Category: Emphasis

A popular website design element that often comes up in discussions is the website slider carousel or slider for short. While this feature may seem appealing at first, at Emphasis.LA, we recommend that most websites avoid using slider carousels due to various reasons. When we create web designs we usually avoid adding sliders in the design. But our customers often request them. We try to dissuade them when possible but we will use them if the client insists. There are some instances where using a slider does make sense.

Understanding Slider Carousels

Before we delve into the reasons why we advise against the use of slider carousels, let’s clarify what they are. A slider carousel is a web design component that typically showcases a series of images or content slides, in a rotating fashion – one after another, often with an automatic transition or navigation buttons to cycle through the slides manually. It’s often implemented on the homepage or landing page of a website to highlight different products, promotions, or featured content.

Why EmphasisLA Recommends Avoiding Sliders

Limited Attention Span

In today’s fast-paced digital world, users have increasingly short attention spans. Studies have shown that website visitors often make snap judgments within seconds, and if they don’t immediately find what they’re looking for, they’re likely to leave the site. Slider carousels can be distracting and may fail to convey essential information within this brief window of attention.

A 2021 Microsoft study found that you only have about 8 seconds to capture someone’s attention before they lose interest. If your slides transition every 5-6 seconds, that means people might only see the first two slides before moving on.

Low Engagement and Conversion Rates

Despite the initial appeal of slider carousels, research suggests that they suffer from low engagement rates. In fact, the first slide of a carousel receives the majority of attention, with subsequent slides being overlooked or ignored. A Notre Dame University study found, only 1% of users interacted with slides beyond the first one. This lack of engagement can lead to reduced conversion rates, as crucial messages or calls to action often appear on ignored slides.

Accessibility Challenges

Web accessibility is a critical consideration for any website owner. Slider carousels can present significant accessibility issues, especially for users with visual impairments or cognitive disabilities. Screen readers may struggle to convey the changing content, while users who require additional time to process information may find themselves overwhelmed or frustrated by the constant movement. Other users who have to use keyboard navigation may get stuck in the slider. They may have to use the tab key excessively before they are able to consume the other content on the page. 

Performance Concerns

Slider carousels can impact the performance and loading times of a website. Each slide typically contains images or multimedia content, increasing the overall page size. In order for the slider to slide through the images, the page will need to use a lot of JavaScript code to make it work. A page with a lot of images and code will potentially cause slower load times. In today’s era of instant gratification, where users expect websites to load quickly, a slow-loading page can lead to a high bounce rate and a negative user experience.

Need a second opinion? Here’s a website that poses the question “Should I use a carousel?”

When Slider Carousels Can Be Useful

While we generally advise against using slider carousels, there are certain scenarios where they may still be suitable. Ecommerce websites, for instance, can leverage slider carousels to showcase a variety of products or highlight specific promotions. In these cases, it’s crucial to follow best practices to mitigate the drawbacks mentioned earlier. Limiting the number of slides, optimizing images for fast loading, and ensuring that important information is displayed prominently are some ways to make slider carousels more effective.

Addressing Accessibility and Performance Issues

To overcome the accessibility challenges posed by slider carousels, it’s crucial to provide alternative options for users who may struggle to interact with them. This can include offering navigation controls to pause, rewind, or skip slides, as well as providing textual alternatives or summaries of the content. Furthermore, optimizing the website’s performance by compressing images, minimizing scripts, and utilizing lazy loading techniques can help reduce the negative impact on loading times.

Conclusion

While slider carousels may seem visually appealing and offer the potential for displaying multiple pieces of content, we recommend that most websites avoid using them. The limited attention span of users, low engagement rates, accessibility challenges, and potential performance issues make slider carousels a risky choice. However, in certain cases, such as ecommerce websites, slider carousels can still be utilized if implemented thoughtfully and optimized for accessibility and performance. Ultimately, the goal should always be to create a user-friendly and inclusive website experience that effectively communicates your message and drives conversions.

Most likely the answer to this question is: Yes, you need to have a privacy policy on your website. Let’s review the reasons why.

Disclaimer: This is not legal advice, just our understanding.

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

The CCPA gives California residents four fundamental privacy rights that affect the information you collect and handle:

• Right to know
• Right to delete
• Right to opt-out
• Right to non-discrimination

Your business is subject to this law if you are targeting California residents whether or not your business is located in California. Smaller businesses may not be required by California law to have a privacy policy unless they meet the following criteria (pulled from the Office of the Attorney General’s website):

• Have a gross annual revenue of over $25 million;
• Buy, receive, or sell the personal information of 100,000 or more California residents, households, or devices; or
• Derive 50% or more of their annual revenue from selling California residents’ personal information.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other foreign laws

If you are a California business or non-profit organization that targets residents in Europe, then you definitely need a privacy policy regardless of the size or scope of your website. Other countries have similar laws that require a privacy policy. Check the privacy laws for any country that you target its residents.

Other businesses that provide products or services to you may require it

When we set up promotions for our customers on LinkedIn, they ask for a link to a privacy policy page. While other organizations may not ask you for a link to your privacy policy, they may still require it. Nobody reads terms of service agreements but these requirements are probably in there. You may have agreed to have a privacy policy without knowing. 

Here are just a few of the organizations that you may be working with that may require you to have a privacy policy depending on how you use them:

1. Google
2. Facebook
3. Stripe
4. Paypal
5. Instagram
6. LinkedIn
7. Twitter
8. Shopify
9. WooCommerce
10. Squarespace
11. Mailchimp

How to create a Privacy Policy

The best privacy policy will probably be one that is custom made and updated by a legal professional for your specific business use.

In the absence of your own legal representative, you can write your own policy (if you have that type of know-how and time). Otherwise there are free and paid options available for you. (Not legal advice, just what I have used in the past).

Termly

Termly has a free privacy policy generator that can be used for websites with low traffic (up to 10,000 visitors).  You must update manually if/when new laws are introduced. They also have a very good paid plan with unlimited views and auto updating policy.

Auto Terms of Service and Privacy Policy (WordPress plugin)

Create a privacy policy for free from your WordPress dashboard. You have to manually update the policies if/when new laws are introduced. They have lifetime deals for their paid plans.

Termageddon

Our favorite privacy policy generator is Termageddon. They do not have a free plan but we feel their auto updating policy is a good value. We use Termageddon for our own privacy policy and use it for many of our customers.

Conclusion

You may not be required by California law to have a privacy policy on your website but other service providers that you use may require you to have one. If you are not tracking analytics on your website, advertising on your website, leading people to your website with ads or social media, or selling products on your website, then you may be able to get away with not having one. In our experience, most businesses should be doing some of those things or else why even have a website?

Since we work with a lot of small businesses and nonprofits, we see a lot of websites that are not set up for success. People know that they need a website and they know that there are services that allow you to easily create a website. But they don’t know the true value because they think that a website works like a business card or a directory listing.

We believe that a website can be much more than “who we are” and “what we do”. Yes, those are important, but that doesn’t make you any different than your competitors.

Your customers are researching you first

To state the obvious, the internet has changed the way we do business. Depending on your industry, 50-90% of people have probably researched your product or service before talking to you or making a purchase. This is known as the self-educating buyer. 

The Death of the Salesman (hyperbole)

In a time, not too long ago, when you wanted to get more information on a product, you would have to speak with a salesperson. A salesperson working on commission would obviously want to push for a sale, even if you weren’t really ready to buy. This created friction and a lot of uncomfortable situations. 

With the rise of the internet, people no longer have to talk with a salesperson just to learn more. By the time people talk to a sales rep, they have most of the information they think they need and are much closer to making a purchase. A lot of a salesperson’s job (depending on the industry) has been reduced to processing credit cards. The need to convince or close on-the-spot has been reduced and may even lead to people not wanting to do business with a company.

Compete by being a top educator

When people are doing the research about your product or service, are they finding the information on your website – making you the expert? Or are they finding the information on your competitor’s website? Since people are doing the research themselves, doesn’t it make sense for them to learn about your products or services from you? 

Your website can be one of your salespersons

When your website is consistently able to answer people’s questions about your product or service, it becomes a salesperson for you. You are building trust with people. When they are ready to buy, they are more likely to remember you if you have consistently answered their questions in an easy to understand manner. 

Are you getting the same questions from your clients before they make a purchase? They are probably asking your competitors and the search engines the same questions. Answer those on your website and you could be getting name recognition. 

The more common the question, the more upfront the answer to that question should be.

Conclusion

Many people treat their websites like business cards. They give out their web address to everyone and cross their fingers. When people land on the website there is a minimal amount of information about their service or product. In this scenario, the chances of someone working with you because of your website are very low. We believe that a website should be more of an advocate for you and should attract people to your product or service.

The speed of your website is important because it can lead to a better user experience (UX),  increase your conversion rate on your website, and lead to better search engine optimization (SEO). If you do a little research online you will hear a lot of terms such as caching, content delivery network (CDN), or time to first byte (TTFB). These terms can seem complicated so I want to see if I can simplify and give you a better understanding of website speed.

The Horse Race

Let me begin by comparing your website to a Horse race. In a horse race, the only way for a team to go faster is to either get a faster horse or get a smaller rider. It is similar to a website. The only real way for a website to go faster is to get faster hosting or make the website lighter. 

In any race, the winner is often determined by how fast the racer launches from the start line. For a website, this would be the time to first byte (TTFB). TTFB is the amount of time it takes for the requesting browser (the website visitor) to receive the first byte of data from the hosting server. Typically, this is an indication of the quality of your website hosting platform. 

A very small site with small pages, may be ok on a less-than-great server. As you increase the size and complexity of a website, you will need better hosting with the resources to process code and data quickly. Some plugins such as page builders can make building a website easier but they  add a lot of extra weight to the website. Consider using better hosting if you plan to use a pagebuilder. Here is a list of our favorite WordPress hosting companies.

The smaller a website is, the faster it can load. Every item on your website adds extra code to either the HTML, CSS, or JS files. The code has to travel electronically from the server to the user’s browser. The browser has to read and translate all of the code before it renders it on the screen. The less it has to read, the faster it can read the files and then render the website.

Some items such as sliders, may not look big on the screen but they are composed of many small items and code that enable the functionality. Sliders can add a very large amount of weight  to a website so we recommend avoiding them whenever possible.

A basic website

When you type in a website’s URL and hit enter, you are sending a request to a server. A server is essentially just a computer connected to the internet. The server then returns up to three files to your browser: 

• a HyperText Markup Language (HTML) file, 
• a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) file, 
• a JavaScript (JS) file. 

You may hear terms such as Ruby, Node, Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), Python, and others if you are researching websites. Your browser does not recognize these other programming languages. Any code written in these languages has to be converted to HTML, CSS, and JS before it is sent to your browser. 

When websites first started popping up they were simple. You put the HTML, CSS, and JS files in a folder on the server. Then, when someone input a URL to request a website, these static files were served instantly. Nowadays, for the majority of websites, when you send a request for a URL, the server receives the request and then compiles (builds) the website based on various data and inputs. It then sends the compiled HTML, CSS, and JS files back to the requester.   

Caching

Our metaphor gets kind of fuzzy here but imagine a horse race where the horse is going through the race without a rider. The unburdened horse is able to travel faster through the course. The split second before the horse crosses the finish line, the rider magically appears on top of the horse.

Caching allows a user’s browser to store certain information from a website. When the user visits a web page that they have been to before, some of the files are already on the user’s computer so they don’t have to be re-downloaded. It works really well after the initial visit but the first time someone visits a website, the whole content has to be downloaded. In other words, you can make a bad first impression by having a large website. 

Oftentimes website speed tests will test a website and will include the caching ability as part of the grade. First time users may still have a bad experience. If a user only visits your site once a year, you may not have a happy customer. 

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Let’s change the metaphor for this one. Imagine that you own a pizza chain in Los Angeles County with headquarters in downtown LA. If someone orders a pizza in Palmdale (about 70 miles away) or Long Beach (about 27 miles away), you wouldn’t send the pizza from your downtown location. You would send it from a location near Palmdale or a location near Long Beach, respectively. You still own the recipe and maybe control the ingredients and other things, but you don’t need to deliver from downtown. 

This is sort of how a CDN works. A CDN is a network of servers with multiple locations that aims to deliver cached versions of websites from the server nearest to the requesting user. If your website hosting provider has servers located in Los Angeles but a website visitor is located in New York, that visitor would be served from a CDN server near New York. Of course, if you are the first visitor to a website from a specific CDN server location, it may not have been cached yet. You will probably be served from the hosting server and the CDN will cache the website for the next visitor.

You do have to connect your website to a CDN service. Many website hosting companies are in partnership with CDNs and can provide that for you. If not, you can look for a CDN provider such as Cloudflare. They have a free plan available that is adequate for many websites.

Lazy is good

Lazy loading is good. Lazy loading means that certain items such as images or videos are not loaded to the browser until they are needed. For example on a very long page, you don’t need to load a picture in the footer until the user scrolls toward the bottom of the page. 

Image Optimization

One of the most common reasons for slow websites is improperly sized images. Optimized images are smaller in file size and if done correctly won’t be noticeably different for most viewers. Content management systems such as WordPress make it super easy to upload images to your website. Many themes do not set a limit for file size or they are not properly coded to serve smaller versions of images. If possible, optimize image size and resolution before uploading images. I like using Photoshop to resize images but you can also use a service such as TinyPNG. 

If you are using WordPress, you can try an image optimization plugin such as Smush or Imagify. These will automatically optimize your images as you upload them. 

Static websites

We are seeing that a lot of websites are returning to serving static files in a folder (HTML, CSS, and JS) instead of building the websites on the fly. Any time a change is made to a website by a website owner or administrator, the website is compiled/built and the files are created in a folder. When a website visitor requests a web page, the pre-built files are quickly sent back. No more waiting for the files to be built. You can compare this to ordering fast food where the food is prepared before you get there versus a sit down restaurant where the food is prepared after you order.

Headless WordPress is an up-and-coming technology that will allow administrators to access the WordPress backend dashboard they are familiar with to build or edit websites, but will build static files on the front end. We are not using Headless WordPress yet but look forward to using it as the technology matures and becomes easier to use.

Conclusion

Website speed is important for an effective online presence. It can help you make a good first impression and lead to a better ranking on Google and other search engines. For best results, we recommend building a lightweight website and using good hosting first. Adding caching and a CDN to an already optimized website can enhance results.

The simple answer to this question is, no, you shouldn’t use an accessibility overlay or widget. The main reason not to use an overlay is because they don’t make your site accessible. The only true way of making a website accessible is through testing. Accessibility overlays may, ironically, make your site less accessible and more vulnerable to lawsuits.

What are Accessibility Overlays

Accessibility overlays or widgets are third party scripts or code that are added to your website. The makers of the scripts claim that they make your website accessible automatically. They will detect if the website visitor is using a device such as a screen reader on the website and will attempt to fix that experience based on the device. So, it could disable other scripts from running if a person is using a screen reader. They may also add other functionality such as the ability to increase font-size and/or automatically adding alternative text to images. 

Overlays Do Not Automatically Fix All Problems

I recently reviewed a prospect’s website (it’s what I do) and I saw they were using an accessibility overlay. You can easily tell when someone is using an accessibility overlay because they will usually have a small popup on one of the corners of the screen with either a wheelchair icon or an icon somewhat in the shape of a person.

When I reviewed the site, I quickly saw that in some portions of their site they had light gray text on a white background. I knew from experience that these colors did not provide enough contrast to meet the WCAG 2.0 standards. I tested it anyway to make sure and the results confirmed my expectation. 

To state the obvious, the site was not accessible – it did not pass WCAG 2.0 standards. Accessibility overlays do not automatically increase color contrast, they do not automatically increase font size for everyone, and they do not add appropriate alternative text to images. Overlays do not make your website accessible; they add a way that people can access if they take a few extra steps after arriving at your site.

Automatically adding alternative text (alt-text) is something that cannot be done accurately. Even the best artificial intelligence cannot properly and relevantly describe an image. In some cases I’ve seen websites add alternative text programmatically based on image titles. So if a user adds an image from their phone without first renaming it, you can get meaningless alt-text such as “IMG3820”. Not helpful at all.

Equal Access is important

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires equal access to goods and services.  If an establishment such as a restaurant makes people with wheelchairs come in through the back door only, that is not equal access. The visitors on your website shouldn’t have to push extra buttons to be able to consume your content.

Don’t remind people that they have a disability

For a person with some form of color blindness to be able to view improperly colored text properly, they would first have to know that they can click on the accessibility button to increase the contrast. About one in twelve men and one in two hundred women have some form of color blindness. Unless you are very close to them on a personal level, you will probably never know that a person is color blind. They themselves may have gone through the first few years of life without knowing that they couldn’t see something that somebody else could. Do you really want to remind them that their vision is not equal to everyone else? 

Make the website easier for everyone

Having an accessible website can make a website easier to use for everyone. Improper color contrast and font-size can cause eye-strain and wear out the reader. So even people with optimal vision will consume less of your content. Do you know anyone that wears glasses? Then you are probably aware that they don’t have their glasses on all the time. Larger font size might increase the chance that person would be able to read your content without having to remember where they left their glasses. Some people prefer to use keyboard navigation, not because they need to, but because they feel it is faster. 

Making changes that make your website accessible are sometimes very easy

If you build a website from the beginning with accessibility in mind, there is very little, if any change in the amount of time it takes to build a website. If you are using pre-made templates, the developer or designer who made the template, probably considered accessibility (if they are any good) when they made it. Most of the time you just have to make choices (such as color) that won’t negatively affect accessibility. 

If you use WordPress you should start with an Accessibility-Ready theme.

If you have a website that is already built, look for common problems on your website that could negatively affect accessibility. You could also run some tests using tools such as the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools.

Make sure to:

• Use colors that have proper contrast
• Use an easy to read font
• Use proper font-size – usually at least 16 px
• Add appropriate alternative text to all images

Overlays add waiting time

There are a lot of statistics on how the speed of your website affects your conversion rate. Some of them state how shaving mere milliseconds can help you convert more. Imagine now that in order for a website visitor to start reading or shopping, they now have to click on a button and adjust some settings before they can even start the experience! With so many options available, that person is going elsewhere. If the risk of lawsuits doesn’t bother you, the risk of losing customers is something that should keep you up at night. Did I mention that 1 in 12 men are color blind! And it is one of the most common problems on websites. 

I have heard claims from accessibility overlay companies that you can make your website accessible with a line of code added to your website (or something similar). That little bit of code is just there to import a larger amount of code. This can slow down your website which can affect your search engine optimization (SEO).

Conclusion

We don’t recommend using an accessibility overlay because we feel that most elements on a website can be made accessible easily. Especially if accessibility was a consideration when the website was built. Features on websites that are common culprits (such as sliders, pop-ups, or animations) are usually unnecessary and ineffective. Removing them can help give your users a faster and better experience. If your website is accessible, then why do you need an overlay?

For more information on this topic please visit the following links:

• https://www.lflegal.com/2020/08/quick-fix/
• https://beaccessible.com/post/accessibility-overlays-are-not-a-web-accessibility-solution/
• https://overlayfactsheet.com/

A common complaint on WordPress websites are the excessive amount of spam comments on blog posts. Lets go through some ways we can reduce or eliminate the spam.

Disable WordPress comments 

Of course, the simplest thing you can do is disable comments. I’ve done this a few times. Some businesses or industries do not see much of a benefit from comments anyway. This may be something that you want to test first to see if it has a benefit for you. It can provide some search engine optimization (SEO) benefits if comments add relevant ideas to your content or if people are engaged in the comments. To have an engaged audience, you may have to be engaged yourself, which requires extra work from you  or your team. If it is not producing any benefits to your business, go ahead and disable the comments.

1. In the left sidebar of the WordPress dashboard, hover over “Settings” and click on “Discussion”

2. In the “Default post settings” section, uncheck “Allow people to submit comments on new posts”.

Modify WordPress Discussion Settings

The discussion settings provide several options that may help you drastically reduce spam. I won’t cover all of them but you should review them all. Before you decide to disable comments, consider the following solutions.

Require users to be logged in to comment

You can allow people to register on your website to engage on your website and require anyone who wants to comment to be a registered user. This will eliminate most, but not all spammers. It does offer the benefit of collecting people’s information that you can use to market to them. On the other hand it creates a barrier for the casual user to engage on your website so you may get less people engaging.  

• In the “Other comment settings” section of the Discussions settings, check the box for “Users must be registered and logged in to comment”.

• Make sure you go the General Settings (instead of the Discussion Settings) and check the box for “Anyone can register”.

Add a comments blacklist

An easy and cheap (free) way to decrease your comment spam is to add words or phrases to either the “Comment Moderation” or the “Disallowed Comment Keys” section in the discussion settings of your dashboard. Simply type in words or phrases into the box – one word or phrase per line. You can also add IP addresses to this list.

Comment Moderation vs. Disallowed Comment Keys

Adding words to the Comment Moderation list means that if a word on this list shows up in a comment, then it has to be approved by a moderator first before it is publicly visible on the website. Moderators will still have to read it, and either approve or disapprove the comment. 

Adding a word to the Disallowed Comment Keys sends the comment directly to the trash. This is very useful for words or phrases that you know you don’t want published on your website. This could include curse words or words that are not relevant to your industry such as pharmaceutical terms. If your settings are set to send you an email for every moderation request, this can save you a lot of time.

Choose blacklisted words carefully

You should list common spam words in the discussion settings but be careful not to unintentionally block words that may be helpful. As an example, I have noticed a lot of spam comments that include pharmaceutical terms such as “Propecia”. As a digital marketer, I don’t see why any comment that includes the word “Propecia” would be beneficial to Emphasis.LA or anyone that would read anything on our website. I can safely add the word “Propecia” to the Disallowed Comment Keys and send these comments straight to the trash. 

Another common pharmaceutical term is “Cialis”. This word is a little more tricky. I don’t want to see any comments with “Cialis”, but if I add it to the Disallowed Comments, then any comment that has the word “specialist” will also go directly to the trash. In this case it may be a better idea to add the term “Cialis” to the Comment Moderation list instead. These comments will likely be spam but there is a chance that someone might be looking for a “Website Development Specialist”. As an option you can add extra words or modifiers such as “buy cialis” or “_cialis” to the Disallowed Comments.

Find an already available comments blacklist

You don’t have to do all of the work yourself because someone else has already done most of the work. My favorite is this WordPress comment blacklist by someone with the username “splorp”. Just copy and paste their blacklist into the Disallowed Comments. You should probably occasionally look into the trashed comments to make sure you are not over-filtering but for most websites it should be fine. 

If your business is in the pharmaceutical industry or any other industry that is used by spammers, then you will likely have to look for a different list or create one for yourself.

Install an anti-spam plugin

I don’t often use a plugin but that is definitely an option. A plugin such as Akismet can reduce the amount of spam comments you receive. It takes information it “learns” from all of the websites that use it to accurately detect and filter out spam comments. Akismet is free for personal use. Pricing starts at roughly $10 a month for commercial sites. 

Conclusion

Comments can be very beneficial to a WordPress website but the comments spam can make it an annoying experience. Before turning off comments, try the solutions mentioned above. We feel they have made a huge difference for our websites. If you don’t see a benefit or the spam is just too much, you can always turn off the comments. 

I was recently at a networking event where someone asked me, “what are the newest things in the web development industry?”. While these are not necessarily “new” developments, these are the things you need to be considering this year (2022) when building a website. 

Note: some of the links below may be affiliate links. If you visit one of these websites and make a purchase, we may receive an affiliate commission. Our fee does not affect the price you pay but it does help us to provide you with helpful content like this.

Core Web Vitals

Google is now using User Experience as a ranking factor. Ever been on a website that takes a long time to load? Or the split second before you click on a button, the page moves and you click on the wrong button? What about those annoying pop ups you have to keep closing before you can read any content? Google now dings websites for slow loading or layout shifts. A good user experience will benefit your ranking on Google and make your website visitors happier.

You can check your website performance here: https://web.dev/measure/

Accessibility

An underestimated number of people have disabilities. For 30 years now, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has required businesses to give people with disabilities equal access to products and services. This means that people with disabilities must be able to use your website or you could be putting yourself at risk of a lawsuit. 

A lot is made of the lawsuits but making websites accessible can also help with Search Engine Optimization. The same things that make websites easier for people with disabilities, can also make it easier for Google to crawl the website. Those sidewalk ramps on every corner are necessary for people with wheelchairs but they also make life easier for parents pushing a baby stroller or travelers with rolling luggage. 

There are some tools such as the WAVE Evaluation Chrome extension that can help you find some accessibility issues. Or the Lighthouse Chrome extension that checks your website for accessibility, core web vitals, and other areas. Testing your website for accessibility requires some manual testing that cannot be done with any current tools.

Privacy Laws

Government bodies are implementing privacy laws rapidly in the last few years. Just this year, Google Analytics essentially became illegal in Austria and Italy because data collected goes to non-EU locations. California has implemented the CCPA and other states have passed similar laws. If you do business in California or in any other state with privacy laws, you need to have a privacy policy.

We’re not lawyers and do not provide legal advice. If you can afford an attorney, that is your best choice for getting a privacy policy. As an alternative, you can use a service such as Termaggedon to create a privacy policy for you. 

Content for humans is king

Google is getting smarter everyday. Focusing on answering consumer questions is more important than ever. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) used to reward content that had a lot of keywords stuffed into the paragraphs. The more times you used a word, the more weight that search engines gave the page. Some written content on the web made little sense to a human reading it.

With artificial intelligence and new Google search engine updates, it is now more important than ever that your content be written so that other humans can understand it. Instead of trying to trick search engines into ranking your website in the search results, you should be trying to help people find what they are looking for.

Feeding the robots (search engines) used to be all about making sure you used keywords over and over. Now giving the robots what they want means giving humans using search engines the information that will satisfy their search query.

Conclusion

The modern web is becoming a safer, more inclusive source of information where you can find content quickly. Your website must be fast, easy to use, accessible, privacy focused, and relevant. If not, you will either find yourself in legal trouble or (maybe) even worse: not showing up in search results.

Make sure to test for common website problems. 

In WordPress, page builders are a type of plugin that add a visual editing process to the website with the ability to drag and drop items into place. You can picture putting together a website with a page-builder similar to building something with Legos. You can grab an image block for example and put it above a text block. If you want, you can easily change the order of the blocks and put the text on top of the image. 

The most popular page-builders such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, or Divi, offer extensive functionalities. You can build some WordPress websites with nothing more than a modern page builder if you really wanted to. Page builders are easy to use and can save you a lot of time in building a website without having to know how to code. 

Note: the links provided in this post may contain affiliate links. If you decide to make a purchase, we may receive an affiliate fee.

Page builders vs the default WordPress block editor

Let’s compare some of the features and benefits of using page builders versus using the default WordPress block editor.

WordPress page builders

For a lot of people and for many projects, page builders can make building a WordPress website faster. If you are starting a new business venture, launch speed is one of the most important factors. You can refine as you go along. A page builder can help you to create your online presence quickly.

An important difference between a modern page builder and the default block editor is that page builders are mostly visually identical on the backend (while editing) and the frontend. What the person editing a website sees is (most of the time) the same as a website visitor. If you have ever spent time editing cascading style sheets (CSS) on a website, you know how much time this can save.

The ease of use and extensive functionality come at a price, they add a lot of extra code to your website that can affect the amount of time it takes your website to load on a browser. 

So, should you use a page-builder on a WordPress website?

 If you meet some of the following criteria, then you may want to consider using a page-builder:

• You want to build a website quickly with a lot of functionality.
• You are using a good hosting company. The heavy weight of a site built using a page-builder, can adversely affect website performance on less expensive and/or shared hosting. Find out which hosting companies we recommend.
• You want to make a lot of customizations, but you do not want to, or know how to code.
• A capable person will be handling future updates and content integration.

Ease of use

When deciding on whether to use a page builder or not, you must consider who will be doing the updates and entering new content into the website. While building a website with a page builder is intuitive for a lot of people, some people will have a hard time understanding it. With all of the possible adjustments and options, it can become an option overload.  It may be difficult for a casual user to maintain the look and feel of the website.

I know of several agencies that primarily use page builders because of the speed of building, the all-in-one functionality, and the reliability. These agencies have very capable developers that could build websites any way they want but they put their trust in certain page builders.

Functionality

Robust page builders such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Divi, offer some great features that can help you accomplish your website goals without having to add a lot of other plugins.

One thing to consider is plugin compatibility. WordPress is open source software that uses plugins to add functionality. The plugins are built by 3rd party developers and they occasionally have compatibility issues with other plugins or WordPress itself. With the expansive nature of page builders, where it has control over so much code, compatibility can be a real issue.  I have seen it a few times where other plugins have compatibility issues with a new version of a page builder that comes out and the website goes down.

As a general rule, we must try to limit the amount of plugins we use. It is also highly recommended to test on a staging site before making changes on a production site. 

Price

While some WordPress page builders, such as Elementor and Beaver Builder, have free versions, to get the most out of page builders, you likely have to purchase a user license. You can purchase individual licenses or, if you plan to build multiple websites, you can buy a multi website license.

The Default WordPress Editor

Since 2018, the default WordPress Editor is a block based editor. Every piece of content forms its own block. There are paragraph blocks, heading blocks, image blocks, and many more. In a lot of ways, it works very similar to a page builder. It includes the ability to drag and drop blocks. The main disadvantage is that blocks in the editor may not look like they will in the frontend (what website visitors see). 

One reason we like using the default block editor is that it decreases the chance that you may have to do another complete website overhaul in the near future. Technologies may change and a new page builder may come out that can make your current page builder obsolete. With so many users, that is not likely, but it is possible. What happens if you want to work with a new developer? If the new developer has a strong preference for  a different page builder, you can increase your costs. 

By using the default editor, a new designer or developer may only have to change the theme or change some code but the content structure of the posts and pages should be good.

Ease of use

If you are building a simple website, using the block editor can be much faster than using a page builder. Choosing a theme and then sticking to the theme styles can produce fast websites. The problem starts when we want to do modifications and adjustments. The default blocks are lightweight and purposely limited in adjustments. 

Functionality

The block editor does not include the same extensive functionality that page builders provide. This has its own advantages and disadvantages. 

The default editor produces cleaner code that is more semantic and lightweight. This could theoretically make it easier for a search engine to crawl and understand your code. It could also make for a faster loading website which is good for user experience and search engine optimization. 

If you decide to use the default editor, then you will likely have to add other plugins to add some of the same functionality. Having smaller plugins that do specific tasks is usually better than having a huge plugin that includes every feature under the moon. If you have too many plugins then you have to start worrying about compatibility again. You may also have to spend time researching individual plugins to make sure they are from reputable developers that are going to maintain the code for that plugin. 

Does Emphasis.LA use WordPress page builders?

Although we do work with page-builders occasionally, we prefer to create websites without page-builders because:

• We prefer to spend a little bit more time to create much lighter websites that perform better. 
• The current WordPress editor (released late 2018) is a block editor that has some of the same functionality of page-builders but is much lighter. The default block editor is being worked on constantly and is getting better every day.
• We prefer to add plugins that perform specific tasks instead of using page-builder plugins that can do almost anything.
• We believe that using the default editor is a good way to future proof your website. While the popularity of page-builders likely means they will be around for a while, it is not a certainty. You are also more likely to be able to find a person that knows how to use the default editor than a specific page-builder.

Our favorite WordPress page builder

When we do decide to use a page builder, our go-to option is Elementor. With over 5 million websites using it and a 4.5 star rating, there are a lot of people that agree with us. Some of the features such as the slider and parallax scrolling are well done and better than you can get with most other plugins. I have been personally impressed with the constant upgrades and improvements made by Elementor.

Get Elementor

Conclusion

WordPress Page builders are a good option for a lot of people when it comes to building a website. The main advantages are the speed of building a website and the ease of use. The main disadvantage is the size of the plugins which could slow down a website. A good website hosting company and setting up caching, can negate the possible speed difference.

In the end it comes down to personal preference. Some people prefer Macs and some people prefer Windows. You should use the tools that will help you best to accomplish your goals now. You can try starting with the default WordPress editor and switch to a page builder easily if accomplishing your goals on the website are getting too difficult.

Often, at a meeting, I am asked by small business owners to review their website and give them my thoughts. These are a few common issues with websites, especially DIY websites. These are good tips on what to look for when doing a DIY website.

• Images missing alternative (alt) text
• Insufficient color contrast
• Improper heading structure
• Images are too large
• Missing SSL certificate

Images missing alternative (alt) text

Alt text is text used to describe an image on a website. It is used mostly by people with vision disabilities who use screen-readers to read the content of a website. When screen-readers get to an image, it will read the text out loud. Most people I talk to have no idea what alt text is. Most websites that I see that were created by business owners don’t include alt-text.

Missing alt-text can have the following negative effects:

• Your images may not be found by search engines. Images with alt-text can help search engines better understand your website and possibly improve your overall search engine optimization (SEO).
• You could be missing out on sales from an underestimated population.
• You could be making life harder for someone with a disability.

Want to know more about alt-text? We wrote an article on it: What is alt-text and why should you use it.

Insufficient color contrast

Your content will be much harder to read if you do not have sufficient color contrast. Color blindness affects about one in twelve men and about one in 200 women. These people may have a very difficult time with your website if you do not have enough contrast between components such as text and background. Beyond color-blindness, having the wrong colors can cause eye fatigue and cause people to stop reading your content.

Our favorite tool for testing color contrast is the WebAIM color contrast checker.

Improper heading structure

In Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML) – the computer language used on all websites –  headings are indicated with “h” tags (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, and h6). When your web browser displays these h tags, the headings are usually displayed in different sizes automatically based on heading level. H1s are displayed larger than h2s, h2s are larger than h3s, and so on. If you are using a Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress, then the theme’s stylesheet  probably makes the headings different sizes based on the heading level as well. For this reason, people often use different heading levels to control the size of the headings.

The proper way to control heading size is to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). If you are using a CMS, you are usually given some size adjustment options via a slider or a dropdown menu.

Headings help search engines to understand page and topic structures. There should only be one h1 per page – usually the page title. The h1 should be followed by an h2. You can have multiple h2 headings on a page and these should be subtopics of the h1. H3s should only come after h2s, h4s after h3s, and so on. 

Images are too large

Slow websites can affect a website visitor’s experience. If the website is too slow, people will leave your page and may not view the content you want them to see. One of the most common reasons for a slow website is having excessively large images on the page. While large, high-definition images may be stunning, they are rarely ever necessary for an effective website. 

We suggest using optimized images of the right size for where it is being used. If you were inserting an image with a maximum width of 1080px on the website, your image width should probably be between 1080px to 1200px. There are many tools to resize images such as Adobe Photoshop or Imageresizer.

Missing Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate

Installing an SSL certificate on your web server (your hosting provider) is a way to ensure communication between the web server and a web browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, etc.) is encrypted. These digital certificates are issued by a Certificate Authority (CA). It is a semi-complicated procedure that gives your website a secure designation. 

When you have a secure connection via an SSL certificate, you will usually see a padlock in the URL address bar. If you don’t have an SSL certificate, people visiting your website may see a warning from the browser stating that your website is not secure. If people visit your website and quickly leave because it is marked as insecure (commonly referred to as the bounce rate), search engines may decide not to show your website in the search results.

This is an example of what it looks like when you don’t have an SSL certificate:

This is an example of what it looks like when an SSL certificate is installed:

These days, there is really no reason why your website should not have an SSL certificate. Most web hosts provide a free SSL certificate for every website. If they don’t, that is a good indication that you should change your web hosting provider. Need help choosing good hosting? Read our article on WordPress hosting companies.

Conclusion

In our work we often review websites and find many of the same common issues. Optimizing your website can lead to better usability and better results in the search engines. 

Are we missing any common issues that we should include? Let us know in the comments below.

In our line of work, we often help non-profit organizations to develop and expand their online exposure. We love to help organizations that have a mission to make the world a better place.

These are a few resources that we have learned about that offer free services for nonprofits. Some restrictions may apply to these resources.

Note: some of the links on this page may be affiliate links. If you click on a link and make a purchase, we may receive a referral fee. This fee does not affect your price and it helps us to provide helpful content such as this.

Google for Nonprofits

If you are a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, Google can provide you with a free Workspace account, Google Ads, YouTube services, and Google Earth services. Google Workspace is a set of services and tools built by Google that include gmail (using your domain name) [link to choosing a domain name], Google Drive, Google Meet, Google, Calendar and other useful services. 

DreamHost website hosting

DreamHost is a website hosting company that we really like. They offer free shared hosting for 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. If you want to upgrade to a managed WordPress hosting plan, they offer 35% off for the life of the plan. 

Kinsta website hosting

One of, if not the best managed WordPress hosting companies, Kinsta also offers a 15% discount for nonprofit.

AmazonSmile

The biggest online retailer has a great program for nonprofits. When a nonprofit organization registers on AmazonSmile, they are provided with a link that they can share with their audience. When anyone uses that link and makes a qualifying purchase, a small percentage of that purchase price goes to the nonprofit. 

Canva for nonprofits

Canva makes it easy for nonprofits to create graphic media that can be used for flyers, banners, websites, and social media. They have great templates that you can start with or create your own. Having an easy way to create graphics can help you spread the word about your nonprofit faster. Canva gives nonprofits access to the “Pro” features of its platform for up to 10 users. 

Nonprofits that help other nonprofits

Some nonprofits specialize in finding volunteers and matching them with nonprofits in need. This is how we first started to build our portfolio. We hope to find more soon but this is a start.

Jericho Road Pasadena

Not specifically a digital resource but they help other Pasadena based nonprofits to grow. We’ve done a few website projects with them as volunteers. They truly make a difference for Pasadena nonprofits.

Conclusion

Nonprofit organizations help to make the world a better place and there are many companies that want to help. We hope these resources are useful for you.

Leave a comment below if you know of any resources we should be including in our list.

If you are building a website using WordPress, one of the most important decisions you make is choosing the right website hosting provider. The hosting you choose can affect your website speed, uptime, and security. Working with a good hosting provider can save you a lot of time and frustration in the setup process. Use that time to improve your website instead of spending time researching and communicating with support.

The following is a list of our favorite website hosting companies that we commonly use and recommend to others. We are not going to provide you with numbers regarding page speed, or uptime, or bandwidth, etc. While all of those are important, we believe that these hosting providers are adequate.

These are the main considerations when choosing a hosting provider:

• Performance/Up-time
• Price
• Customer Service

In addition we also consider the following:

• Do they have a good reputation?
• Do they support the community?
• Is it easy to use their services?
• Are there any other reasons I should use them?

Note: the links provided in this post are likely affiliate links. If you decide to make a purchase, we may receive an affiliate fee. The amount we receive does not affect the price you pay but it does help us to provide you with content like this.

What is Website Hosting?

I like to think of website hosting as “someone else’s computer” that is connected to the internet. The web hosting provider’s “server” is a more powerful (probably) computer with back-up hard drives, back-up generators, large cooling fans, and many other concepts that I do not fully understand. Unless you want to be a system administrator, you don’t have to. There are a lot of people out there who can do that a lot better than me.

You rent your space on the server, place your files on it, point your domain name to the server, and the hosting provider transmits it to the world. There are many different types of hosting available for whatever website or application you want to build and for your skill level. This article focuses on hosting for WordPress websites. 

Learn more about WordPress.

Types of Web Hosting for WordPress Websites

The two main types of website hosting for WordPress websites are shared hosting and managed WordPress hosting.

Shared Hosting

As the name suggests, in a shared hosting plan, you are sharing a server with several (maybe hundreds) of other users and websites. The main advantage to sharing a server with other users is the price. For less than the price of a latte at your favorite coffee shop each month (at least during the introductory period) you can purchase space on a server and broadcast your website across the globe.

There are many negatives to shared hosting including:

• Slower websites – with so many websites on a server, you may often have congestion which slows down your website. 
• Less secure – if one of the websites on the server gets hacked, you may be putting your website at risk of a back door entry. 
• Lower email deliverability (if you use their email hosting). You are likely using the same IP address as other email accounts on the same server. If one of them is sending out spam emails, your emails may soon be blocked by many users as well.

Managed WordPress Hosting

With Managed WordPress Hosting, each website has its own resources and is not sharing space with other users. WordPress is preinstalled on each website. The hosting company will handle things that shared hosting (usually) does not – such as enhanced security, back ups, and performance optimization. 

The dashboards are usually much simpler to use which, in my experience, saves me a lot of time. We believe that all established organizations using WordPress should be using managed WordPress Hosting.

The hosting Companies we use

These are hosting companies that we have experience with that we recommend to other users.

Our Current Favorite Hosting Company: Flywheel

Type: Managed WordPress Hosting

Our favorite hosting company and the one we have been using for most of our new clients since 2020. 

One of the best values in Managed WordPress Hosting. Similar plans are twice as much with other companies. We fell in love with the ease of use of their dashboard. Their customer support so far has been amazing. When we have had issues, the problems were resolved quickly. The websites we have hosted with Flywheel have received good scores using Google Lightspeed.

Flywheel has a separate product called Local WP that is used to create a “local” environment on your computer so that you can run a local version of a WordPress website on your computer (not accessible to anyone on the internet). Local is the easiest (my opinion) tool of its kind. If you use Local WP and Flywheel, you can “push” and “pull” the website from your computer to the production website in a matter of minutes with the click of a button. This has been a big time saver for us.

Flywheel recently merged with WP Engine so they are even more of a reputable company. Flywheel and WP Engine have been huge supporters of the WordPress community and have sponsored many events.

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Best Overall Hosting Company: Kinsta

Type: Managed WordPress Hosting

Kinsta is well known for providing excellent performing hosting services. They excel in speed tests and they have excellent customer service. 

A Google Search says that Kinsta’s headquarters are based in West Hollywood, California. A big plus for us to be able to work with local companies. According to their website, their workforce is remote first and they hire support people in all time zones. 

Kinsta has an amazing blog that showcases their mastery of the industry. I am signed up for their newsletter and am constantly reading their articles. Their video tutorials include some well known industry specialists that explain things in easy to understand ways.

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Best Shared Hosting: SiteGround

The current Emphasis.LA website is hosted on SiteGround. We feel that they are an excellent hosting company. The unlimited websites provided on our plan, allows us to experiment with other side projects.

They are one of the three hosting companies recommended by WordPress. We have used them and have had good success with them. They have one of the better performing shared hosting plans and their optimizer plugin works well to make the websites perform. Their custom dashboard is easier to use than most of the other shared hosting we have used. 

One thing to be aware of is that they offer an exceptional introductory rate but if you don’t pay attention to the renewal rate, you could be in for a shock. Still a value at the renewal rate – especially if you have several websites.

Other Hosting We Like

BlueHost

We like them for their affordability and for their support of the WordPress community. Also, one of the hosting companies recommended by WordPress. We’ve heard a lot of complaints on message boards but I believe a lot of that is unrealistic expectations for often less than $6 per month. I have found their website speeds to be decent for small sites and their support to be more than adequate most of the time. 

If you are an established organization or if you want the best customer experience, you should probably use a managed WordPress hosting company. If you are a new business trying to create an online presence now with very little budget, Bluehost is an excellent option.

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Dreamhost

Another host officially recommended by WordPress. I’ve mostly used their shared hosting service but they also offer Managed WordPress hosting. They offer great pricing and good service.

Since we work with a lot of nonprofits, we truly appreciate the difference they make by providing free shared website hosting for 501(c)(3) registered nonprofit organizations. While larger nonprofits can easily afford hosting plans, many boots-on-the-ground nonprofits can really use all the help they can get.

Dreamhost values your privacy and they have fought for it. They have shown that they are a company that can be trusted. https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/we-fight-for-the-users/

They are based in Brea, California. We love working with companies that are based in Southern California.

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Greengeeks

Environmental conscience website hosting. They put back 3 times the power they use into the grid through renewable energy. They support the WordPress community such as the WordCamp Santa Clarita 2019 event where I was a speaker. 

They operate out of Agoura HIlls, another fine neighborhood in Southern California that we love.

Conclusion

We have a strong preference for managed WordPress Hosting but understand the need for using shared hosting. Our list is not extensive and we’ll keep adding as we go along. For now I hope you like these recommendations.

We left off one of the biggest shared hosting companies from our list (you’ve seen their commercials). We feel that all hosting providers these days should at the very least provide free SSL certificates and we have been unhappy with their nickel-and-diming.