Why do you need a SSL certificate?
From end of January 2017 Google will start labeling websites that do not have an SSL certificate as “not secure”. This " not secure"-message will be shown in the Google search results in Chrome. This will most likely influence your SEO rankings although, as usual, Google doesn't confirm nor denies this.
A visitor to your website will notice the website is not secure and might (will) therefore hesitate in using all functions on your website like contact formst, buy products, register, subscribe to your mailing lists or access client portals.
"Cookies" and your legal obligations
What Are Cookies?
Cookies are pieces of data, normally stored in text files, that websites place on visitors' computers to store a range of information, usually specific to that visitor - or the device they are using to view the site - like the browser or mobile phone.
They were created to overcome a limitation in web technology. Web pages are 'stateless' - which means that they have no memory, and cannot easily pass information between each other. So cookies provide a kind of memory for web pages.
Cookies allow you to login on one page, then move around to other pages and stay logged in. They allow you to set preferences for the display of a page, and for these to be remembered the next time you return to it. Cookies can also be used to watch the pages you visit between sites, which allows advertisers to build up a picture of your interests. Then when you land on a site that shows one of their adverts - they can tailor it to those interests. This is known as 'behavioural advertising'.
Do you need a "CNIL" registration number in France?
The answer to this question is yes as soon as you collect any data from clients or visitors to your website. Examples are a subscription to a newsletter where you ask you visitor to leave a name and email address.
What is the CNIL anyway?
CNIL stands for “La Commission Nationale de l’informatique et des Libertés”. The CNIL’s responsibility is to ensure that information technology is at the service of the citizens and does not infringe on human identity, human rights, privacy, or individual or public freedoms. It carries out its duties in accordance with the french law.
What are the "Mentions Légales" on a web site in France?
All professional web sites in France (whether or not you sell products or services online) need to have the so called ‘Mentions Légales’ on it.
The website Service-Public Pro is the official website of the French administration, where you can find all sorts of intereresting information; including the below list on the subject of the "Mentions Légales". But what information should be in them?
Google announces important changes
Google has announced that from April 21 mobile-friendliness of a website will become much more important in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
The most important vision of Google on any website is: is this website designed and developed with the visitor in mind? Google regards the users of their search engine as clients and they want to serve their clients as good as possible. Therefor they have a preference of showing websites in their SERP's that are user friendly.
Will there be any major changes in 2015?
There are different fields of interest with regards to this question. We can talk about design trends, or development trends, search trends or devices trends. All subjects have a relation with you as a business owner who depend heavily on his website for doing business.
In this article I will try to give you a small list with a few of the trends (or expectations) for 2015 that might be of interest to you and your business.
The life cycle of your website
If you view your website as a product, which in fact it is, than its life cycle consist of four stages: introduction, growth, maturity and decline. These are marketing concepts that describe the phases of any product.
Applied to the “product” website these stages could be described as follows:
Introduction
The website is being designed and developed and goes “live” online for you to market and attract potential clients.
Searching in Google: SEM, SEF, SERP, SEO, SEA, and SMM explained.
On the internet we use a lot of new terms and definitions. For you as a business owner not always easy to follow the developments and use of technical terms. In this blog I will try to explain a few terms related to search engines, like Google or Bing.
The most important goal of your website being on the internet is to have a many visitors as possible who convert to being clients or at least being a lead or contact. How can you achieve this goal? The short answer is: internet marketing. Internet marketing consist of a mix of many actions and a whole lot of work. One of the pillars of internet marketing is search engine marketing.
There is a difference between a website and property management software
Designing and developing a website is not the same as developing property management software.
The (design of the) website is driven by user friendliness. You design your website for your visitor to stay and click on as many pages as possible. To contact you to show him a property. To come back to your site to see if any new or price reduced properties are added.
Trends in webdesign: single page websites
One of the trends of this past year has been the development of single page websites. These are websites that seem to consist of only one long single page. All of the information of your company is on this single page through which you can scroll bottom to top (and back).
Most of the single page websites have a menu on top of the site which can be used to jump from topic to topic.
An introduction to webmail, Outlook, POP3, IMAP and Exchange.
The internet changes. The way we access the internet changes. The way we connect with each other changes. But we still use email as before. Or not?
Most of us still use email as before, but there is a change going on in this subject as well. Before we all used a web based email address which we accessed on a webserver. Then more of us started to use a POP3 email in Outlook. The more tech savy ones moved to IMAP in their local Outlook. Nowadays we advise our clients to move to Exchange. Need some explanation? Read on, I will try to explain the difference between POP, Outlook, IMAP and Exchange in a few short paragraphs.
Photo and video for use on your website
It doesn't really matter if you run an estate agent or a hospitality business, you will need good photos to give a good impression of what you have to offer.
A picture can say more than a thousand words, so don't try to marginalize this subject. More and more website visitors tend to look at the pictures only if they search for a house or a holiday destination. If they don't like what they see they will leave your site. You only have a few seconds to convince them to click through, otherwise they will leave your site in search of a better place to spend their money.
There are two question involved here: how to get good pictures (photo, video) and how to use them on your website?
Panda, Penguin or Hummingbird: does this ring a bell?
As most of you know, Google is the biggest search engine in the world. Especially here on mainland Europe most of the internet users are Google users.
Google is always trying to give you the best answer to your search questions. This means they want to show you a list of pages in your organic search results on which you find an answer to your question within the first few pages. Google does this by crawling all sites and see what is on it. The results shown are based upon very complicated algorithms. These algorithms are updated regularly to keep this list of search results interesting for you as a visitor.
Presentation to stand out from the crowd
There are so many estate agents out there. Doing the same thing you are doing. Selling the same houses you are selling. At least the visitors to your website think this way. Selling a house is not an easy thing. There is a huge supply at the moment, so it seems to be a buyers' market. How do you catch the interest of a buyer as soon as they enter your site. How can you make sure that your website stands out from the crowd?
We have seen many estate agents website, and we have noticed that all site look more or less the same.
SEO basics for estate agents (and others..)
Everybody needs to "do" SEO, and you have probably already thought about that. But since it is such complex stuff you have no idea where to start. The first question you should ask yourself: can you do it yourself?
Depending on the website and property management system you can or cannot improve your SEO. Important to know is if you can access your own website section to change or add texts or blogs to your site. If not, who can do that and what is necessary to arrange for it? What costs are involved if your webmaster needs to make all changes to your site because you can't do it yourself?
What to do if you have a question about your site?
As you probably know, we at Studio la Brame, are continuously looking to improve the quality level of the (online) services we deliver. In an ever changing environment like the internet this is a bare necessity that shouldn't be underestimated.
Throughout the coming months we will release a series of newsletters that evolve around different important website related topics. Via this blog we inform you on some need to know topics, best practices, guidelines and tips that we think you should keep top of mind.