Marketing Automation – Ticketyboo https://ticketyboo.co.uk Sat, 15 Dec 2018 21:34:22 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 Web site Speed https://ticketyboo.co.uk/web-site-speed/ Tue, 30 Oct 2018 20:14:21 +0000 https://ticketyboo.co.uk/?p=1193 In this post, I talk about the importance of website speed, how quickly it delivers content to your visitor’s browser. There are some simple actions you should take in the first instance. I explain these below and also why speed does matter. There are two main considerations.

  • SEO
  • Visitor functionality

In my view, it is the second that is the most important.  Speed is now a factor for Google but it is a small element unless your site is really bad and very slow compared to your competitors.  The most important factor does your site “work” for a visitor.  If they click on a video does it start playing quickly, do the images and pages or posts articles load quickly.  Are they readable etc?

A CMS (Content Management System) like Word Press has more to do to display a page than one created in pure HTML.  There are database queries taking place etc.  Therefore a host that has servers optimised for CMS or even better for WordPress in particular, is likely to provide a  better and faster environment.

As this site and all of the Ticketyboo sites are developed in Word Press. I will concentrate on some of the speed factors and steps you should take to test and optimise a Word Press sites.

Image sizes

The first step you should take –  this applies to all websites on any server is to optimise the images.  Ensure that your images are optimised and compressed using a service Kraken.io.  At the bottom of this page, you will find more information and a video demo of the free web service from Kraken.  If the space on your web page is eg 600 X 450 pixels do not use an image that is 1200px wide.  Resize it so it is a little larger than the space it occupies then optimise the image using a service like Kraken.  It is often possible to build this into a Ticketyboo website so that the image is optimised automatically when uploaded.

Server speed.

If you are using WordPress choose a host that is focused on WordPress and offers PHP 7 (it is between 30 and 50% faster than PHP 5).   If you have more than a few images and videos you should use a CDN (Content Delivery Network).  All Ticketyboo sites will use PHP7 and are hosted on a server Network that specialises in Word Press.  All Ticketyboo website come with an SSL certificate and come already configured on a Content Delivery Network) CDN.  To start with we recommend Amazon’s CloudFlare S3 as it free for a year then is a Pay as you go service.

Content Delivery Network

A content delivery network (CDN) is a system of distributed servers (network) that deliver pages and other Web content to a user, based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage and the content delivery server.

Please read our FAQ for more information on what is included in a Ticketyboo web site.

]]> Mobile responsive web site https://ticketyboo.co.uk/mobile-responsive-web-site/ Sun, 30 Sep 2018 21:28:07 +0000 https://ticketyboo.co.uk/?p=1308 A mobile responsive website is now essential. All Ticketyboo sites work on mobile devices.  According to SimilarWeb’s State of Mobile Web US report, roughly 56 per cent of consumer traffic to the leading US websites is now from mobile devices.

  • Having a mobile responsive web site is no longer simply a useful extra it is essential. With traffic from mobile devices at 50% you can not afford to handicap yourself.
  • Visitors using Mobile devices spend less time on a site making it even more important that you get their attention and make that initial contact quickly.
  • Over 33% of your subscribers check their email on mobile devices.  Are your emails mobile responsive?  If not you are giving yourself an enormous handicap.
  • 79% of people surveyed use their smartphone for reading email — a higher percentage than those who used it for making calls.
  • Google says 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead.
  • Google is ranking sites on their responsiveness and the user experience using a mobile device. Opt in forms etc must comply.  You can read the official Google Webmaster announcement here and check if your pages are Mobile Responsive here
  • Local business? – According to Google “50% of consumers who conducted a local search on their smartphone visited a store within a day, and 34% who searched on computer/tablet did the same.”

mobile responsive web site

All Ticketyboo websites are mobile responsive. They look good on phones, tablets and desktops. The marketing sequence emails and other marketing email are designed to be responsive and display well on mobile devices. Opt-ins and forms are developed to ensure they meet Google’s new rules (see above) and are specific for desktops and mobile.   Any questions please contact me

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