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Hiring a website design and development company

Hire Grateful Web Services

Benefits to hiring a professional

Would you sell your home without the help of a realtor?  Can you even imagine having to pack, look for a new home, work, and then try to show your home and worry that you have all the paperwork in order?  The same is true for hiring a professional website company to handle your website related needs. How are you supposed to effectively run a business and in some cases start a business if you are trying to design and develop a website?  It is not a good use of a business owner’s time to try to set up a website that will serve as a very valuable tool for your business. Knowing how to delegate is an important skill for a business owner.

Many people think they can easily build their website through one of the many do-it-yourself options available. For a professional business that has plans for growth, this is a short-sighted solution. Many times, there is little room for changes in the template, and SEO or ADA is not taken in to account. Plus there is no one but you to lean on if anything goes awry. Remember, your website is often the first impression and might be the only impression a potential client has of your business. 

Value your time

The time spent trying to mess with putting together a website can be better spent growing your business.

While there are so many books, websites, and tools dedicated to building a website, it is important to know just how time-consuming the process of designing and implementing a website is. Many hours! If you’re running your own business, the time could have been used to actually work. A professional Web designer does this for a living and will not only build you a better product but also save you so much time and time is money when running a business!

Support

There is a lot of peace of mind knowing that if something goes wrong you can always call your website design company. You have a professional on the other end waiting to help you with whatever you need. Whether there is an issue that needs fixing or you need to add some new content, your web company is there to help. Grateful Web Services offers maintenance and we are always available for our clients if they need us. We take a lot of pride in building relationships with our clients and want to be here for you for the long haul. We are very proud to have quite a few long term clients.

Professional Impression

Perception is everything when it comes to reputation, and if your potential customers see a  link at the bottom of your websites like GoDaddy or Squarespace they may think you’re not truly professional business.  With the affordable price of domain names, hosting, and Web-design software, anyone can buy a website name and some space and put a site up claiming to be a real business. Investing in a  custom website for your business contributes to its legitimacy and professionalism.  

Custom Design

A professional Website company works with you to create a website that fits your needs. It will be designed with a unique branding solution that fits you and your business. There are many inexpensive templates available. These templates don’t stand out from countless websites already online. Many of these tools are so basic and have little flexibility for customization.  Often times they are not even built with Google’s requirements taken into consideration. 

 Responsive Web Design

With a high percentage of users using tablets and Smartphones, it is critical that your website is built to be compatible with the latest mobile technologies.

A high ranking on Google is critical to driving traffic to your website. If your website is not designed as responsive design, you will not be ranked on Google and will lose many visitors. Mobile search traffic is growing every month and if your website is not mobile-friendly, this is detrimental to your website.

SEO built in the Design

In order for Google to rank your website, they have certain requirements that need to be built into your design. A good website design and development company understands what Google requires and how to build your website accordingly. 

We can Help

Grateful Web Services can help you create a website that you will be proud of and that will help bring your business to the next level. We do our best to make the process as easy as possible for you. We are in touch with you throughout the process and will request information from you as needed. Once in development, we build the site in WordPress, create the database, and upload all of the content.

We are here to hold your hand throughout the entire life cycle and take care of your website for many years to come. 

SEO – Search Engine Optimization explained

SEO Explained

 

S – Search – E – Engine – O – Optimization

You know you need it but what does it really mean?  According to Wikipedia here is the full definition.  “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of growing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine.  SEO refers to the improvement of unpaid results (known as “natural” or “organic” results) and excludes direct traffic and the purchase of paid placement.”

Tips to improve your visibility on Google

Some important things that can be done to improve your search results in no particular order.

  • Clear navigation and UX – user experience factors
  • Updating the website frequently – this is one of the most important things that can be done
  • Responsive design – mobile-friendly
  • Use search engine friendly URLs
  • Setup Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools
  • SSL – Secure Socket Layer purchased through the host
  • Infusing relevant keywords in text copy
  • Good word count – Google wants there to be enough content to make your site worthy of ranking.  Suggested
    Home page content – 200 to 300 words of static content
    Inner pages – 300 to 500 words – this needs to be updated regularly
    Blog posts – Minimum of 500 words if possible. The more content, the better
  • Identify and remove duplicate content
  • Remove anything that slows down your site. Large files!
  • Include Backlinks – Link to other websites with relevant content
  • Encourage other trustworthy sites to link to you
  • Write content for humans first, search engines second
  • Write unique and relevant meta descriptions for every page
  • Utilize Social Media and link to your site
  • If you still have your blog or mobile site on a different URL, you need to have them all live on your website
  • If you still aren’t blogging, you need to be! Ask us about our blogging services

Design Elements

Design elements are an essential part of helping Google find your site. Good SEO that is built into your website helps search engines understand what a person would see and what value they would get if they visited your website. This way, search engines can reliably provide what search results a person would consider high-quality content when they enter a search request.

There are many things that can affect SEO and it is a process that must be maintained frequently within your website to receive the greatest results. Good website design will include specific elements that Google wants the designer to integrate. To obtain better ranking among your competitors, writing content that uses relevant keywords, tagging all images properly, and making monthly changes will all show Google that your website is ‘alive and breathing’.

Other essential considerations

If you want to be on the first page of Google results, the only one guarantee is buying into Google Ads (formally Google AdWords) https://ads.google.com/. Grateful Web Services can help you with the Google Ads process but additional fees will need to be paid directly to Google for this.

Additional important steps you should take to improve your ranking are to create a Google My Business page showing client reviews and being active on social media sites. Grateful Web Services can help with this too!

Important

The following statement is important! Because Google search ranking is organic and can change throughout the day, NO company can promise you a certain placement. If anyone promises you a certain ranking on Google, run! SEO is a many-pronged process and must be consistently maintained. Grateful Web Services can help navigate all of your SEO needs. We do our best to help facilitate the process, design accordingly, and making sure your content remains fresh and updated often. SEO is not a destination but a journey.

The history of Websites

An early website that we created
A website we created in the early 2000’s

1991 – The beginning

Websites have been around for close to 30 years. To some people, this may seem like a long time, but it hasn’t been that long considering the incredibly fast evolution and advances that have been made since then. The technologies have grown immensely and have improved beyond the early pioneers’ wildest dreams. Our dependence on websites has become immeasurable. Every time you go on the internet, it’s a website that you are accessing. 

On August 6, 1991, Berners-Lee published the world’s first website from a lab in the Swiss Alps. It was a text-only site with hypertext links in blue, no images. The site can still be visited today, almost three decades after its creation. The site, originally found at the clunky  URL http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html The website was updated frequently after launching; therefore, images of its earliest versions were never saved. Nevertheless, a later copy from 1992 is still preserved and welcoming visitors. The bare-bones website was created, to explain the World Wide Web to newcomers. “The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents,” the site reads, going on to explain how others can create their own webpages. If they only knew that this was the beginning of something beyond incredible and that would shape each and every one of our lives.

HTML

In the early 1990s, the first publishing language of the Web was called Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML. Anyone who wanted to publish a website for people to see had to learn this programming language.

The language used to share text-only pages via a simple browser – was limiting. Many early web sites were basic, using vertically structured, text-heavy pages with few graphics. People quickly adapted to vertically scrolling text and eye-catching blue underlined hypertext to navigate the virtual Webspace.

Tables

In the mid- to late-1990s, it wasn’t just about function anymore and developers were forced to learn to do both design and development. Along came the Graphical User Interface (GUI), which allowed the incorporation of images and graphical icons into websites.

On scene, came dedicated designers to help with the more creative side of the website.  Still many of us became well rounded playing both roles of designer and developer. When the Web started to gain popularity as a means of communicating information, designers saw an opportunity to use tables for arranging text and images.

Originally the table’s purpose was to create a structure for numbers, but designers used them to create site layout. The problem was these structures were very fragile and difficult to maintain. There were some benefits, such as the ability to align elements vertically. Tables also paved the way for the grids of the future. The image in this blog used tables for the layout as an example. We did this website a very long time ago for the Lincoln Arts and Culture Foundation. The Lincoln Arts website was used by thousands of people over the years. The website served as a huge resource for Feats of Clay which was an International Ceramics show and competition. It shows you just how long Grateful Web Services has been involved in the website world! 

JavaScript

JavaScript helped designers overcome the limitations of static HTML by allowing them to bring some motion to the web. This was the start of the “pop-up” window. The problem was that it had to load on top of the existing page, which then causes sites to load much slower. Many of the early functions of JavaScript have now been accomplished through CSS,although JavaScript is still used today.

Flash Animation

Flash was a game-changer at the time for website design. For the first time, designers could create any shape, add animation, and develop more engaging sites than ever before using one single tool. The page would compact all of the information into a single file to be loaded. The main issue was that not every web user had a Flash plugin installed and Flash sites took much longer to load! The age of Flash brought us to splash pages and animated intros. Its downfall came from the lack of being “search friendly” and its heavy consumption of processing power. Many of our websites back in the day were created using Flash. At the time, it was all the rage and really added “life” to a once fairly static design. 

CSS -Cascading Style Sheets

Shortly after the creation of Flash, CSS came on the scene. As more and more users were going online, speed was becoming a big issue. The thought behind CSS is simple. Separate content and presentation. The content of the site was in HTML and the style of the site would be coded in CSS. The early struggle for CSS was the result of poor browser support. Luckily it fought through the early years and is still in full use today. CSS may be the most important “language” a web developer needs to know these days.

Responsive Design

As mobile internet use increased, mobile design became necessary as a normal design layout looked broken on smaller screen sizes. In 2010 a web developer challenged the way mobile website design and how it was being approached. Instead of creating a separate mobile site, he proposed that the same content could be used, but in different layouts and designed depending on screen size. This was the birth of Responsive Design. It is now critical that every website has a responsive design. Mobile literally accounts for approximately half of the web traffic worldwide. In the fourth quarter of 2019, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 52.6 percent of global website traffic, consistently hovering around the 50 percent mark since the beginning of 2017. If your website is not mobile-friendly it not only prohibits your users from viewing your site properly but is quite honestly a poor reflection of your business. 

2020

A company’s website is very often the first opportunity they will have to connect with a potential customer. Complementary colors, an eye-catching logo, and pages that present the mission of the company are all important. Web design must also incorporate clear navigation, relevant content, and images that relate to the products or services. Website speed is an essential part of the overall design and cannot be ignored. These days a slow load is a fast exit. Each page on the website must incorporate SEO optimization on all images as well as meta descriptions and title tags. A great design may look nice, however, it will not help Google find you. It has become a real balance of aesthetics, usability, and search engine optimization.

If your website is not up to date then you should contact Grateful Web Services to discuss. We offer a $75 full site review and if it’s deemed that you need a new website, we will apply the $75 towards your new website! 

 

Grateful

 

Grateful
Grateful for our clients

Sending support and strength to our clients and friends during this difficult time.

We are grateful for all of our clients and so very grateful for those who are still doing business with us. Owning a small business is challenging at this time and some of our clients have had to put projects on hold with us and we completely understand that. For those who have been able to continue working with us, your support of Grateful Web Services has given an even deeper meaning to the word Grateful! Thank you! If you are able to, invest in your business, now couldn’t be a better time. 

Remember

We need to remember that this is temporary and although it feels all-encompassing and never-ending, it will end. As long as we stay healthy and are able to breathe, it will be okay! This is a hard statement to make because many people are not okay or have a friend or family member, who is not okay. Our hearts truly go out to you.  For the rest of us, It’s okay to have bad moments in your day. There is much sadness due to all of the sickness and deaths that we are hearing about. This is when we need to find our inner gratitude and to be truly grateful for health. Health is truly everything. It’s easy to get down and feel sadness and that is okay, just try to keep it as a ‘moment’ in your day and not your entire day.

As always, we are here for you for maintenance, a new and improved website or contracted project management help.

Stay Healthy!

Website Check-up

Computer check-list
Is your website up to date?

Now is the time to give your website a check-up and even do an update!

Grateful Web Services is here to support you during this difficult time. We are open for business and helping our clients update their websites, add new services online and take advantage of some downtime to work on new website projects with us. 

Your website is a window into your business! With limited public mobility, more people are becoming internet-dependent during this national emergency and people are online and for even longer periods of time than ever before.  Take a moment and check your own website or have us do it for you. This is a perfect time to get your website up-to-date. Remember,  the current Covid-19 crisis is not going to last forever and business will get back to a more normal pace. Although this is scary and unsettling, as long as we stay healthy, life will eventually resume back to normal for most of us. 

A few things to consider

  • How is your SEO
  • Where do you show up on Google search? 
  • Is your website mobile-friendly? 
  • Is your website user-friendly? 
  • Is your website easy to navigate? 
  • Is your content giving your users the information that they need? 
  • Is it optimized to load quickly? 
  • Are you blogging?  Keeping your audience engaged? 
  • Is your blog outdated? Now is the time to re-engage your users! 
  • Is your content outdated and are you showcasing all of your services? 
  • Can you move any of your services online? 
  • Is your site secure with an SSL
  • Do you have a security plugin installed? 
  • Is your design outdated? 
  • Do you have testimonials? If not, reach out to past clients and they might have time to send you one and support you. 
  • Are you linking to your social media and keeping it updated? 
  • Are all of your links working? 
  • Do you have an easy-to-use contact form? Have you been receiving emails? 
  • Are you responding to all inquiries? 
  • Do you have a sitemap
  • Do you have a privacy policy
  • Is your website ADA compliant
  • Is your text easy to read? Is your background or font color too light or too dark? Does it strain your eyes?
  • Are your images clean, clear and not pixelated? 
  • Do images load quickly? 
  • Do you have meta-tags and descriptions of your images? 
  • Have you updated your Google My Business Listing?
  • Do you need help updating your website? Please get in touch with us!

We are here to help! Whether you want to take this time to give your website a much-needed makeover, update certain sections or need a project manager

The internet is still open!

Stay healthy!

WordPress? Squarespace? Wix? What should you use?

Image of doors, one is yellow
Which to choose?

The answer is simple, WordPress!

So many options these days when developing a website! We will help you navigate the confusion!

The main difference is that WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS), whereas Squarespace and Wix or even GoDaddy Builder, for example, are drag-and-drop website builders. If you had to use one drag and drop builder, then Squarespace is definitely the better of the options but we don’t recommend anything other than a CMS and WordPress specifically. A CMS generally has more in-depth functions than a drag and drop website builder. You can scale and customize your WordPress site on a more technical level not to mention access to the many powerful plugins (tools) that are available.

Squarespace and Wix are easier for the complete novice on a budget, but a lot less flexible in the long run. Sure, WordPress has a steeper learning curve, which is why you hire a professional unless you are technologically savvy and have the time to learn it. When creating something as important as a website to represent your business, it isn’t the place that you want to cut corners. Sure you want to save money and may even attempt to do it yourself but it is short-sided. Maybe if you are just starting your business and are on such a thin budget, it’s all you can do for now. Eventually, you will need to switch to a CMS like WordPress if you plan on actually growing your business.

Blogging

If you are blogging (and you absolutely, should be if you expect Google to rank you in web searches) then WordPress is by far a superior tool for bloggers and one of the best around. It will let you use both visual and text editors so you can enjoy writing and you can still add custom HTML or your website service company like Gratefulwebservices.com can do it for you on one of our affordable Maintenance Plans. WordPress takes care of your articles, so it will automatically save your progress. Just in case something bad happens like the power goes out. It also keeps revisions, so if you decide that you want the old paragraph back at some point, you will be just one click away from having it on the page.

Unfortunately, Squarespace or Wix just isn’t as good for bloggers. There is no autosave feature, and the platform will not let you use revisions. While there are code blocks that you can use, the feature still won’t let you run your own HTML or CSS from the page. For some bloggers, this can be a deal-breaker. Extremely inflexible! Squarespace isn’t that good with media as well. While WordPress will let you reuse images that you uploaded in the past, Squarespace will force you to upload the same image once again if you decide to reuse it. If you tend to use photos on a regular basis (which you should), this can be a nightmare. Not to mention double work!

How about SEO?

Squarespace and Wix do set your template up with some basic SEO which can help boost your site so that it appears higher in search engine ranking. It is less well known for its solid range of SEO tools, which can help boost your site so that it appears higher in search engine ranking. You can have a beautiful site but if no one finds you, what is the point! It’s the old adage of being penny wise and pound foolish

Security and Speed

One of the most important functions of your website is its security and speed. Having a fast website will increase user engagement and search engine optimization. Wix and other DIY site-building websites usually host your website on a shared server with thousands of other users. This diminishes the speed of your own website as well as security, which will result in lost customers and bad user experience.

Professional Web Services Are Still Needed

People have mentioned over the years that these newer drag and drop programs will make it harder for web design companies such as Grateful Web Services to stay in business but honestly, it really hasn’t. When we started building websites over twenty years ago, there weren’t any of these tools and we had to build using code only but when technology shifted we got on board to give our clients the best product possible. The client can now either manage the content themselves much easier and through an admin control panel or have us do it under one of our maintenance plans. It is not unheard of that a potential client rejects a proposal that we prepare for them in favor of something that they can do themselves. However, many times they come back to us or if they don’t we can see that the website isn’t working for them as intended and in most cases, they end up not maintaining it. Basically ending up with a flat tire on the side of the road. Unmaintained and outdated.

When you build your website with platforms like Squarespace or Wix or any of the other drag and drop programs that promise ease of use, it comes with a price. It’s like you are trying to build a house all by yourself and it may end up looking decent but it’s going to have a lot of structural issues. It’s going to end up costing you more in the end than hiring a professional to get the job done.

The Cool Kids

There are lots of popular, high-profile companies that trust WordPress to power their sites such as, TED blog, PlayStation, Vogue, Sony Music, Walt Disney, Time, BBC America, and thousands more.

Many celebrities also have their sites built on WordPress too to name just a few Leonardo DiCaprio, Kobe Bryant, Katy Perry, Maria Sharapova, Snoop Dogg, John Grisham, The Rolling Stones, and Sylvester Stallone. WordPress claims to power over 35% of all websites on the internet and is growing. You can check out the WordPress Showcase for details and more examples.

When you visit the main page for Squarespace and scroll down, logos are displayed of the companies that use Squarespace. Most of them are small businesses that aren’t nearly as high-profile as those that are built on WordPress.

Here at Grateful Web Services, we now build all of our websites in WordPress and couldn’t be happier with the platform!

What the heck is a CMS?

Content Management CMS
Grateful Web Services designs all websites using a CMS

You may have heard the term “CMS” as it’s gotten quite popular in the last fifteen plus years. Maybe you have never heard of it, but either way, we will help you understand it a bit more clearly. CMS stands for Content Management System. Here is the link for the official Wikipedia definition. In the early days, a website was built using code but was not editable by the site owner or a non- technical person, only your web developer could make edits. Even for your developer, it was more complex and required all files to be stored on their local computer, and all files then had to be uploaded using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program. Back in the day, you had to know HTML (HyperText Markup Language), which is a programming language. Everything took longer and was way more complicated. Modern sites are usually built with a CMS so that it is easier to make changes for the average person or even for your web developer moving forward. Maybe you have a new phone number, a new employee, you want to add a picture to a photo gallery, it can all be done through the CMS, also known as the back-end of the site. It’s still wise to hold off on doing updates and more complicated changes on your own, but the simple things can be done once you learn the basics. We find that many people still rather have Grateful Web Services handle maintenance and that is totally okay since we do offer that service. It is still in the best interest to develop the site using a CMS since there are so many available tools and plugins that make it the best option when developing a new website. In short, the CMS allows users to create, edit and publish content from anywhere and at any time. Because content is added to the CMS server, the operational aspects of the CMS are not installed on the users’ personal computers so this allows for much easier editing.

A few advantages of using a CMS

  • Easy to edit through a browser-based admin panel
  • Tons of plugins to help build your site without pricey custom programming
  • SEO-friendly URLs
  • Tons of Integrated and online help
  • Group-based permissions
  • Content hierarchy with unlimited depth and size
  • Minimal server requirements
  • SEO tools
  • Revision features allow content to be updated and edited after the initial publication. Revision control also tracks any changes made to files

The most popular content management system is WordPress, used by more than 28% of all websites on the Internet, and by 59% of all websites using a known content management system., The choice for WordPress is followed by Wix and Squarespace, both of which are less robust. Here at Grateful Web Services, we use WordPress as it’s proven to be the CMS of choice!

Cracking the code

Blog - Cracking the code

We are not talking about cracking the actual website code on a website that is way too much to cover on a blog! Besides, most of you, really don’t care to know all of that technical programming anyway, which is why we are here! Navigating the confusing terminology can be somewhat intimidating though. There is a lot of terminologies that might not make sense to you but that’s okay. Below, we have some common words that are used often in the web industry to try and help clear the mystery.

Back-end

The back end of a website is the part hidden from the view of regular website visitors. The back end generally includes the information structure, applications, plugins, and where you edit the content on the site.

An incoming hyperlink from one web page to another website.
the more backlinks you have pointing back to your site, the more popular it will be.

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are the navigation elements that generally appear near the top of a web page and show you the pages and subpages for the page you’re on. For example, Home > Services > websites>

Browser

The browser refers to the program a website visitor is using to view the website. Examples include Safari, Firefox, and Google Chrome.

Cache

Cached files are those that are saved or copied (downloaded) by a web browser so that the next time that the user visits the site, the page loads faster.

Content Management System

Also known as a CMS, the Content Management System is a backend tool for managing a site’s content that separates the content from the design and functionality of the site. Using a CMS generally makes it easier to change the design or function of a site independent of the site’s content.

CSS

This is a set of instructions in a programming language used for describing the style. The style of the page layouts, colors, fonts, etc. This saves a lot of work. It can control the layout of multiple web pages all at once. CSS is an important technology of the Internet, alongside HTML and JavaScript. Wikipedia

DNS

This Stands for Domain Name Service. It’s the thing that converts IP addresses into domain names. DNS servers are provided with the IP address of your web server when you assign your domain name to those servers. When someone types your domain name into their web browser, those DNS servers translate the domain name to the IP address and point the browser to the correct web server.

Domain Name

The domain is the name by which a website is identified. The domain is associated with an IP address. Depending on the extension com, .net, .org, etc., a domain can be anywhere from 26 to 63 characters long.

Domain Registrar

The place where you purchase your domain name like GoDaddy

eCommerce

This is short for electronic commerce. It’s the buying and selling of goods online, through websites. Products sold through eCommerce can be physical products that require shipping, or digital products delivered electronically.

Error 404

An error message indicating the server cannot find what was requested by the user. For example, landing on a page that does not exist on a website.

Favicon

Favicons are tiny (generally 16×16 pixels, though some are 32×32 pixels), customizable icons displayed in the web address bar in most browsers next to the web address. They’re either 8-bit or 24-bit in color depth and are a small version of your logo

Front-End

The front end is the opposite of the back end. It’s all the components of a website that a visitor to the site can see (pages, images, content, etc.) Specifically, it’s the interface that visitors use to access the site’s content.

FTP: File Transfer Protocol

FTP is how files are moved across the internet. You can use FTP to connect to your web server and put your web files there. You can also access files via a browser.

HTML

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It’s an essential language for developers to use to specify content for a website or web page.

HTTPS

Similar to HTTP, HTTPS stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol over SSL (Secure Socket Layer) or, alternately, HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure. Like HTTP, it’s a set of rules for transferring hypertext requests between browsers and servers, but this time it’s done over a secure, encrypted connection. This is required these days and is handled as an extra but required charge through your hosting company.

Hyperlink

A hyperlink is a link from one web page to another, either on the same site or another. Generally, these are text or images and are highlighted in some way. Text is often underlined or put in a different color or font weight.

Javascript

JavaScript is a programming language that’s used for web development, web applications, game development, and lots more. This is used to implement dynamic features on web pages that cannot be done with only HTML and CSS

Landing Page

A landing page is a page where a visitor first enters a website. Oftentimes, a special landing page is created for a specific action from the new visitor. This can be used for a special advertising or marketing campaign.

Links

Active text or images that by clicking on you will move to a different page or place online. This is usually highlighted as an underlined or different color or font weight.

Menu

The list of buttons, like home, about us, contact, etc. that are used to navigate through your website.

Navigation

Navigation refers to the system that allows visitors to move around the website. Navigation is most often thought of in terms of menus, but links within pages, breadcrumbs, related links, pagination, and any other links that allow a visitor to move from one page to another, are included in navigation.

Payment Gateway

This is relevant to e-commerce. This is a 3rd party financial service provider that collects money generated from online sales from the customer’s credit card and deposits the money into your bank account. It is like the middleman between the sale and your bank.

Plug-in

A plug-in is a bit of a third-party code that extends the capabilities of a website. It’s most often used in conjunction with a CMS like WordPress for example. Plug-ins are a way to extend the functionality of a website without having to redo the coding of the site. Plugins can also refer to bits of third-party software installed within a computer program to increase its functionality. Using these plugins saves the site owner a lot of money since custom coding is very expensive. However because it’s not custom coding, there are limitations of what the plug-in was created to do.

Responsive

Responsive design is a way of building web pages that detect the visitor’s screen size and orientation and automatically change the layout accordingly. Whether you or on an iPhone, Android device, tablet, or computer, the website will look good and will be laid out in a readable format. Providing a consistent browsing experience across different platforms.  Responsive design is critical for Google to rank your website in its results. It is also critical for your users to get a smooth experience when reading your website

Search Engine

A system designed to help find information on the internet Like Google.

SEM

Search Engine Marketing – includes any type of marketing and advertising for the best search engine visibility. This includes SEO and paid methods such as Google Adwords.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization – The process of improving your search ranking on search engines.

SERP

A SERP, or Search Engine Results Page, is the page displayed by a search engine in response to a user’s query.

Shopping Cart

The online tool within your website where you can list products available for sale – a series of dynamic pages that allow users to browse, add items to their cart, then purchase. This is eCommerce

Spam

Junk email.  Unsolicited, uninvited emails to sell stuff to you that you probably don’t want.

SSL

This stands for Secure Socket Layer. This is a must-have these days on your domain hosting account.
When your website URL shows HTTPS, you know you are secured by an SSL.

SVG

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based vector image format for two-dimensional graphics with support for interactivity and animation

Traffic

The number of visitors to your website

URL

Stands for Uniform Resource Locator. A site’s URL is its address, the name that specifies where on the Internet it can the found. Like, gratefulwebservices.com

Website

Many times people call a website a web page but a website is All of the pages and is not a single document, like a web page.

Web Hosting

The fee you pay to rent space on high-speed servers so your website is available to the general public even when your computer is switched off. You can ask Grateful Web Services about hosting your site on our dedicated server.

Web Page

A web page is a single document with a website. Generally written in HTML/XHTML, meant to be viewed in a web browser. In many cases, web pages also include other coding and programming such as PHP or ASP. Websites are generally built from multiple interlinked web pages.

Web Server

A web server is a computer that has software installed and networking capabilities that allow it to host websites and pages and make them available to internet users located elsewhere.  The web server holds all of the web files on a website and makes them available for people on the internet to see them. It is necessary to have this to have your website on the internet.

Web Statistics

An application that reports the number of visitors to your website, where they are from, how they are locating you etc. Ask Grateful Web Services about Google Analytics. We can install and monitor your website traffic. It’s important to know what your site visitors are doing to better serve them.

Whew, you made it down the list! There is no quiz, so no worries! Please be sure to ask about anything unclear, when you talk to us. We are here to guide you through and not confuse you!

Rebranding

 

After twenty years, Cobalt Images has rebranded as Grateful Web Services!

While our name has changed, we will continue to provide you with our personalized and outstanding service, that we have always prided ourselves on.

When building websites for business’ became a “thing” in the late ’90s, I just knew that I had to be involved! I loved the internet, loved computers and technology! I was hooked, and have devoted the last twenty years of my career to this industry. Maybe that ages me, but I don’t care. Age and experience are a value and I wear that proudly.

In addition, I enhanced my knowledge as a project manager for the last ten years and have been overseeing website and eCommerce projects for other website and marketing firms as well. Having been involved in every aspect of the process, I am well versed in the lifecycle from every angle.

As a company, we know how to be a real partner to our clients and will be responsive and available every step of the way. We are ready to work within your timeline and budget.

Grateful Web Services is a boutique firm and this enables us to give our clients personalized service and faster turn-around times, and you just won’t find this kind of service at a larger agency! 

Laura Rider
Owner