you from closing the pop-up unless you click through the advertisement. These pop-ups are irritating and Google is making sure that websites with these types of ads don’t make it into their search results. Google’s focus is on the user's website experience, especially when it relates to mobile browsing, and this type of advertising interferes with that experience.

What does this mean for our clients? We have always advised against adding pop-up advertising for our clients and will continue to do so. There are much better and less annoying ways to get your message to your visitors. Now that Google will start penalizing websites that utilize pop-up advertising, you can’t afford to choose this option in the future.  

If you have a website with interstitial ads, contact Solutions by Design to discuss updating your site. We have a full in-house staff of graphic designers, web developers, programmers, and more, as well as specialize in custom websites.  Also, we don't use templates and have over 30 years of experience assisting clients all over the world with maintaining branding, web presence, and our clients have top rankings on Google. Call us today 800-888-4084.  

Important Reasons Why You May Need To Revamp Your Website

The internet is ever-changing so it’s important to remember your website must reflect those changes as well. Maintaining your website is essential to your business because most potential leads come from searching online for goods and services. Typically, the first impression potential customers of your business get will come from your website and other platforms your business is connected to online. Because of this, it’s imperative your website stays fresh with new content and design trends. What worked for you in the past may not work for you in the future, especially as the audience to your site changes and web developments continue to occur. So when is a good time to update the look, feel, and operation of your website?

Keep reading to learn some important reasons you may need to revamp your website with redesigning and functional modifications.

Maintenance
Just like everything else, your website may need repairs once in a while. Unlike a car, however, you may not be aware of when something breaks on your site. Having a trusted team to help you with website repairs will make your life a lot easier as most of your staff members in-house don’t have expertise on browsers and servers that operate your site. Sometimes what may seem to be a minor change may actually result in a major web redesign. Regularly revamping your website will keep your business updated with the latest technology changes and leave your customers with a flawless website experience.

Results
You might have a breathtaking website with amazing functionality and gorgeous graphics, but if you’re not getting the results you want it may be time to redesign your site. One major purpose of a website is to build a customer base, so if you’re unhappy with the analytics of that, redesigning may help. Updating and redesigning things such as the call to action, too much text, or the tone of voice can help you achieve your goal results.

It’s Not Responsive
Out of our clients at Solutions by Design, over 50% of their website visitors browse from a mobile device, that’s why we make sure our website clients have responsive websites. Responsive websites are crafted to provide an easy experience and website navigation to users on a wide range of devices and browsers. Also, another important factor is Google algorithms give preference to responsive websites. If you want to keep your rankings up or increase them, you need to have a responsive site. Responsive sites must be built from the ground up, you can’t convert these, but you’ll likely see a return on your investment once you update from a non-responsive.

There are several other factors as to why redesigning and routine maintenance to your website is significant. From outdated third-party tools to your competitors who keep up with the trends. Realizing that investing in your website regularly will keep your business modern, functional, and ideally it will appeal to visitors and turn them into new customers. Do you think your website may be in need of a redesign? Give us a call to set up a consultation. Call 800-888-4084.

The Death of Flash

There have been warnings from the major browser companies in the past couple of years regarding their decreasing support of Adobe Flash. Google and Firefox have both stated that it would eventually drop all support for Flash, and it looks like Google is making good on that promise.

This week Google announced that the new version of their Chrome browser, Chrome 53, which is set to be released next month will block Flash content by default. Users will still be prompted about enabling Flash support, but this is the first major step toward dropping support altogether. Firefox will soon follow with the same type of Flash blocking.

What does this mean for you as a customer? If you still have a Flash-based website, or if you have any Flash content on your website, your customers will be unable to view it. A Flash-based website is now a virtual dinosaur and it’s time to upgrade.

If you don’t have a Flash-based website, or any type of Flash content on your website, congratulations! This will have no impact on your online presence. If you’re still using Flash, it’s time to update it now to prevent complications in the future. If you are ready to take the steps to update now, call Solutions by Design at 800-888-4084.

The Ultimate Facebook Secret to Success for Orthodontic Practices

Lately, we’ve been getting a ton of questions from clients confused about social media and how to create effective social media strategies on social networks. This is a huge topic, seriously, we could write pages and pages on it! To make your lives easier, and save our hands from carpal tunnel, we decided to share with you the ultimate Facebook secret to success for orthodontic practices.

Here it is…USE YOUR CURRENT PATIENTS AS BRAND AMBASSADORS ON FACEBOOK FOR YOUR PRACTICE!

How do you do this, you ask? Simple. Engage with your patients when they’re at your practice and encourage them to connect with you online, specifically on Facebook. One way to do this is something a lot of our social media clients currently do; use strategic Facebook contests.

Let’s explore this a little more.

So many practices do contests, but the real question is, are contests being done right? This Summer, Solutions by Design’s social media clients have tons of custom created contests that are efficient for the practices social media marketing strategies. Several of our custom created contests promote patients to post selfies and tag the practice on Facebook, in order to be entered to win a prize from their doctor.

By doing this, we have the patients utilizing the power of social media for the practices brand awareness.  Yes, posting photos of the patients to the Facebook business page is great, but having patients post their own photos and tagging the practice is even better, and the ultimate secret to social media success. By doing something like this, your patients become brand ambassadors for your practice on Facebook.  Ultimately, this connects their closest friends and followers with your practice because they tag your practice on Facebook, and this shows the world of Facebook they do business with you. All while they think they're just entering a contest.This eliminates extra costs of paying to boost Facebook posts, purchase Facebook advertisements, or worrying about HIPAA consent forms.

Also, when your patients tag you in a post, Facebook will notify your practice, and provide you with the option to share the post on your practice's page.

Custom designed contests are just one of the several ways our social media clients use patients as brand ambassadors. Are you interested in learning more about our social media services? Contact our trusted social media department and ask for more details or client reviews.  Remember, there are several companies out there claiming to provide similar services, but they’re based on limited experience and misguided advice; especially when it comes to the area of orthodontic marketing. 

3...2...1...Launch!

April has been an amazing month for Solution by Design’s website clients. We have had several of our website clients finalize their websites and are now live! Solutions by Design would like to congratulate the following clients on their recent live websites.

These beautifully custom crafted websites created by our SBD team show detailed skill, knowledge, and professionalism of each practice. Check them out now!

1. Dr.Rupali Wadhwa : Morristown Orthodontics – New Responsive Website, Social Media Program and bLink Patient Reminders
2. Dr.Jeremy Albert: Albert Family Ortho – New Responsive Website
3. Dr.Alex Cranford: Cranford Orthodontics – Responsive Website Upgrade and bLink Patient Reminders
4. Dr.Eric Sacks: Sacks Orthodontics - Mobile Website Re-Design
5. Dr.David Kemp: Kemp Orthodontics – New Responsive Website, Social Media Program and bLink Patient Reminders

Our team is proud to call you all clients. It was a pleasure working closely with you during this process to provide you with a truly amazing website. Solutions by Design features custom website development. No templates and no canned content. Each site is developed based upon the attributes of the individual practice and its markets.

Our clients choose Solutions by Design for the creation of their website after evaluating their other options and realize that we are the only company that truly offers a unique combination of design, marketing, programming, SEO, social media and clinical knowledge necessary to create effective and functional websites. We are the total solution and offer several levels of website development based upon your needs and budget. Give us a call to now at 800-888-4084 and ask us about our newest promotions.

SBD New Product Launch - Checkin4Charity.com

Solutions By Design has created another solution to enhance your social media strategy.  Are you ready to connect with thousands of potential local customers each month?  Interested in expanding your brand online while making a difference in the world? Then you need this new innovative social media tool we’ve created, Checkin4Charity.com.

What is Checkin4Charity.com?

Checkin4charity.com is a very low cost and innovative social media tool that will greatly and instantly expand your social presence on the internet, while allowing your customers to help make a difference.  By providing digital signage in your office, blasters to your customer base, and information on your website….your patients will “Check-in” at your business and reach thousands…mostly local potential customers per month.

How does it work?

We have established relationships and committed donations to 12 charities, one per month.  Your customers see the “call to action” notifying them that for every Check-in at your business, we will make a donation to the charity of the month.  The provided digital display and your website give an up to date accumulative, by charity total donations by our program.  The digital display slides month to month showing your customers how they are helping to make a difference in the world when they check in at your business. Your patients see the total accumulative donations raised by ALL Checkin4charity.com participants worldwide.

For Montage Users, we will also provide a Banner Ad to build awareness and participation.

You can choose from 5 levels of participation.  Each is based upon the volume of participation by your customers.

Also, you will receive a monthly Certificate of Appreciation from Checkin4charity.com showing the results of donations generated by your customers check-ins.

Call 1-800-888-4084 TODAY!  (Website still in development)

Exciting Changes for SEO in 2016

The SEO industry is constantly changing, and one of the challenges for us is keeping up with this ever-changing landscape and, more importantly, continually adding value to our SEO services.

As we move into a new year, we are planning on implementing some exciting changes for our many SEO clients. First and foremost will be dynamic online reporting. Utilizing our popular ANDI client portal, your SEO reports will be available online for reviewing at any time, along with historical trends and other important information.

If you haven’t used the ANDI portal yet, you will find it powerful and easy. All of our products are at your fingertips, along with the latest news and information from Solutions by Design. Adding the SEO product will make it even more valuable for our clients.

There are even more changes in the works for SEO in 2016. Our commitment is to continually provide leading-edge SEO services, and when combined with our proven social media strategies it makes sense to go with a company that stays current with the changing online marketing landscape.

Shouldn’t your New Year’s resolutions include SEO and Social Media?

bLink January 2016 News

Ask your SBD representative how blink fits into your communications Eco-System! 

bLink 2.0 is in the works.

There is a lot of development going on here these days.  bLink 2.0 is a major undertaking that will add a significant amount of new features to its functionality.

The long awaited Newsletters and Survey feature will provide our users with the tools necessary to allow our users to send Newsletter to Existing/ Active Patients as well as all “Patients of Record”.

This month we are pushing out a new feature that will allow you to automatically send a “Request for Review” email. This specific email can be synced to any appointment “type”.  Based upon the appointment types designated in your PMS.  The same functionality applies here as it does to your Montage Board Reviewer functionality. Reviews once completed and submitted go to ANDI.  Once ion ANDI you can accept them and respond with a request to post.  From there your patients can post reviews about your practice to popular review sites such as Yelp and Google Reviews.

Create your Own Email Types:

This new feature will allow you to add and delete any of the email opportunities in bLink.  Want to add an email specific to “How are you Feeling” to be sent right after the bonding appointment? Want to add an SBD video on how to deal with any possible pain…you can set up your emails with your own message with your designated attachments.

Here is a list of the most requested features for bLink 2.0

1. Newsletter


2. Message Center communication linked up to Doctor/Patient emails


3. Text Message being able to confirm


4. Mass Email fixes, additional features, and improvements


5. Combining/consolidating multiple appointment reminders that go out within a single day


6. Notification settings automatically update when emails/cell numbers are change within clients Management Software


7. bLink fixing RP and P link as long as it is correct from client Management Software


8. Control over which reminders go out (reminders by appointment types)

 

Other bLink news includes:

We added the Automated Reviewer email to blink

We also enhanced the Reviewer feature in Montage so the “Review that the patient wrote goes into the email that asks them to post; it can also be ported to the website.

ALL OF THESE AND MUCH, MUCH MORE ARE INCLUDED IN THE NEW 2.0 UPGRADE CURRENTLY IN THE WORK.

Montage January 2016 News

Montage 3.0 was released and looks great!  We have a variety of additional features that will be released in packets as 3.1-3.2 and 3.3.

3.0 added a lot of great features.  If you want to convert to 3.0…it is simple and it is free.  Simply log into your ANDI account and under the Settings tab select Layout.  A list of “versions” will appear. You will see a template demonstrating the look of each version.

3.1 which is in the works is truly amazing!

Here is a preview of what is in development for 3.1:

Cosmetic features:

Although 3.0 looks really cool…especially on our new iPhone looking Kiosk…we were not happy with the way that each widget enlarged…they were lacking pizazz.  We went back to the drawing board on this function and now…they have pizazz.  Instead of filling the center of the screen right to left with a blue background, each has a fun motion and retains its shape and color background.  They are smaller when enlarged and look a lot more balanced.



Each of the widgets now have motion in them while in their inactive mode.  This adds more interest and instantly alerts any patient of the fact that the display is interactive.

The Main Menu with multiple screens will allow users to select any and all widgets from the main screen.  Look at the list of widgets in development here and you will see a ton of new features.



 

Additional Widgets:

Utilize Sling Box technology to stream your cable TV connection onto the Montage board. This feature connection onto the Montage board. This feature expands at a touch and can be set to enlarge if the board is unattended for more than “X” minutes.





 

 

3.2  is in the final stages of development.  Now testimonials and reviews can go to the Website, Montage Board and to Review sites automatically.



 



Also new on 3.2

Introducing the new Montage Examiner, offering special features:

• Whiteboard Feature with X-ray import and icon import


• Brochure Feature


• Videos feature

For more information on Montage click here or call 1-800-888-4084 TODAY! 

 

The last days of Internet Explorer 8, 9, & 10

Microsoft will end support for older versions of Internet Explorer on January 12, 2016. The versions included to end are 8, 9, and 10.  This leaves Internet Explorer 11 as the last version of the browser supported by Microsoft Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10. All users of the older browser versions will be notified at the time of launch to upgrade to a recent browser.

What does this mean?

This means if you don’t have the Internet Explorer 11 version, you better update it now.  Those running the older versions will no longer receive security updates or technical support from Microsoft.  According to Microsoft, “Security updates patch vulnerabilities that may be exploited by malware, helping to keep users and their data safer.”  It’s important for Internet Explorer users to upgrade and stay current to help protect their computers.

What are the risks of running older versions of Internet Explorer after January 12, 2016?

Microsoft has alerted users of 3 risks they can be exposed to if they run older versions after the final date: security, compliance, and lack of ISV support.

Security Risks: Some security risks of running older browser versions include harmful viruses, malicious software that can take your business data, and spyware.

Compliance: Businesses with governing obligations such as HIPAA should follow up to ensure they are able to satisfy the legal requirements while using unsupported software.

Lack of ISV Support (independent software vendor): Several software vendors, such as Office365, use the latest web programs and are created to function properly and best on the latest browsers available.

If you’re still using an older version of Internet Explorer, it’s time to update it now to 11 to prevent complications in the future. If you are ready to take the steps to update now, please see the guidelines on TechNet.