You’ve done all of the heavy lifting, and you’re nearly ready to launch (or relaunch) your website. But before you pass “Go,” it’s important to make sure you haven’t overlooked anything that will embarrass your company, damage your SEO or cost you money to fix.

You can often forget a number of things in your eagerness to make your site live, so it’s useful to have a checklist as you make your final touches. Some may sound simple, but the devil’s in the details, especially in today’s ultra-connected society.

Here are 12 things you should double-check before showing your website to the world:

1. Spelling and grammatical errors. Read everything and then read it again. That includes headlines, sidebars and bullets. Even better, have someone read it who is not involved in the process. There’s always something you’ll pick up on and have to change. See if you can reduce the amount of text by removing any ambiguities. Break up large blocks of text into shorter paragraphs. Make sure your headlines are clear. Your CMS likely has a built-in spell-check feature, so make sure to use it to catch anything you may have overlooked.
2. Links. Do they all work? Do they all go to the correct place? Don’t assume anyone else has checked them – do it yourself. You may often forget to add “http://” to links to other websites. Make sure your logo links to the home page, a step commonly overlooked. Also, think about how your links work. Is it obvious to new users that they are links? They should stand out from the other text on the page. When possible, links should open in a new window or tab so that the initial page stays open.
3. Titles and metadata. The title of your page is the most important element for SEO, and it lets users know what they are reading. Make sure it changes on every page and relates to that page’s content. Research target keyword phrases, then optimize your metadata (page title tag, meta description, and meta keywords) as well as your copy with at least one keyword per page. Change the description to make it relate to that page’s content, because this is often what Google displays in its search result description.
4. Cross-browser checks. There’s nothing worse than when you think your design looks great, you check it in Chrome, and see that everything is broken. It’s important that your website works across browsers. The most popular browsers to check are Chrome, Internet Explorer 8, 9, 10 and 11, Firefox, Safari and Opera. Take the time before launch to do final cross-browser testing to ensure all content and functionality is working and appearing how you intended.
5. Favicon. A favicon brands the tab or window in which your website is open in the user’s browser. It is also saved with the bookmark so that users can easily identify pages from your site. Make sure it’s showing as intended and the image is not broken.
6. Contact forms. Forms are a great feature for lead generation, but they’re only useful if they work and actually notify you of a new submission. Make sure that they are capturing all of the information you need to contact an individual without making them too long or invasive, as this will turn potential customers off. Be sure to submit all forms to ensure they work. Leave fields blank and make sure your error message is clean and informative.
7. Social media icons. You want people to share your great content, so ensure you not only have social media icons on each page and blog article, but also that they click through to the desired site. These should be tested frequently after launch as well.
8. Image file types and sizes. Check all page images to make sure they are JPG, PNG or GIF image files. Be sure the images are placed in the page at 72 dpi and not their original resolution. If images are only being used at 500 pixels wide on the page, don’t upload it at 2,200 pixels wide and downsize it in the image editor, as this may have an impact on page load speed. Investigate using new image formats such as WebP (put forth by Google) and JPEG XR (backed by Microsoft) that can help reduce image size if you plan multiple pictures and graphics on your site.
9. Page load speed. Uploading photos that are too large causes a web page to load slowly, which can impact whether or not a visitor stays on the page. It can also impact SEO, since the Google algorithm includes site speed as a factor in determining page rank. Use a free site speed tool to test how quickly your page loads; the industry standard is three seconds.
10. Sitemap. Towards the end of the site launch process, it’s important to have your sitemap updated and ready to go. Adding a sitemap.xml file to your root directory allows the major search engines to easily index your site by pointing crawlers to all the pages. Many CMS platforms will create a sitemap automatically as the site is created. Just be sure to make it live when the time is right.
11. Copyright. Most CMS platforms will automatically update your copyright date stamp, but you may need to manually update it. Double-check the date before launch.
12. Analytics tracking. Once the site is ready to launch, analytics tracking code needs to be added to every page to track post-launch traffic and usage of the new site. Document current keyword rankings and other performance metrics to compare pre- and post-launch performance.

While this list is comprehensive, there will be additional areas you’ll want to continue to test as visitors come through. A website should be a dynamic part of your business and should always reflect the latest content your company has to offer. Frequent reviews with impartial eyes will make your site the best it can be.

What tips have you learned from launching a new website? Share them in the content section below.

A visitor to your site is about to make a purchase decision. But he also has tabs open for a few of your competitors, and can see that pricing, shipping and turnaround time are all pretty equal. None of you are local to him, so he turns to the section of your website that tells him a little bit more about your company and its philosophies. What will you say and show on the “About Us” page to sway the decision in your favor?

An “About Us” page is intended to give visitors a glimpse into the identity of either a person (an individual contractor, for example) or a business. If you know who you are and what your goal for your site is, the “About Us” page – sometimes dubbed the “Company” page at larger businesses – should come naturally. But that’s not always the case. If your forte is photography or software, for example, the words might not flow as easily as if your business was marketing services or copy writing. That’s OK. But you do need to know how to maximize your strengths to make the “About Us” page as compelling as possible.

It’s important to note that the “About Us” page is not just for prospective customers; it’s also a great tool for recruiting new employees, attracting potential investors, and providing information to media who cover your industry. It’s your best opportunity to open a conversation with anyone visiting your website.

Visitors to your “About Us” section are looking for reassurance that you are the right choice. They want answers to the questions:

• Who are these guys?
• Can I trust them?
• Do they know their stuff?
• How can I contact them?

Your website needs to answer these questions in a concise, believable way. A brief story of how the company was founded, along with explanation of its main offerings and objectives, is key. Keeping all this in mind, let’s go over five tips for making your “About Us” page as informative as possible:

1. Be compelling: Every company has a story about how, when, where and why they got started. What’s compelling about yours? Did you see an inherent need in the market for the solutions your company offers? Were you just sick and tired of Corporate America and wanted to strike out on your own? Whatever the answer, that story is uniquely yours. Tell it in a compelling way and your page will shine.
2. Be fun: Can you connect your “About Us” page to something different or unusual? Smaller businesses – particularly in the entertainment industry – can have a lot of fun with this, using graphics, pictures or even caricatures to tell their story.
3. Be personal: Don’t be afraid to use the “About Us” page to “talk” to your audience. In a world of electronic transactions, anything personal connection will pay dividends. Short staff bios and photos of the team in action (instead of boring headshots) can bring a lot of your company’s personality to the page.
4. Be proud: The “About Us” page is a perfect opportunity to show off a little, as long as you’re not too boastful. If your company or its employees have won industry awards, or your company was quoted in a prestigious publication, the “About Us” page is the perfect place to celebrate that achievement. Don’t make it a direct sales pitch; let visitors come to the conclusion on their own that you’re the company to do business with.
5. Use a timeline: Not sure how to structure the page without making it too text-heavy? Consider using a timeline to showcase your company’s achievements. Potential customers should be easily able to tell how long you’ve been around and review the company’s milestones. By structuring data into a visual format, website visitors can quickly understand the high points of your company’s history, even if it’s a short one.

Don’t forget to include links to your social media presences for sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google+. Also include a link to your company blog. By encouraging your visitors to interact with you, your company is more likely to be the one that walks away with the sale.

What unique angle did you take with your “About Us” page?

Businesses of all sizes are moving to the cloud in droves, looking for flexible, cost-effective solutions that enable their operations to run more efficiently. This move by businesses to migrate their IT services, applications and infrastructure to a cloud-based architecture will cause market revenue to reach an estimated $174.2 billion this year, up 20 percent from $145.2 billion in 2013, according to new research from IHS Research. By 2017, enterprise spending on the cloud will amount to a projected $235.1 billion, IHS predicts.

But just as there are best practices to adopt when embracing cloud computing, there are also worst practices to avoid. Let’s take a look at some of the cloud-based decisions by businesses that simply do not pay off in the long run:

1. Jumping in too soon. It’s easy to get started in the cloud; in many cases it’s as simple as entering your credit card info. That’s great for experimenting, or even offloading some researching and development processes, but anything else requires homework – and sometimes a lot of it, especially if you’re planning to build enterprise-ready solutions in the cloud. Doing your research includes due diligence on security and regulatory requirements, understanding your company’s priorities, and knowing what you should and shouldn’t expect in terms of benefits.

2. Failing to plan for the unexpected. Yes, that’s an oxymoron, but how many disasters are really expected events? Clearly if your business is on the coast of Florida, you have a plan that involves hurricanes. But what about everyday events that can just as easily put you out of business for a day, a week, or a month? Cloud-based solutions should be incorporated immediately into your company’s overall disaster recovery plan.

3. Not understanding business needs before picking a vendor or hosting partner. Before selecting a partner, figure out what type of cloud makes sense for both the business problem you are trying to solve and your architectural standards. Potential questions might include the following:

• Are you looking for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS)? Do you want to be free to code your applications in any language?
• Does platform-as-a-service (PaaS) make sense, and can you live with writing only in the code mandated by the platform?
• Do simple software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions adequately meet your needs? Maybe it’s a combination of these that best suits your business?
• What kind of redundancy will you need?
• Do you need virtual datacenters around the globe?
• Do you need a public cloud, private cloud or a combination of the two?

There are a lot of questions to answer before you choose a hosting partner or vendor.

4. Not evaluating skill sets. The cloud changes everything, or at least it might seem that way if you’re counting on the same employees to deploy, monitor and maintain your cloud-based applications and infrastructure. For some, the change will be easy; however, for others there will be a big adjustment period. IT staff will not only need to understand networking and security, but also distributed computing models and SOA Web architectures. Failure to recognize these changing needs in skill set is a recipe for disaster.

5. Using cost savings as your only justification. Moving applications to the cloud can result in significant cost savings for many companies, but cost should never be the only factor. Since it shifts IT from capital expenses to monthly subscription payments, the cloud may appear to be far more inexpensive up front. However, primary IT costs tend to remain constant, and companies that build software in the cloud may find it just as expensive or even more so to develop applications in a cloud-based environment.

The bottom line: Adopting bad cloud practices can be incredibly costly to your business. By understanding your requirements and doing your homework before signing on the dotted line, you’ll be well-positioned for success in the cloud.

Keyword-driven advertising programs like Google’s AdWords can be a terrific resource for generating interest in your business. However, marketers can often become so focused on keywords and click- through rates (CTRs) that they forget the intended goal of these programs: lifting conversion rates.

Conversion rates indicate how many visitors from these ads actually purchased the intended product or service. That means what’s on the landing page is just as important to your online marketing campaign as the advertisement itself, so optimizing your landing pages’ effectiveness is critical to the success of your program.

A big part of the equation is just being seen.  Nearly a decade ago, the major search engines began considering landing page quality in their ranking algorithm. With Google AdWords, for example, your landing page quality score and the cost of your keywords determine your AdWords ranking. Building a high-quality landing page can help you achieve a higher ranking and save money.

Fortunately, nearly all of the things search engines consider to determine your landing page ranking are things that lead to a better experience for your visitors. Here is a list of seven things you can do to keep your landing page score high and deliver on its intended results: conversions.

1. Make your headline compelling and match it to your ad. The headline is the first thing the search engines and your visitors use to judge the quality of your landing page. If your headlines and content do not contain the keywords that your visitor is looking for, that visitor is going to go look elsewhere for what they want. Your landing page should be a reflection of your ad, and your ad should be an indication of your landing page’s content.
2. Allow visitors to share. The strongest messages will likely not come from you, but rather from your satisfied customers. Make it easy for visitors to brag about their purchase and share their experiences by adding links to all types of social media. The most successful companies in the world do it, so why shouldn’t you?
3. Create a dedicated landing page for each ad group. It seems like an insurmountable task, but if you start small, you can see how well individual landing pages for each ad group can work. Start with one landing page per campaign. As you have the time to build a new page, add it in and slowly convert your ad groups to all have specific targeted landing pages. Many businesses drive visitors to their home page from the AdWord ad, but that’s a mistake; your homepage is general, while your AdWord campaign is usually pretty specific. Creating a fresh page that’s directly related to your keyword ad will significantly improve your quality score.
4. Optimize pages for conversion. Every landing page has a conversion goal, whether it’s to sell a product or get visitors to sign up for a newsletter. Visitors have a better experience with your landing page when that goal is clear and easy for them to accomplish. Keep the page clean and easy to read, give users more than one prompt to provide their information and only ask them to provide for the information you need most. This will appear as less risky to your visitors and will lead to higher conversion rates.
5. Do not use pop-up windows. Many people associate pop-up windows with unwelcome advertising and find them annoying. Search engines are likely to penalize you for a poor user experience if you use pop-up windows on your landing page.
6. Test often, but do so carefully. The landing page may be the best and perhaps last chance to close the sale. In the same way you test ad text, A/B test landing pages. Create sample landing pages and put them out there to test. Use your imagination and try different themes, colors, headlines, layouts and keywords. Testing various combinations for your landing pages is the best way to find out what works and what does not. Doing so will allow you to change and test single variables such as headlines, imagery, body text, and calls to action evenly over time.
7. Don’t rush it: Not allowing your tests to run for significant amounts of time and stopping after one test are common mistakes. Gather as much data as possible before determining which option works best, then use that data to set up ongoing tests against the winner to find and display the best possible advertisements and effective landing pages you can.

Using the tips above to create highly relevant landing pages can help improve your quality score and thus your page ranking. When more people see your ad, there’s more potential to convert.

What has worked for you when creating landing pages? What is the best landing page you have seen? Join the conversation by sharing your experiences below!

SMBs are trying to compete with the big guys online, and in many cases are doing so quite successfully. But it’s taken a while for many cash- and time-strapped SMBs to get to the point where they can even have a consistent online presence, let alone one that is optimized to help them compete against high-profile competitors. Now that the tide is turning for SMBs, there are four key trends emerging that need to be embraced to move to the next level.

1. This is the year for mobile commerce. Every year, experts claim "this is the year" for one technology trend or another.  According to a recent report from InMobi, 2014 is the year for mobile commerce. The report states that 83 percent of global shoppers who use mobile devices plan to make a mobile purchase in the coming year. Worldwide, 48 percent of respondents listed mobile as a key media that impacts purchasing decisions. Reliance on mobile is even higher in some consumer markets, such as India, where it was cited by 60 percent of those surveyed.

Prepping your website to meet this mobile commerce wave means more than simply optimizing your existing website for iOS, Android and other devices. Small business owners need to make their buy-from-anywhere shopping more appealing to potential customers by building out great mobile experiences, with responsive websites that work on every device and resize in a way that makes sense to the increasingly savvy mobile shopper. Seamless browsing and shopping across platforms will be crucial for SMBs in 2014. Ask your hosting provider for tips on getting started.

2. It’s time to get social. Social media and content marketing are no longer online marketing “trends” – they’re an inherent part of many customers’ commerce experience. SMBs are realizing the importance of interacting with their followers on Facebook and solving customer service queries via Twitter. Social referrals and conversions from sites such as Facebook and Pinterest are becoming a critical part of the e-commerce experience for SMBs, with the objective of having customers not just interact with your business, but also with each other.

3. Align your small business with Big Data. Calculators and cash registers don’t allow businesses to do anything more than crunch numbers. But new point-of-sale (POS) technologies will let SMBs evaluate their sales data to spot trends and buying habits with a whole new depth. Its customer relationship management (CRM) meets POS, and the information gathered will not only help with sales, but with the other elements that SMBs need to manage their businesses, such as staffing and inventory. According to a recent customer survey commissioned by ShopKeep, up to 42 percent of the 640 small businesses surveyed are already using real-time data to adjust business decisions, in some cases in under 24 hours.

4. Get familiar with personalization. Using the information gleaned from Big Data above, SMBs have the opportunity to go beyond simply suggesting similar products – which is a must-do strategy in and of itself – to actually tailoring a user’s shopping experience based on previous data. Allowing customers to move through different channels based on what they’ve done on your website in the past is essential to e-commerce in 2014.

What one thing do all of these trends have in common? They are enabled by advances in technology that make adopting methods once beyond reach now easy and cost-effective for businesses of all sizes. In many ways, SMBs are ahead of the game, because they’ve limited their investment in "enterprise-grade" technologies that gave large businesses an initial leg up. Now that advanced e-commerce capabilities are available to the little guys at a price point they can afford – and in a "form factor" they can understand – the playing field is starting to become a little more even.

Businesses are increasingly migrating to the cloud because of the flexibility, cost savings and other related benefits. Cloud adoption figures are already high and are projected to rise further. IDC predicts that in 2014, cloud spending, including cloud services and the technology to enable these services, will surge by 25 percent, reaching over $100 billion. Moreover, Gartner predicts that from 2013 through 2016, $677 billion will be spent on cloud services worldwide (figures include cloud advertising, which accounts for about half of that growth).

But before business owners sign on the dotted line, they need to understand their objectives, the expected ROI associated with moving to the cloud, and the risks that go along with it. Doing so will increase the chance of not only a successful migration, but also long-term success. Finding the right balance between reducing risk and maximizing value is important, but not always clear-cut. There are several questions businesses should ask themselves before determining if they're ready to go to the cloud.

1. What is my expected ROI? Return on Investment (ROI) is the savings expected to result from moving to the cloud compared with a company’s existing costs. A thorough analysis is needed, taking into consideration the following elements:

• Hardware savings
• Reduced expenses due to optimal staffing
• Lessened energy costs
• Application changes
• Organizational efficiency

2. Which of my applications need additional protection? Many companies haven't thought about classifying their information assets, but it's an important part of moving applications to the cloud. Identifying, classifying and protecting information at all levels will facilitate the move.  This includes taking into account requirements for physical and technical security, as well as procedural and legal requirements.

3. Have I thought about how my applications with perform in the cloud? Although businesses may adopt new applications when they move to the cloud, it's likely they will first look to migrate existing applications. Existing code may need to be refactored because of the differences in the underlying architecture of cloud-hosted applications and systems. Code refactoring is often done to optimize the performance of a cloud application and needs to be considered when changing to a different infrastructure architecture.

4. Who will monitor the performance of my applications? Testing and monitoring does not stop after a successful deployment to the cloud. If the performance of the application or system affects your business, monitoring will remain a critical part of your processes. You can continue to monitor those assets yourself, or utilize the capabilities of your cloud provider.

5. What will I do if something goes wrong? You test and test, and everything is fine. But your planning needs to consider how you will respond if you deploy an application in a cloud environment, it experiences issues, and you have to roll it back. It happens, and how you respond is critical.

Despite all of the positives associated with moving applications to the cloud, it's not for every business. However, by asking the right questions as part of the planning process, and carefully weighing the risks and rewards, many businesses will see a tremendous benefit from cloud adoption.

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System Center 2012 SP1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 show the value of a modern, flexible, scalable solution that is agile, resilient and built for the hybrid IT solutions of tomorrow. Windows Server 2012 R2 offers a proven, enterprise-class virtualization and datacenter platform that can scale to run the largest workloads while enabling rich recovery options to protect against service outages.

As 2011 Microsoft’s Hyper-V Partner of the Year, Hostway has remained at the forefront of Microsoft-driven cloud solutions. Working closely with Microsoft, we’ve created and refined a cloud solution that meets the needs of fast-growth SMBs as well as large enterprises. We’ve reduced complexity and costs for users, staying committed to creating equal access to scalable, redundant cloud technologies for companies of all sizes.

Next-generation R2 platform users will find increased scalability, performance and reduced deployment times, along with superior data analysis capabilities through SQL 2012. Faster builds, implementation and management of both Linux and Windows applications are right around the corner, as are support for OpenXchange and private-label cloud services.

Key features:

• New functionality for Server Message Block (SMB), improving data transfer, provisioning, access and management
• New functionality in Failover Clustering
• Legacy Support for 32-bit .net applications
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) improvements allow IT administrators to accommodate mobile devices into the workplace
• Advanced Database Availability and Business Intelligence (BI) tools via SQL Server 2012
• Enhanced functionality for Linux guests running on top of Hyper-V

Keep pace with the evolution of cloud technology. Check out the next wave of computing.

John needs a way to send out his new customer newsletter and is looking for recommendations. In the past, he might have read online reviews to learn about companies’ reputations. Now, John has another great resource right at his fingertips: his network of friends, family and colleagues on social media.

He posts his query and within minutes, he has recommendations and a 10-percent off code that his friend Gary sent him for the email service he uses. What John may not know is that Gary gets 30 percent off his monthly fee if his recommendation yields a new customer for that service.

Using referral programs as an online marketing channel is gaining more attention than ever because it works for many businesses, from mom-and-pop storefronts to multinational corporations. For example, Dropbox has grown its business significantly through its referral program; meanwhile, even a giant like Google can get into the online referral mix, recently offering users $15 for each referral to Google Apps they successfully converted.

Below are seven tips on how to build a successful online referral program:

• Poach ideas from companies that seem to be doing a good job. They don't have to be in your specific industry – if something piqued your interest, take the time to understand why the campaign was so successful.
• Get to know your target customers. Where do they hang out online? What content are they consuming? This early legwork will help you determine the success of your online referral marketing campaign.
• Budget wisely. Buying Adwords on Google, Facebook ads and advertising on relevant blogs can be expensive, so make sure you are laser-focused on your audience. That will help with your first conversions. Once your initial conversions are in place, incentivize them to spread the word in the form of a discount or value-add.
• Use social media to engage. People have liked and followed your company for a reason. Reward them with special offers and make them sharable with friends.
• Make it easy to share. Put links, buttons and template emails together for your customers so that sharing is as simple as possible.
• Build your email lists. If users have engaged with you previously, and have opted into emails, use them frequently but judiciously. Provide unique content. Ask for feedback and reward those who give it to you.
• Acknowledge and reward. Customers like nothing more than a thank you and a reward for referring other customers to a business. The reward, regardless of value or delivery method, should always include two important words: Thank you.

One last piece of advice: Make sure to set a measurable goal for your referral program so you can see which type of incentive is most successful. For example, set a goal of a 15 percent increase in referral business over the next two months. Establish your baseline, and start testing various offers to see what works. You'll soon find your investment paying off. Best of all, you'll remind existing customers of their commitment to your company. You might even find an uptick in sales simply based on their renewed interest in your company.