Tag Archives: Website Maintenance

The Importance of Ecommerce for Retail Businesses

March 15, 2019

Ecommerce has grown dramatically in its importance and its ability to be the deciding factor between whether a business is a success or not. This was more clearer than ever from the findings in the 2019 PwC Irish Retail & Consumer Report which provides a vast array of interesting insights about consumers and the current state of the retail sector in 2019. One of the prevailing recurring themes of the report was the need for retail businesses in this day and age to not only have a website but an Ecommerce website where customers can purchase products online. Two key insights found in the report in relation to Ecommerce was that 20% of Irish consumers shop online weekly or more often via their mobile devices and also 30% of consumers purchased online weekly or more often in 2018, compared to 24% in 2017. There are many reasons why you should consider having an Ecommerce website for your business if you haven’t already. Here are 3 great reasons why you should have an Ecommerce website: Better Customer Experience By having an Ecommerce website it is extremely convenient and easy for customers to browse your online store and purchase a product whenever they wish. By having an online store you remove the need for the customer to make the journey to your bricks and mortar location and purchase their product of choice. By giving them the convenience to do this at home they will be more at eased and relaxed. A happy customer is a buying customer. Reach a Broader Global Market By bringing your retail business into the digital market you will open yourself up to a whole new market that can potentially have a global reach. When you are a bricks and mortar business your customers will be generally just those in the immediate area as it would be inconvenient for others from further afield to travel just to shop at your store. By restricting yourself to only the local populace you have not only greatly reduced your target market but also reduced your potential earnings. By having an Ecommerce website you remove this restriction and your market is virtually endless in its reach. Passive Earnings By having an online store you are always open for business 24/7! This is a great advantage over a traditional shop which is open for a certain amount of hours and usually only on certain days also. When your store is online and always open for business people can purchase off you any day at any time. By giving them this convenient option you have endless opportunities to earn money as you are no longer restricted by traditional business hours. While there is and will always still be a place for traditional physical retail businesses it cannot be denied that those choosing to shop online are increasing and will continue to do so into the future. By not having an Ecommerce website you’re not only restricting your potential earnings but you are ignoring an ever growing and important part of the retail market. If you would like more information or would like to inquire about getting an Ecommerce website created and developed please contact 2Cubed and get your business the traffic and success it deserves. You can call us on 01-9058114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie or else get in touch using the live chat on our website! Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles.

Wexford Social Media & Digital Marketing Excellence Award 2019

Category: News Website Design

March 11, 2019

The Wexford Business Awards which are now in their eleventh year, are county wide awards which recognise the entrepreneurialism, innovation, diversity and talent of businesses across all sectors in the county. The Wexford Business Awards honour Wexford’s industry leaders through the acknowledgement of their innovative business processes, product development, enterprise, sustainability and overall business success. This year 2Cubed are delighted to be the official sponsor for the Wexford Social Media & Digital Marketing Excellence Award. The purpose of the Wexford Social Media & Digital Marketing Excellence Award is to recognize and honour Wexford based businesses who have achieved success in their sales and marketing by successfully utilizing the very best of the latest business thinking, creativity and technology to put themselves apart from all competition and to be number one in the frontier of social media engagement. An independent panel of Judges will come together to discuss and decide who will be the lucky recipient of the 2019 Overall Wexford Business of the Year Award. They will choose the recipient of the 2019 Overall Wexford Business of the Year Award from the pool of winners of each existing category. The winners and runners-up in each of the award categories and the overall Wexford Business of the Year Award 2019 will be announced at the official County Wexford Business Awards Gala Ceremony, on Friday, 24th May 2019 in Clayton Whites Hotel, Abbey Street, Wexford. 2Cubed wish the best of luck to all involved in the 2019 Wexford Business Awards. For any and all website support and queries please contact 2Cubed. You can also call us on 01-9058114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie or else get in touch using the live chat on our website! Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles.

The Importance of Good Content for SEO Value

Website Content & SEO Value - 2Cubed Web Design

Category: Tips and Tricks

February 25, 2019

Content and SEO are two important elements of a website that when both done well can elevate a website to new levels of success. However when neither are done well or even just one done well then the website will without a doubt suffer. The reason for this and the reason that content and SEO accommodate each other so well is because strong content that is seen by google to have SEO value will rank more highly than others who are deemed not to be of such value so basically when your content has value to search engines the SEO work that you will have done on this page already will cause your page to rank highly on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). So what is SEO value exactly you may find yourself asking? To explain what SEO value is one should first be clear on how Google as a search engine works. Google uses algorithms when people input a search to generate results which based on Google’s algorithms are what they believe to be the best and most relevant to the term/search query inputted by the user. The results that Google will display to the user are generated from content that is available throughout the web and content which is then ranked in order of its usefulness to the user’s search. So to ensure that your content is shown here in the relevant results you need to ensure it has SEO value and to ensure that it does have SEO value your content simply put needs to be beneficial to searchers, it needs to provide answers or at least information that will aid the user. To ensure that your content provides the right beneficial information and that it has SEO value be sure to ask yourself these questions when creating your content:

Does my content provide useful information?
Is my content easy and engaging to read and interact with?
Does my content have a professional and credible tone?
Is my content more beneficial than competitor’s content?

If you can honestly answer yes to these questions then your content has the correct elements in place that are required to achieve the true potential of the SEO value of your content. If your answer to these questions is no then it’s time to go back to the drawing board and rewrite your content to achieve some true SEO value. Please contact 2Cubed and get your business the traffic and success it deserves. You can call us on 01-9058114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie or else get in touch using the live chat on our website! Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles.

Web Designers Wexford

Category: Tips and Tricks Website Design Wexford

February 21, 2019

Website Design is one of the most important components of a website alongside functionality. The design and look of your website can be the deciding factor on whether your website is a success or not. This is of course because the design of your website provides the first impression to users. If the impression is good users may proceed and navigate further throughout your website whereas if the impression is bad they may bounce straightaway from your website which will be a potential conversion lost forever.

It’s no secret that websites which deliver a great user experience tend to always have a far superior conversion rate than those who don’t. While creating a brilliant website design can seem costly you need to view it as an investment in the future of the success of your website and that by not investing in a great web design now the cost may be far greater than anything monetary. 2Cubed Web Design Wexford & Dublin design and develop websites across all industries and sectors, including eCommerce websites, multilingual websites, as well as projects which include custom functionality and specific database and software integration. 2Cubed Web Design Wexford & Dublin specialises in Website Development, Web Design, App Development, eCommerce Website Design, Website Marketing and Content Management (CMS). We can work with a variety of Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress and Magento, and can give your existing website a re-design making it responsive and moving it into the 21st century. Our creative web designers are ready to design, code & market your project. We provide websites nationally designed by our highly skilled web design team. To view our full portfolio of work please click here. To get your dream website designed today please feel free to contact us on 01 905 8114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles.

Website Maintenance Ireland

Category: Projects

January 18, 2019

Website Maintenance Ireland

Security

Hosting

Updates

Support

Website Maintenance

2Cubed provides website maintenance and website management for 100s of companies across Ireland, from large businesses in Dublin to smaller, regional companies in rural areas. Ensuring that you have an effective website maintenance plan in place is vital if your website is to be safe and successful. Without a website maintenance plan in place you will place your website at risk to malicious threats such as being hacked.

As part of our website maintenance plans 2Cubed will schedule changes and security updates to your website to ensure that it is protected and performing efficiently. Whatever the size or scale of your company, we can manage and maintain your website, keeping it updated and secure, leaving you to get on with the day-to-day running of your business.

To make things easier for people to outsource their website management to us, we launched our new sister site Website Maintenance which allows new customers to come on board and select the website maintenance package that is suitable for their needs.
2Cubed can help fix your website after it has been hacked, update and secure it with latest patches, install security and SSL certificates, provide web hosting, and set up or migrate email.

Our Services Include:

Website Hosting

Website Monitoring (Pingdom)

Security Monitoring

Fixing Website Hacks

Website Malware Resolution

Imporving Website Speed

Plugin Updates

CMS Updates

Dedicated Suppot Channel Between 9am – 10.30am every morning

(Support@2cubed.ie)

Why website maintenance is so important!

Category: Tips and Tricks

January 16, 2019

When most people get a website designed their main focus is the visual look and the physical content of the website. Most people will spend the majority of the development process focusing on these two things. Once they are happy with both and the website goes live many people think the job is done. This assumption would be wrong as when a website goes live it is of vital importance that they have a long-term website maintenance plan in place. A big part of any website maintenance plan is the regular enforcing and checking of security updates on your website. These updates ensure that all plugins and functions continue to run efficiently and are updated when required, these security updates also help to increase the safety of the website as it reduces malicious threats such as being hacked. While avoiding being hacked is the most obvious reason for websites to keep on top of their website maintenance and security updates there are other risks that can occur when website maintenance is neglected or treated as an afterthought. Three pitfalls that you can encounter if you fail to or simply take too long to do your security updates are as follows: Decreasing of Website Speed One of the main reasons applying updates consistently to websites is such a good thing is because each update brings with it improvements which true to their name “update” the quality and performance of the website in key factors such as speed & performance. By ignoring updates and holding on to older versions of plugins you will find your website’s speed is slower than your competitors which in turn will hurt your SEO as website speed is a ranking factor. Broken Website As mentioned above website updates not only improve key factors such as website speed and performance but also can provide additional new features so to not update consistently when possible would be a very silly thing to do. If you fail to make updates, plugins and functions can become so out of date that they are no longer supported which can cause your website to be broken and will cause a terrible user experience for your users. Rising Time & Monetary Costs When you don’t make updates and problems occur, not only will it cost you time to fix but it can also cause you a considerable amount of money. This is because it can cause a developer to have to spend much more time applying the update than originally would have been required as they now have to fix the broken issues before first updating the website. This will cost you time and money. To conclude having a long term website maintenance plan in place is something that every website should have and it should always be a priority. If you don’t you risk your site being hacked amongst a whole other plethora of pitfalls that can occur. To inquire about website maintenance and website maintenance plans please contact 2Cubed today! You can also contact us on 01 905 8114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles.

2Cubed Special Update

Category: News

October 5, 2018

In this special update from 2Cubed we will be sharing some important news and information with you. In this update we will touch on 3 things in particular that 2Cubed will be placing a special focus on in the coming weeks and these are as follows:

Upgrading all Websites
Updating sites who are compatible to PHP 7.0
Applying Purchased SSL Certs

2Cubed are committed to always ensuring their client’s success and security. To stay true to this commitment 2Cubed will be working on all of their websites and upgrading them to not only further enhance their security but also their overall efficiency and performance. If you notice any issues during this period please let us know and we will check if it’s related to our website maintenance and improvement works. For all sites who are compatible with the newest PHP 7.0 major release we will be updating them to run on this. Up until recently PHP 5.6 was the most modern but with the release of PHP 7.0 this is no longer the case. PHP 7 has many major benefits for websites who have it such as it’s twice the speed of the once most recent version of PHP 5.6 and it was also created with the goal of freeing up space which would lead to improvement on websites. This freeing up of space was done by getting rid of many unneeded functionalities on old and unsupported Server APIs and extensions. If you read our recent newsletter you will know already about the dire importance of having an SSL Cert. In it we mentioned that from August 2018 Google has flagged websites which have not already gotten an SSL Certificate. This was part of the plan first announced at the start of 2018 by Google in its Speed Update which rolled out in July, that it will mark all sites that have not migrated to HTTPS as “not secure.” This change has been brought in by google whose main goal is to ensure their users can safely and securely browse and purchase on the internet. As nowadays people turn to the internet for virtually everything ensuring that users can trust it to be safe is of paramount importance. Online security like having an SSL Certificate is no longer just a good option for a website to have, it’s a necessity. An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral. If you don’t have the SSL certificate, a secure connection cannot be established, that means, your company information will not be digitally connected to a cryptographic key. The purchase and application of an SSL cert is a simple but vitally important process that cannot be underestimated as it can be pivotal to the success of your website. To inquire about getting an SSL Certificate for your website to stop it being marked as non-secure please contact 2Cubed today. If you have any questions or queries about any topic we have mentioned in this update or any other general query please do not hesitate to get in touch with 2Cubed! Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles.

Website Performance

Category: Tips and Tricks

October 2, 2018

When it comes to creating websites everyone already knows how important it is for it to have a great design and presentation and that it actually functions correctly on a basic level. One thing that can be overlooked though is Website Performance such as how it performs in the backend. Having a correctly optimised website that performs efficiently has a whole host of benefits, not only for you but also for your visitors to the site. Efficient Website Performance will result in faster load times and reduced hosting costs which in turn can lead to an increase in google search rankings on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Virtually all websites contain images and graphics of many sorts and sizes and they can do a great job of helping to communicate and shape the message your website is trying to present to your visitors. However, it might not be a common known thing but images can usually be one of the leading causes of sites having long load times. Therefore it is vital to make sure your images are optimised correctly before you upload them, if you don’t it can cause your website to have overly long load times which can end up affecting your search engine rankings. Also if you are trying to load from a slow server this may also cause issues. Website performance optimization is always something that should be top priority, especially when there is so much online competition. It’s also very important when optimizing a website that you don’t forget to optimize for mobile and slower devices as well. Choosing the right web host plan is a smart business move to boost website performance. Having a fast web host is equally as important as any website performance optimization you can make, as it truly is the backbone of your site. It’s true that a cheap host plan may offer you savings at the beginning, but you will most likely end up paying more in the long run in order to serve your website needs as it grows. It’s a smart move to make sure to choose a trusted web host with a right variety of hosting plans to handle all your website resources and requirements. 2Cubed’s sister site Website Maintenance has some great offers available for excellent hosting and much more packages that can help your site to be a success in every area. As you can see these are just a number of steps you can take today to optimise your website in order to improve things like your page load times, position in search engine rankings and your sites overall user experience. To find out more and develop a plan to make your website a success, contact us today! Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles.