What’s the Difference Between Good and Bad Hosting?
Whenever you have a website, you need web hosting. Sometimes hosting is bundled with your web software (e.g., Wix, Squarespace, Shopify), but you’ll need to find a company to host your site if you’re using WordPress. What is website hosting? Your web host holds the files for your website, like your graphics, the database, the software, etc. These are large computer systems, and you want them to run reliably for you. Run away from anyone who says they have servers in their basement that will host your website! Your web design firm may offer you hosting, but they are (nearly always) reselling hosting plans from a dedicated website hosting company. Hosting requires a significant investment in computer hardware and a team with specialized knowledge to maintain and run them efficiently. What to look for in a good web host Uptime At the most basic level, you want your hosting to be running and functional so that people can access your […]
Read More...How Much Does a Website Cost? Try Our Free Website Cost Estimator Tool
Every business needs a website, but pricing for websites can be confusing. We decided to pull back the curtain to help you understand how we estimate the costs of designing and building a website. How much does it cost to create a website? Here are the factors that affect the cost of a website: the design writing and creating other content functionality of the site how it needs to support your marketing activities fees for licenses, plugins and ongoing maintenance The design or look and feel of the site It doesn’t cost more to have a beautifully designed site rather than an ugly one. But since we’re professional designers focusing on branding, we take a strategic approach to the design. Custom design vs. prebuilt themes or templates At Visible Logic, every website we create is custom designed. We never use pre-built themes or templates. There are two main reasons why we don’t. First, we believe that small details about the […]
Read More...How to Properly Set up Google Analytics
Setting up Google Analytics will allow you to start collecting valuable data from your website. A free service offered by Google, Analytics will show insights into a website’s traffic and what actions the users are taking while navigating around the web pages. Creation The first step is to create your account and login simply. Following this link, you will be able to create your account by clicking “Start for free,” or if you already have an account, you can log in by clicking “Sign in to Analytics.” You will then need to set up the property for your account. The property will represent your website and act as a data collection point for Analytics. This property will need a name and will also require a time zone to be selected. A Tracking ID is produced that is unique to this property, and a Site Tag that will need to be installed on your website. It is also required here to […]
Read More...Five Reasons to Rebrand Your Business
“Rebrand” — the word can strike fear in the hearts of some business owners and marketing professionals. Rebrands, however, don’t need to be a bad thing. All brands — including iconic ones such as Apple, Starbucks, and Coca-Cola — have changed over the years. It’s necessary to keep your organization moving forward and relevant in evolving marketplaces. There’s no question that rebranding your business is challenging. Rebrands take hard work, and there are real costs in terms of time and expenses to consider. Also, the process can force you to examine some of the not-so-ideal parts of your business. But a good rebranding will inject new energy into a company and its customers. There’s no exact formula for determining when to rebrand. Most often, the need for a rebrand is created by some event or circumstance your company encounters. Here are five common ones. #1 – Your company has changed significantly. As your company grows and matures, you may add […]
Read More...Website Redesign: MainePERS
The Maine Public Employees Retirement System (MainePERS) helps public employees prepare for retirement. After a new logo was designed by Visible Logic, their website needed an upgrade too. But the site needed more than just a new look. Here are the four most impactful improvements we made to improve the site. Before After Design Updates The old MainePERS site design was extremely dated-looking, using drop shadows, outdated graphics, and poor stock photos. Their antiquated design made them look less credible and was not what you would expect from an organization that makes important financial and investment decisions. The colors, fonts, and styles didn’t match their new branding and varied widely. Visible Logic redesigned the site, making it clean, friendly, and professional-looking. The new site matches the design styles established and used for their new building, handbooks, and other printed materials. The old site was also was not mobile friendly and hard to navigate. The site is now responsive and can […]
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