Phoenix AZ web design blog

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Yelp - the review platform you love to hate

I'm pretty sure we've all had times we've said we hated Microsoft, or Google, or some other company whose product of service really ticked us off. It happens. But when it happens SO often that there are multiple court cases against a company whose practices seem "unfair", and there's even a Facebook Page dedicated to how much people hate them, you have to wonder.... 

Yelp, the name invokes different feelings depending on whether you're a consumer (in which case you likely love the helpful reviews), or you're a business owner (which usually bring feelings of hate. loathing and mistrust). True, I have talked to some business owners who seem to have a happy relationship with Yelp, but I honestly feel they're a very small minority... or they're paying for the privilege.

But hang on. Haven't many people tried to sue Yelp over its supposed bad practices? And lost? Yep, 100% of suits against Yelp have failed. So that makes them innocent, right? Yeah, well, the charges against Justin Smollett got dropped too, but what did the prosecutor who dropped those charges say? "We believe he did what he was charged with doing," he said. "This was not an exoneration. To say he

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What's your Content Security Policy?

Perhaps another, better, questions, is, do you have one? Or what IS a Content Security Policy? That's a great questions!

It's a quite complicated series of policies designed to make websites more secure. You can find Wikipedia's explanation on their site. For more reading (if Wikipedia's definition didn't send you to sleep!), you can look at Mozilla's site.

As with many things website related, the average business owner shouldn't be bothered with having to deal with items like this. They SHOULD be the realm of the website designer, done at the build time of the website. That's why we're going through all our clients' sites, for free, and updating their sites with an updated CSP. We're doing it free for 2 reasons. Firstly, all our clients get 12 hours of free time every year for this sort of thing. Secondly, and most importantly, our original deployment didn't provide as robust a security suite as we had thought, so we're doing what any decent business person should do - giving quality service!

So, back to the original question - what's your CSP? If you don't know, you can check it at this site. When you get there, copy and paste in

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5 easy tips for a more ADA compliant website

In the past, the Americans with Disabilities Act has, largely, been used against brick-and-mortar businesses to ensure easy access and movement for disabled people in stores.Alarmingly, for website owners, the ADA has turned its sights against online entities - whether or not they have a brick-and-mortar presence. Some high profile lawsuits over the last 12-18 months have had major businesses scrambling to make their websites ADA compliant.

The bad news is... there are no hard and fast guidelines 

Imagine sitting down to take an math exam, and, when you open the test paper envelope, there's a piece of paper that says, "This exam is going to test your math knowledge." and nothing else. It's going to be hard to complete that exam right? 

That's a little like the situation website owners are faced over the ADA and website design. We're told we need to be compliant, just not exactly HOW to be compliant. There are some guidelines - WCAG 1 & 2, Section 508, and PDF Matterhorn. The problem is there's a lack of guidelines on how to interpret it in regards website accessibility and how to implement it properly.

So what should YOU do?

Should you care?

If you

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6 easy tips to supercharge your website

New Years' resolutions are a great thing... IF you carry them out. As Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (probably) wrote, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"! No plan is bad, but a plan that's never put into action is just as bad.

This New Year, make a resolution to get your website really cranking; and it's not hard to do! In my years of browsing I've seen some pretty horrible, and some pretty awesome, websites. Sadly, I've seen more of the former than the latter. Ever been to a site and thought, "Wow! That's a really cool looking website!" but been unable to find what you want? That's not uncommon. And there's some good reasons for this, but more on that later...

How do I supercharge the website experience for my visitors? 

Google is now placing some pretty heavy emphasis on how users interact not only with your website, but with the results on the SERPs. That's RankBrain and you NEED to understand it and what it's looking for! You can find out more on Neil Patel's article. Or dig deeper into RankBrain here.

Aside from RankBrain, there are really 2 other ranking elements - content and backlinks. And while you have

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