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We recently were asked to comment on web design trends for 2020. Top of our list: web accessibility. Why? Because for businesses in Ontario with 50 or more employees, an accessible website won’t be an option starting next year. Ignoring accessibility will cost companies money. Why?  Aside from the potential legal fines, businesses that ignore accessibility are cutting out 15% (at least) of their potential market.  I haven’t found a business owner yet who is happy to leave that kind of money on the table. What are the other trends? The folks at Digital Ducats Inc. summarized these web design …

The AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilites Act) has been around since 2005. The Act set out several deadlines requiring organizations to make their websites accessible. This year, a major deadline is looming. What’s the deadline? January 1, 2021 Who does it impact? All organizations in the province of Ontario with 50 or more employees What’s the requirement? All websites and web content must be accessible and meet WCAG 2.0 AA. Where do I start? If you haven’t refreshed your website in a few years, you may want to consider starting with a new infrastructure instead of trying to patch …

There is a difference between a web designer buying and customizing a theme and a web developer who is able to code a custom website. We build custom themes from scratch for our clients – always have and always will. Even before we started building WordPress websites, we built custom templates for our client sites. Why? Yes, it’s our craft. More importantly, the site does exactly what you, the client, require. Plus, it results in leaner code that loads faster, making search engines and cell phone users viewing your site happier. Who doesn’t want happier prospective visitors? So what’s the …

Don’t be fooled by domain renewal scams which you may receive by postal letter as a “Domain Name Expiration Notice”or by email. By mail they come from iDNS Canada, which has also been known as Domain Registry of Canada (DROC). These notices look very legitimate and even provide a return envelope and you can actually get to a website. They prey on domain owners who are conscientious about keeping their domains renewed, but because renewal is annual, the domain owner may not realize / recognize that this is not the Registrar that they registered their domain with. This is referred …

What’s the point of creating valuable content for your business? It’s a simple question, but tough to answer because there are so many reasons: To generate leads, to win more business, to engage people, to raise awareness of your brand, to help your customers.  All of these are true, but there’s a step before all those goals which is far easier to focus on, and measure – and if you keep it in mind, will make content creation feel more manageable too. Better content, better conversations The point of content is to start good conversations. That’s it, in a nutshell. Business …

Over the years we’ve had many clients asking us if they should continue buying Yellow Pages advertising. My answer is the same. Look at your websites visitor data and see how many visitors are coming directly from yellowpages.ca. Use the numbers to determine if it’s good value or not. This year I received a different call, not from a client, but a prospect out in the west coast. He asked if he left Yellow Pages could we ensure that his website still be found in Google for his business name? “Of course”, I said, “you don’t need them for your …

Google Warned Us and they are on a Roll: Back in 2016 Google warned us and we warned you, that your website needed to be mobile friendly or your rankings would suffer.  Google warned us that they would be switching from a desktop focussed index to a mobile-first index and it’s happening now. Below is an excerpt of the confirmation that Google is sending to our Webmaster tools for all accounts. Mobile-first indexing enabled for https://cmswebsolutions.com This means that you may see more traffic in your logs from Googlebot Smartphone. You may also see that snippets in Google Search results are now generated from the …

Important Reminder from Google: Review your Data Retention Settings before they take affect on May 25th, 2018! Effective May 25th, 2018 Google is changing the data retention controls of your Google Analytics. If Google Analytics is set up on your own account (as is the case with most of our clients) then you would have or should have already received reminders about this. By default, Google sets the User and Event data to expire in 26 months. This can be changed to: 14 months 26 months 38 months 50 months Do not automatically expire Should you require other settings you …

What is an accessible website? An accessible website is a site that can be used by all of your visitors, including those with disabilities, no matter what tools they use to navigate the web.  Some of your visitors may have reduced vision and use a screen reader to listen to websites. Other visitors may have limited motor skills and use a keyboard instead of a mouse. Accessible websites allow all users to access the information they need with the least difficulty possible. How do I make a website accessible? Making websites accessible is not difficult if you start some basics: …

Question: how often do you experience Microsoft, Apple or other apps sending you updates? They do it because of security patches, upgrades and improvements. So, who’s doing that for your company website?  In the last few years web designers have gravitated towards purchasing themes. These are pre-made templates often loaded with small scripts of codes called plug-ins. Buying and customizing themed websites is usually cheaper than a custom built website. Cost-sensitive businesses like the lower upfront cost. But what they don’t realize is that they come with technical debt, meaning they kick some costs to the future.     Many unsuspecting business owners don’t realize their websites need maintenance. They think it’s like …