If you are a WordPress beginner you might be wondering, what is managed WordPress hosting?

Managed WordPress hosting is a hosting service that manages all the technical aspects of your WordPress site. The goal of managed WordPress hosting is to have WordPress experts support you in the areas you need extra help so you can focus on the parts of your business, blog or project that you know and love. Think of it as your own personal IT department.

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Some of the services included in managed WordPress hosting are:

• WordPress theme, core, and plugin updates
• Regular site backups
• Fine-tuning site performance and speed
• Scanning for malware and other security issues
• Quickly creating new websites
• Building and managing staging sites
• Website migration

What sets managed WordPress hosting apart from regular hosting?

WordPress is your website host, meaning the server and physical location of your website. While WordPress is responsible for managing the overall maintenance of the server, they do not cover the individual technical needs of your personal WordPress site.

Managed WordPress hosting, on the other hand, means that the host takes care of all your website's technical needs. Keep in mind that not all website hosting is managed hosting, so unless you are paying specifically for a managed WordPress hosting service, it is probably not included.

If you have read about different types of website hosting, you may have come across shared hosting as a lower-cost option. Why go with managed WordPress hosting if it costs more? The short answer is, you get what you pay for.

Shared website hosting features websites on all different platforms, not just WordPress, which means that in order to accommodate everyone, the hosting environment needs to be simplified. This can pose a number of issues from potential security risks to your site running slowly, depending on the other sites sharing your host.

Unlike shared website hosting, managed WordPress hosting is designed to handle WordPress sites specifically, which allows for greater customization and understanding of your exact technical needs.

Do you need managed WordPress hosting?

Managed WordPress hosting is a great service, but whether or not you need it is dependent on how much traffic your WordPress site gets, how much technical knowledge you have and how much time and money you have at your disposal. If you are a serious techie or on a tight budget, managed WordPress hosting may not be for you.

For owners of small businesses or high traffic blogs looking to expand and lack the time or technical skills to deal with all that comes with running a WordPress website, Managed WordPress hosting is a great resource.

Managed WordPress hosting may be more costly than other options, but if you factor in potential website crashes and security breaches that could affect business, it is a service that pretty much pays for itself. Not to mention the added stress relief of knowing your WordPress site is in good hands.

The pros and cons of managed WordPress hosting

If you are on the fence about whether or not you need managed WordPress hosting, weighing the pros and cons might help you make an informed decision.

Pros

• Increased website security
• Managed WordPress expert support
• Lightning speed
• Free dev tools/staging site
• Automatic updates/backups

Cons

• Price
• Limited to WordPress sites, does not support external non-WordPress code
• Email service and domain names not always included

Advantages of using managed WordPress hosting

Still not sure if managed WordPress hosting is for you? Let's break down some of the services included in managed WordPress hosting to help you make up your mind.

Lightning speed

Managed WordPress hosting servers are built to handle high levels of traffic, meaning as your business grows, it will not be at the cost of your site's speed. So feel free to scale up without worrying about slowing down.

Expert Support

Managed WordPress hosting means having your own team of WordPress experts at your service at all times. Unlike shared hosts, these experts know WordPress front to back and can advise you on all things tech. No longer will you be left wondering how to fix a bug or which plugins to avoid, your personal managed WordPress council has you covered.

Automatic updates and backups

Managed WordPress hosting teams are constantly figuring out how to best optimize your site via proxy content distribution network (CDN) centers and server-level caching, so you don't have to worry about staying on top of the latest plugins for site-level caching. They can also help you remove unnecessary plugins, which means lower security risks.

Managed WordPress hosting should also include automatic backups to ensure your peace of mind every step of the way.

Security

Managed WordPress hosting increases security on your site to the point that a hacking attempt is basically just a waste of time. Managed WordPress hosting provides features including but not limited to active spyware and malware scanning that help boost security specifically in areas of weakness that hackers know to look for on WordPress.

As mentioned above, managed WordPress hosting also ensures that your WordPress core, theme, plugins, etc. are all up to date, which is also extremely important to your site's security. On the off chance that a hacker is somehow able to bypass all of these measures, your managed WordPress hosting team will help you through the recovery process.

Development Tools

Managed WordPress hosting includes tools that help you to best develop your site. These tools may differ depending on your host, but one example of a dev tool is a WordPress staging site which is basically a clone of your website where you can test out different themes and design features before taking them live.

Additional benefits

While we covered some of the top benefits of managed WordPress hosting, you can also look forward to many other perks from tools that help you monitor web traffic and customer behavior, to simple website conversion, among many others. Managed WordPress hosting ultimately allows you to scale your business by providing you the best support and tools to do so.

What is the cost of managed WordPress hosting?

What is managed WordPress hosting going to cost? Managed WordPress hosting does cost more than unmanaged hosting, but the service you receive with managed WordPress hosting is at least equal to that of a system admin or tech support, which you would likely need to hire without WordPress experience.

Service admins, as opposed to managed WordPress hosting experts, generally do not have the same level of experience with WordPress specifically. This means that plugin updates and overall maintenance will still likely be left to you, which takes time and leaves room for error. Even one site crash or security issue could end up costing you more than managed WordPress hosting.

Managed WordPress hosting also ultimately allows you to scale your website by providing you the best support and tools to grow your business in ways that would take much more time and effort on your own. Think of managed WordPress hosting as a shortcut to a successful web presence, which we all know can’t be bad for business.

As managed WordPress hosting experts, we know what we're talking about, whether you need advice on the pros and cons of regular vs. managed hosting, you want to know which plugins are critical, or you're finding that your site is slow and you need help troubleshooting. You can trust us with the entire gamut of WordPress questions, so the only one left is... why aren't we hosting your WordPress site yet?

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WordPress is by far the most popular platform and is constantly growing and developing in response. This means you have a vast array of features available to enhance your site, but so many options can be overwhelming. Luckily, we have used our skills as managed WordPress hosting experts to help you narrow it down and have compiled a list of 10 of our favorite WordPress features to help bring you more business.

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1. Security compliance

Arguably the most important feature for your WordPress site is security. Customers should trust that while visiting your site, their personal information is secure. Security breaches could mean death to your business.

Part of choosing the right plugins is making sure that they are actively being managed and updated to prevent vulnerabilities. Any plugins offered outside the official WordPress plugin repository should be closely vetted before choosing to add them to your site. However, to the untrained eye, this can be a difficult task.

Our expert opinion as managed WordPress hosts is to stick with the official WordPress plugin repository to avoid any security issues. Anything offered here is a safe bet and removes any worries about security compliance.

To pump up security, even more, you can also download a firewall plugin to help maintain the highest level of security consistently, keeping your user's information safe and sound at all times.

2. Contact forms

Contact forms are extremely important to any online business. This is essentially the first channel of communication between your visitors and you, serving as the best way to receive feedback or questions from potential customers. This way, you are available to your customers without exposing your personal information on your site.

Contact forms can look any number of ways but should not be overly complicated, with limited fields for the user to fill out. Providing a space for users to enter their email addresses is also a great way to generate leads.

Choosing the right contact form plugin is different for everyone. There are many popular plugins for beginners that provide premade contact-form templates. This is the easiest option and gets the job done. If you are a designer and wish to build a contact form from scratch, there are also many plugins that allow you to do so.

3. Email marketing tools

Email marketing, when done right, is a great way to generate sales and build new and existing customer relationships. Customers are more likely to work with businesses that they know and trust, which is why this can be a great feature to increase sales.

WordPress email marketing plugins provide tools to help you build personalized email campaigns, tailored to different customers' interests. There are plugins available that ensure your emails stay within the bounds of anti-spam laws.

Finding the right email marketing tool for you can help push your WordPress business site to the next level by utilizing customer insights with methods proven to be successful.

4. Call to action blocks

Call to action blocks prompt users to take action in real-time while scrolling on your website, making their experience in moving from action A to B as smooth as possible. Good CTA's will use clear wording and design, making it easy for customers to do things like subscribe to emails or be rerouted to your blog.

Whatever the call to action may be, the user is more likely to engage if the option is presented to them with the simple click of a button. Today, CTA's are almost expected and if your WordPress site lacks one, you be losing out on potential customers that need a little extra push.

5. WordPress analytics

In order to improve your business, you will need to have a good understanding of your analytics. Otherwise, you are left clueless as to what is working and what isn't. When it comes to creating effective business strategies, gathering data about how your customers are responding to your products is crucial. Engaging with your customers is a lot easier when you know what generates traffic.

WordPress analytics features allow you to gather a multitude of important business information in one place. Not only are you provided with real-time insights, but many plugins make your analytics easy to understand, allowing you to make the most out of your site.

6. Testimonials and reviews

Another great way to boost sales is by adding either a testimonials or reviews feature to your WordPress website. This not only allows customers an opportunity to leave feedback, which can provide a better understanding of where to improve, but testimonials and reviews also help to build a social presence.

Many potential customers rely on reviews when making decisions about whether or not they find a business trustworthy. Positive testimonials from previous customers can give new customers an idea of what to expect from you. The more good reviews, the better likelihood that a customer will choose you over competitors.

7. Case studies

While at first glance case studies may seem similar to reviews and testimonials, and in a way they are; case studies provide a more detailed and complete account of your business and how it has affected a specific client over time. This often provides a clearer picture of things like your business objectives and how these are translated into the final product than provided by testimonials or reviews.

Many WordPress case study features are able to translate these case studies into quantifiable data that can then be displayed on your site. This data will help potential customers get an idea of what kind of results to expect from your business. Customers are likely to trust the experience of fellow customers and positive results are proven to improve business.

8. SEO plugins

SEO plugins can be a great way to refine your business site on WordPress. There are a number of plugins available, each with unique features from competitor research to keyword title and meta-description optimization. Focusing on SEO is a surefire way to boost your ranking in the search results of potential customers. Generating more traffic to your site is one of the fastest ways to surge sales.

9. eCommerce plugins

WordPress provides you with the basic tools for building your online business, with eCommerce plugins you will find features that can take your site from good to great. Added opportunities for customization will help customers find exactly what they are looking for.

eCommerce plugins also make customer relations a breeze by removing potential payment issues and issuing refunds much more simple. As mentioned previously, the better the user experience, the more the customer is likely to choose your business.

10. Backup plugins

There is nothing more stressful than the thought of having to rebuild your WordPress site after hours of hard work. Your site is an asset to your business and it is important to ensure that it is protected. Backup features remove this fear and make sure that your site is secure, no matter what. Certain plugins perform automatic backups at intervals of your choosing so you will automatically stay up to date with your backups.

Updating your WordPress site is crucial to stay on top of your game, but you can experiment freely with different options and be confident that a recent version of your site is safe in the cloud.

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Let's take a look at five different ways to choose the best possible visuals for your landing pages, along with some illustrative examples to set you on the right track.

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Illustrate Your Brand

The main purpose of your landing page visuals is to showcase what your brand is about. No matter how well you construct your copy, the images you choose will always speak a little bit louder and convey more meaning.

For starters, try to find words that describe your brand best. Is it sophisticated, edgy, traditional, relaxed, hip? Once you are satisfied with your choice, you can judge each visual element by this merit. Does it match your brand's tone and voice well enough?

Take a look at the solution Spores has come up with. As their actual product is difficult to define, they have chosen a custom image that speaks volumes about the brand: cutting-edge, futuristic, tech-based, and innovative.

Source: spores.app

None of these words appear anywhere on the page, though. You're aware of them based on that single landing page image.

Animate Your Visuals

To make your visuals more dynamic and more engaging, you can literally make them move. Animated images, like gifs, are a great way to draw the eye in and add more interest to any page.

You'll have to be careful, however, and make your animated visual WordPress-appropriate. Compress it to make it as light as possible and make sure your servers can handle the load.

Naturally, the animation should also be on-brand and illustrate a specific point on the page. Let's take a look at how Aura has chosen their moving image.

Source: goaura.com

They feature an astronaut, which, at first glance, may have nothing to do with Amazon sales. However, the allusion is easy to spot: take your sales to the Moon and beyond with Aura's solutions.

Make the Data Easier to Digest

Visuals are also a great way to help your visitors digest complex or long-winded streams of data. If your landing page would benefit from data visualization, you can use an infographic to help your visitors get a better hang of whatever it is you're trying to convey.

Other than ensuring that the information you're displaying is correct and up-to-date, the infographic itself should, once again, load fast. It should also incorporate some of your brand's colors and use a font that's aligned with your message and voice.

You can use a free tool like Canva to create this infographic – it doesn't have to be anything spectacular. Its main purpose is to make information easily digestible and more visually appealing.

Reckenen has done some great infographics over the years, and this one on the impact of fraud on small businesses is a great one to try to emulate. It's short but conveys a lot of information, and the brand's overarching design theme has been implemented excellently.

Make Them Colorful

Another way to choose your landing page images is to think about the color story.

The method to employ is along the lines of “keep them on brand.” Start by landing on the kinds of emotions you want to evoke with your visuals, and go from there.

You'll already have noticed that most eco-friendly brands choose to use a green color palette. A lot of SaaS companies use blue, as it's supposed to suggest trustworthiness and knowledge. Purple is often considered a color that fun brands use, and so on.

You can also mix your colors and use a combination to achieve your desired effect. For instance, Scott's Cheap Flights has used turquoise and pink to evoke that sense of paradise we all wish to embrace on our holidays.

Source: scottscheapflights.com

Their illustration is rather simple but very on-brand and in line with their key messaging.

Use Real People

Finally, you can choose visuals that feature real people. This choice is best when you want to establish a deeper connection with your visitors and make them feel part of a group.

Human faces can also show a lot of emotion that will be easy to relate to. So, for example, you might choose to use stressed and anxious faces to illustrate a pain point, and smiling and relaxed faces to showcase your solutions.

Bear in mind that it's always best to reach for images of people who make up your target audience. For example, if you are marketing to an older audience, don't use young couples on your landing pages, and vice versa.

Furthermore, you can use the photos of your actual customers and clients. User-generated content is an effective way to both add a layer of social proof and showcase your products or services.

Skillcrush has used illustrative images of real people on their landing page to make themselves more relatable and approachable.

Source: skillcrush.com

It's much easier to identify with a young woman learning to code than an abstract illustration of the computer language.

Final Thoughts

Using visuals on your WordPress landing pages can make them much more effective and much more appealing to any target audience. The key is to consider what the best choice would be and how to ensure that it is on-brand.

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Who is tagDiv?

tagDiv is a Software Company that's based in Romania and has been part of the WordPress industry since September 2013. With more than 120,000 customers worldwide, this company consists of experienced web developers, web designers, and skilled digital marketers that join forces to create the best web solutions.

tagDiv has built the Newspaper and Newsmag WordPress themes for the blog, news, and publishing industries. The team also provides on-demand web development and web design solutions for any web owner that wants to implement custom ideas. Some of their customers number United Nations, UBER Engineering, TOK HIT, Welthee, Share America, Rackspace, Tech Explorist, and many more.

With technologies such as WordPress, MySql, android, PHP, iOS, Vue.js, Bootstrap, and more, tagDiv performs:

• User Experience Design
• Web design & development
• Performance optimization
• eCommerce development
• Digital support services
• WordPress development
• Frontend development
• and more.

If you're interested, it's quite simple to get in touch with the team. All you have to do is to submit a request and include all the details about your project.

Why is Newspaper a Popular WordPress Theme?

The Newspaper theme is available exclusively on Envato, Themeforest market for $59, and  you benefit from 6 months of free support & lifetime updates. The Newspaper theme package contains all the prebuilt websites (demo designs), PHP, CSS, and JS Files, premium plugins, and others.

Compatibility

It is compatible with latest versions of WordPress, starting with WordPress 4.0 up to WordPress 5.8+. The Newspaper theme has more than 115,000 sales and a 4.82 rating out of 5, based on more than 7,010 ratings.

With this theme, you can build multi-language websites, as Newspaper is WPML compatible. Furthermore, you can create eShops, as the theme is integrated with WooCommerce and has built-in eCommerce functionality.

Customizability

Using the latest technologies, the Newspaper theme is responsive & flexible and is highly customizable on the front-end. The template is loaded with many tools that can help users to create a professionally-looking WordPress site.

Newspaper theme comes with tagDiv Composer, a live editing page builder that allows you to customize all the elements. The functionality given by this tool is drag and drop so it's easy to move, delete, modify, duplicate or reuse customized short-codes.

In the package, there's also a gallery of pre-made design templates that are editable and customizable. It's called tagDiv Cloud Library. From homepages, single post templates to author, search, and sections pages, you can quickly import the desired one and assign it globally or individually.

With this theme you can customize the top and bottom of your site, as Newspaper includes a header and footer builder that allow you to do so.

Easy to Monetize

As publishers look for ways to monetize their content, this theme has several ways to add banners, advertisements on the site.

Furthermore, there's a membership plugin called tagDiv Opt-In Builder that allows editors to lock content and provide access only to the members.

Why Choose the Newspaper theme?

There are many reasons why you should start working with the Newspaper Theme, and for making it an easy choice, we've made a PROS and CONS section.

PROS

• Front-end customization
• Responsive, ready for mobile devices
• 120+ prebuilt websites (demos)
• Fast and versatile
• Includes tagDiv Cloud Library with premade design templates
• Header and Footer Builder
• AdSense and Google Ads ready
• Membership Plugin to increase marketing effectiveness
• eCommerce ready
• WPML compatible

CONS

• Not RTL ready
• Many features that could be overwhelming if you are a beginner

Newspaper is an All-In-One Solution

There are plenty of WordPress themes out there, but very few authors bring the best in them. Newspaper theme is a popular WordPress theme and the best one in the blogging and news community. You'll see thousands of newspapers and magazines built with the tagDiv theme. Each with its own designs and color schemes, and created to deliver the best UI and UX best practices. As managed WordPress hosting professionals, we know how important it is to make an honest choice. Newspaper is an all-in-one solution, due to the amount of features and the possibility to extend everything with custom services implemented by the theme's software company.

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With WordPress, these often happen when you run updates. It's crucial to keep your WordPress updated as part of website maintenance, in order to close security wormholes and keep the website running smoothly. Most of the time, the update processes and everything carries on like normal. But every now and then, a WordPress update can throw a monkey wrench in the works and make a mess out of your website.

These problems are always fixable, but they can still cause you a good deal of anxiety and worry along the way. If you're part of a large company, you probably have in-house technical support who can deal with your WordPress update problems in the blink of an eye. But small businesses and solo website owners don’t usually have that luxury.

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If you're grappling with WordPress website maintenance on your own and need to troubleshoot WordPress update problems, don't panic. Most of them are relatively easy to correct without any major techie expertise. All you need are simple instructions to guide you through the process.

Here is the support you need to help you deal with 4 common WordPress update problems.

1. Compatibility issues

Compatibility issues that stop the website from working properly are very common after major core updates, usually because some of your old, outdated plugins and/or theme can't communicate well with the new, updated WordPress code.

The fastest way to fix the problem is to check when your plugins and theme were last updated. If it's been a year or more since any update, it's best to look for a replacement that has more support.

A poorly maintained plugin can be a security risk as well as provoking compatibility issues.

2. White screen of death

With the white screen of death, all you see when you try to log into your WordPress account is that white screen, with no error message and no notification.

Sometimes, you might get this popup

There are a number of possible issues that can cause the white screen of death, so you'll have to methodically try each one. Here are a couple of the main ways to fix the problem.

Note: Make sure you have a backup of your site before you start, just in case things go really wrong.

Troubleshoot your plugins

Plugins are often the cause of this issue, so you can deal with it by disabling them all.

If you can get into your WordPress admin area, just navigate to Plugins » Installed Plugins. Select all the plugins and then click Bulk Actions » Deactivate.

If you're blocked out of the admin area too, you'll need to enter through your FTP account. Connect to your WordPress site using the FTP client, then navigate to wp-content folder » plugins folder. Right-click on the folder and select Rename to change the name and deactivate the plugins.

If this fixes your issue, just reactivate one plugin at a time until you identify the one causing the problem. Either replace it with a different plugin, or contact the plugin makers to report the issue.

Clear the WordPress cache

If you can access the backend but you're seeing the white screen of death on the front end, you could be encountering a caching problem. Clearing the cache should help; you'll find detailed instructions here.

3. Download failed

It's not unusual to get a message "download failed" when you try to update WordPress or a plugin/theme. When that happens, it's usually because of an error in your wp-config.php file. Fixing it does involve some code, but all you need to do is copy and paste the code below.

1. Use the cPanel File Manager Code Editor to open the wp-config.php file
2. Look for this code near the top of the page

3. Copy this line of code and paste it as the second line:

define(‘WP_TEMP_DIR’, ABSPATH . ‘wp-content/’);

4. That chunk of code should now look like this:

5. Click Save

4. Installation failed

Most of the time, auto-updates go smoothly, but every now and then you'll get an "Installation Failed" message about your auto-update, which leaves you locked out of your Admin account.

To fix this, you'll need to go to your FTP account. Navigate to the root directory, then find the .maintenance file and delete it.

Now you can re-enter your admin account, and finish the update by downloading it and then upgrading manually.

WordPress update problems don't have to be a cause for panic

Website issues can be worrying, especially when you're running a small business, but with a little help you can troubleshoot them like a pro! When you inform yourself about these 4 common issues and ways to solve them, you'll feel more confident about your entire website.

As managed WordPress hosting experts, we know what we're talking about, whether you need advice on dealing with common WordPress update issues, building a business website, or improving website speed and uptime. If you’re asking what is managed WordPress hosting, it means you can trust us with the entire gamut of WordPress questions, so the only one left is... why aren't we hosting your WordPress site yet? Click below and join us.

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That's where marketing tactics come in. It can be hard to know the best steps to take to raise awareness about your product or service or to entice people to choose your company over the competition, but fortunately theres no reason to take a trial and error approach.

You can learn from the experience of other small business owners who've gone before you to use what works, and steer away from what doesn't. Here are 6 marketing tips for small businesses to help boost your customer base and raise your revenues.

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1. Get online

The internet is the first place anyone turns to to compare prices, research brands, or find the closest store. If you're not online, that ideal customer may never find you.

Marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy aren't enough. They drive sales, but think of them as like owning a stall at a farmer's market. It's a great way to connect with new customers, but it can't be your permanent store.

Owning your own website means you can:

• Create a fully branded experience, with your color schemes and logo
• Track customer data like cart abandonment rate, bounce rate, and product views
• Build a relationship with customers that goes beyond the first sale

If the idea of building a website makes you shudder, fear not. Website hosting platforms like WordPress or Shopify have pre-set templates and easy-to-use editors that make it simple to create a website even without any technical knowledge.

2. Start a blog

If you want Google to send new customers your way, you need to make it clear what your website is about, and to do that, you need to use the right keywords. It's tough to do that if you’re only running an online store, but starting a business blog makes it all much easier.

Aim to write one blog post a week, but make sure your content adds value. For example, if you run a shoe business, you could write about how to choose the right running shoe. Don't worry about giving away business "secrets;" this information convinces customers to trust you.

Writing blog posts can be tough at first, but it's easier when you pick a topic that you care about. There are also tools to help improve your blog post, like built-in spell checkers, Hemingway to check sentence length, and Grammarly for phrasing and grammar issues.

Once you've written your blog post, make sure you share it thoroughly through social media and to your email subscribers.

3. Hone your website

No one is willing to wait around while your online store takes ages to load. According to one survey, 93% of people clicked off a site because it didn’t load fast enough, and by “fast enough,” we mean under 1.6 seconds. 

Once they leave, they are unlikely to come back, so your business website needs to be easy to navigate, fast to load, and very reliable.

Managed WordPress hosting can help make sure that your website has minimum downtime and responds as quickly as possible, while also taking the burden off your shoulders. When experts deal with the technical side of your website, you can focus on marketing strategies.

4. Grow your social media audience

Social media is basically our second home today, so your business needs to be there. 67% of consumers say they bought something after seeing it appear in their social media feed.

Facebook is one of the best places to start. Set up your Facebook business account and include all the vital information — location, services/products, opening hours, etc. Then you can invite people to like your page, and post content that people want to see and share.

The other channels you use depend on your business. If you're in a very visual line of work, like a photographer or a makeup artist, you might want to be on Instagram. If you’re targeting younger audiences, join TikTok. For B2B sales, make a LinkedIn page.

It's easy to get overwhelmed, so focus on just a couple of channels to begin with. You can write your own new content, post links to your blog, or share other people's content, but make sure it always adds value for your customers.

If this sounds like too much, you can use social media automation. Platforms like Buffer, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social help you plan and publish your posts. Set a schedule for a month’s worth of posts at a time, and then leave the platform to automatically post them at the right time.

5. Ask for reviews

It may seem hard to believe, but more than three-quarters of consumers trust reviews they see online from a random stranger as much as recommendations from family or friends.

That means it's worth it to ask your satisfied customers to leave you a review on Google My Business, Yelp!, or social media like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. It can also help to have a "leave a review" box on your site, so you can share positive feedback on your social media or your website.

6. Embrace email marketing

Email might seem old-fashioned now, but people still respond to it better than any other channel. It's the ideal way to remind someone about items they forgot in their cart, share news about your new collection, or send discounts and promotions.

Use your website to gather email addresses from visitors, and then segment them into different groups so you can send targeted, relevant email messages.

Email marketing platforms like MailChimp, AWeber, and ConstantContact help with segmentation, automated campaigns, and detailed data insights, to make your email marketing faster and more effective.

The right marketing tactics can drive big growth for small business

Small business marketing doesn't need to be tough. When you build a business site and improve its speed and uptime, share your wisdom through a blog, build a social media audience, gather positive reviews, and promote your site through marketing emails, you can keep increasing your business reach and growth.
As managed WordPress hosting experts, we know what we're talking about, whether you need advice on marketing your small business, building a business website, or improving website speed and uptime. You can trust us with the entire gamut of WordPress questions, so the only one left is... why aren't we hosting your WordPress site yet? Click below and join us.

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What could possibly go wrong?

Your website.

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Businesses that depend on their websites for lead capturing and sales conversions stand to lose significant revenue when their website goes down or loads too slowly. You probably designed your website with conversion rates in mind, but page speed might not have been one of your top concerns.

Think about it. If you have the choice of purchasing a baby gift from three different sites, you'll go to your favorite first. If it's taking time to load, you'll bounce over to the competitor's site within seconds. You're short on time and must complete the task before jumping on a business call in five minutes. Completing the purchase is more important than waiting around for your favorite store to load up.

Nearly 70% of users say that the speed of a page affects their willingness to buy from an online retailer.

Unbounce conducted their own study and discovered that 22% of your website visitors will close your tab if your site takes too long to load. Another 14% say they'll visit a competitor's site instead. If you count on 1000 daily visitors, that's 360 potential customers lost.

Try this formula out for yourself. How many visitors do you expect on your site per day? Multiply that number by .36 to determine how many visitors are potentially lost due to a slow webpage. (You can connect your website to google analytics to obtain real numbers regarding your website traffic.)

Still not convinced? Website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time (between seconds 0-5).

How do I measure my page speed?

Before panicking, first, determine your page speed by measuring it.

There are many tools available including:

Solarwind's Pingdom

Google Pagespeed

These tools not only measure your page speed but also capture many other metrics as well to help you improve your end-user experience.

3 Reasons why your website is down or slow

There are many reasons why your website may be sluggish or completely down, and more often than not, the solutions are straightforward. Read about more ways to speed up your website here, and try these 3 tips below.

Your website hosting service

Not all web hosts are created equal, which is why Witty Sparks produced this guide on how to compare different options and choose the right one for your needs. According to WebsiteSetup, although most web hosting services promise 99.99% uptime, the average uptime of 32 shared web hosting providers was actually 99.59%. When calculated, that amounts to about 35 hours 32 minutes of downtime per year, per website!

WebsiteSetup recommends web hosts that provide you with an uptime of at least 99.94%.

There are other points to consider when choosing a web hosting provider. Does your web hosting provider offer the following?

1. A CDN: If your business is global, a CDN (content delivery network) enables you to distribute your content from servers located around the world. For example, if your web host's main server is located in New York, and your user is located in India, a CDN will replicate your site and place it on a server in India (and other global locations) so that users in India can access it more quickly.

2. Managed services as opposed to shared services

There are different ways to be hosted. For small businesses that run few campaigns or host less daily traffic, sharing server space with other sites will probably be fine.

For larger businesses with more traffic, campaigns, and frequent spikes in traffic, you may be asking, do you need managed WordPress hosting? This is an option with a dedicated server or a VPS (Virtual Private Server) that will give you more flexibility and space for additional traffic. What is managed WordPress hosting, you ask.

2) Your website content

A website with all the bells and whistles may be attention-grabbing and aesthetically pleasing, but fancy websites tend to load more slowly.

Backlinko's research revealed that the total content size impacts fully loaded page speed more than any other variable on both desktop and mobile.

Too many images, videos, and third-party scripts (like Google Analytics, video hosts, etc.) weigh down a site. As a result, large pages (greater than 3.49 MB) take 486% longer to fully load compared to smaller pages (less than .83 MB).

Perhaps that's one reason why many modern websites have opted for a minimalist design with fewer images and assets.

Have your website developer audit your site. Depending on the results, you can then reduce the weight of your website content by:

1. Optimizing and compressing your images and videos
2. Limiting the number of plugins
3. Reducing the number of JavaScript and CSS files
4. Installing website caching

There are also specific plugins that can help you with all these tasks, like WP Rocket, as recommended here. It includes lazy loading, caching, CDN configuration, and a few other tools that speed up your site.

3) Your end user's device and network

Your end-user may experience a slow load time because he's working from an outdated device or is located in an area with poor internet service. Even if your site is perfectly optimized, there's nothing you can do about the end-user. On a positive note, your competition won't fare any better in this scenario.

Your customer's expectations matter

The first step in any sales process is prospecting or lead generation. If you're running an online business, part of that process occurs through your website. Your prospect explores your site, your product, your blog, and all the assets provided to determine if you offer what they need.

For your potential customers, this research occurs early in their buyer's journey. If you want them to see your value proposition at its best and convert them into real leads, your website needs to be user-friendly. It's not just about having a cool design and top visuals; your site speed is probably the most important factor contributing to your site's UX, although there may also be other design mistakes affecting user experience.

Don't risk losing potentially solid leads and lost revenue because of a slow website. Test your page speed as well as your site speed, and then, fix your site accordingly.

Also, with mobile searches on the rise, your prospects expect their mobile load speed to match their desktop speed. Keep this in mind as you optimize your site.

Then, sit back and watch your leads click and convert.

As managed WordPress hosting experts, we know what we're talking about, whether you need advice on what's making your site slow, how to secure it, or how much bandwidth you really need. You can trust us with the entire gamut of WordPress questions, so the only one left is... why aren't we hosting your WordPress site yet? Click below and join us.

Explore plans

The post How Much Do You Lose in Sales When Your Website is Down - or Even Just Slow? appeared first on uPress.

It's true that managed WordPress hosting costs more, but it could be worth the extra dollars each month. It's a tricky choice to make, so here are some things to bear in mind to help you make an informed decision.

Do you need managed WordPress hosting with uPress? Yes. Click here.

What is the difference between managed WordPress hosting and non-managed WordPress hosting?

Essentially, when you use non-managed, "regular" hosting for your WordPress website, the host is only responsible for maintaining the server that you use. The server is like your website's physical home, and the host makes sure that it's always in good working order.

But that's as far as the host would go. When it comes to your site's performance, security, and operating conditions, it's all on your shoulders. Updating WordPress core, plugins, and themes; ensuring the site is backed up daily; scanning for security risks; and other routine website maintenance tasks are all your responsibility. Unless you are already a WordPress expert, all this may have you asking, do you need managed WordPress hosting?

In contrast, managed WordPress hosting means that the host's experts take care of all these obligations, as well as other issues that affect the technical well-being of your site. A managed WordPress host also helps create staging sites so you can test out new website ideas before they go live, enable smooth website migration, and carry out ongoing tweaks and refinements to make sure that your site is always operating at peak speed and performance.

What is the difference between shared hosting and a VPS?

It's important to understand that managed WordPress hosting isn’t the same as using a virtual private server (VPS), also known as private WordPress hosting. Shared hosting means that the server which hosts your site is also home to other websites - probably hundreds of them.

Shared hosting costs less than private hosting, but the flip side is that your site has to share resources. If another site on the same server sees its traffic spike, it can cause your site to load more slowly. Similarly, once hackers penetrate one site, it's much easier for them to move on to the other sites that share the same server.

Using a VPS means that your website gets its own exclusive space on the server. It doesn't actually have a whole server to itself, but it's separated from the other sites on the server (that's why it's called a virtual private server). If you really want your own private server without any other websites on it, you're talking about a dedicated hosting plan.

Whether you're using shared or private hosting, you'll find that managed WordPress hosting is still valuable to protect your site security, ensure site performance and speed, and maintain your site on an ongoing basis.

The pros and cons of managed WordPress hosting

Still asking yourself, do you need managed WordPress hosting? Let's weigh the pros and cons.

Pros:

• No hassle about maintaining your site
• Higher website security
• Improved site performance and speed
• Free staging site and website migration
• Expert assistance troubleshooting performance and security issues
• A customized environment that's optimized for WordPress sites

Cons:

• Only suitable for WordPress websites
• Domain names and email service usually aren't included
• Costs more than unmanaged WordPress hosting

Do you need managed WordPress hosting? Who can get away with regular hosting?

It's true that managed WordPress hosting costs more than unmanaged hosting, so if you're seriously counting your pennies you're probably wondering whether you can get away with the lower-cost option.

We can't make the decision for you, but we can tell you who would be better able to cope without expert managed WordPress hosting in their corner.

Business owners who are also techies

You need a certain level of technical knowledge to manage a WordPress site. You need to know how to migrate WordPress sites and create staging sites, what to do if there's a security issue, and how to keep your site at peak performance.

Business owners with time on their hands

Managing a WordPress website doesn't just require technical knowledge. You also need to have enough time to stay on top of every update, run backups every day, and drop everything to respond when your site goes down or slows down. Do most business owners have that kind of time to spare?

Small businesses with an in-house WordPress expert

Some businesses already have a tech expert in-house, one who has the time to maintain their WordPress site as well as taking care of the business network and dealing with other cybersecurity issues, and is knowledgeable about WordPress maintenance. If you've got someone like that on your staff, congratulations, you’ve won the lottery.

Website owners that don't need a reliable, high-performance site

Managed WordPress hosting means that your website has higher uptime and faster page loads, so that you don't lose out on customers because your website is down or the site takes too long to load. If that's not important for your business, you might be able to get by without managed hosting.

If you don't fit into any of these categories it is probably safe to say you do need managed WordPress hosting.

What to look for in a managed WordPress host

If you've decided that you do need managed WordPress hosting for your business, the next step is to choose a company to provide it. Here are some of the things to look for during your search:

• Transparency about what is included in the price
• High uptime and performance levels
• WordPress-specific expertise
• Real-time malware scanning and removal
• Free website migration
• Free SSL certificates
• Automated daily backups
• Automated updates for WordPress core, themes, plugins, etc.
• Free WordPress staging sites
• Dedicated 24/7 customer support
• Traffic spikes are free or incur minimal extra cost

As managed WordPress hosting experts, we know what we're talking about, whether you need advice on the difference between managed vs. regular hosting, how to manage security updates, or even formatting the time and date on your WordPress site. You can trust us with the entire gamut of WordPress questions, so stop asking yourself, do you need managed WordPress hosting and focus on the only question left...

Do you need managed WordPress hosting with uPress? Yes. Click here.

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Managed WordPress hosting means those tasks are dealt with by somebody else (hopefully, a managed WordPress hosting expert!). Technical maintenance jobs handled by website hosting management include:

• WordPress theme, core, and plugin updates
• Regular site backups
• Fine-tuning site performance and speed
• Scanning for malware and other security issues
• Quickly creating new websites
• Building and managing staging sites
• Website migration

Click here to get all the benefits of managed WordPress hosting

What is managed WordPress hosting vs. regular hosting?

Every website host is responsible for maintaining the server, which is the physical home of your website, but that doesn't mean they are providing managed website hosting. What is managed WordPress hosting exactly, then?

Managed website hosting essentially means that the host takes care of all your website's technical needs. If you're just paying for website hosting, without any management specified in the price, you're likely just getting unmanaged hosting.

Many website owners use shared hosting for low-cost website hosting. But that can bring security risks (for example, if one site is hacked, the others on the same server can be at risk), plus another site's increased traffic can cause your site to slow down. However, managed website hosting can refer to either shared or private website hosting.

A typical host has websites using many different platforms on the same server, so the environment has to be pretty generic. In contrast, managed website hosting offers an environment that's fully customized for the needs of WordPress websites in particular, with all systems tailored to WordPress sites.

What is managed WordPress hosting able to provide you?

There are a number of benefits to using managed WordPress hosting for your website.

Tech expertise at your fingertips

Managed WordPress hosting means you effectively have a WordPress expert at your disposal all the time. You don't need to learn the tech side of things yourself, or hire a techie every two minutes to troubleshoot a bug or handle core updates, you can just leave it to the hosting management team.

Optimized website performance

What is managed WordPress hosting management doing for your website's performance? By optimizing your website for speed at the server level, your site won't slow down when traffic levels spike, and you can scale up whenever you like without worrying about it.

Managed website hosting teams improve performance with proxy content distribution network (CDN) centers and server-level caching, so you won't break your head installing and managing plugins for site-level caching, plus the fewer plugins you have, the fewer potential back doors there are into your site.

Stronger website security

What is managed WordPress website hosting doing for your site's security? Managed hosting boosts security in numerous ways. It typically boasts features like free SSL certificates, and real-time scanning for worms, viruses, spyware, malware, spam, etc. baked into the system. Because it's for WordPress websites only, managers can optimize security features to compensate for known WordPress weaknesses.

Managed WordPress hosting ensures that your WordPress core, theme, plugins, etc. are updated promptly, closing security loopholes. If you are unlucky enough to get hacked, your managed WordPress hosting team will help you deal with it.

Staging site free of charge

Managed WordPress hosting includes a staging site that allows you to test drive different features and experiment with your website without worrying about affecting visitor experience or affecting something on your existing site.

More benefits

What else is managed WordPress hosting boasting? Other advantages to managed WordPress hosting include the option of a complete WordPress install within minutes; advanced dashboards that help you track visitor numbers and behavior; and automated daily backups that ensure that you can quickly and easily get your website back if anything goes wrong.

Do you need managed WordPress hosting?

The decision whether or not to use managed WordPress hosting depends on your specific circumstances. If you have plenty of tech know-how, and also enough time to handle ongoing maintenance and management yourself, you probably don't need managed WordPress hosting. It's also not an option for website owners on a very tight budget.

But if you don't have the time and knowledge to manage all aspects of website maintenance alone, and/or you need reliable website uptime and can't afford any downtime or glitches, then it's even odds you need managed WordPress hosting to give you peace of mind and time to dedicate to running your business.

The pros and cons of managed WordPress hosting

Pros

• Peace of mind about website security
• Dedicated customer support
• Faster website response speeds
• Free staging site
• Advanced analytics dashboards

Cons

• More expensive than unmanaged website hosting
• Only suitable for WordPress sites and can't support external non-WordPress code
• Doesn't always include domain names or email service

What is managed WordPress hosting going to cost? Is it worth it?

The short answer is Yes, and Probably yes.

What is managed WordPress hosting going to cost compared to unmanaged hosting? Managed WordPress hosting always costs more than unmanaged hosting, because you are receiving a higher level of service than with unmanaged hosting. However, you have to balance those extra few dollars a month for the service against the money you're saving from the results of unmanaged hosting.

For a start, without managed WordPress hosting you'd probably need to pay for technical support on a regular basis, or put up with the hassle of managing plugins, caching, maintenance, updates, and security trouble-shooting yourself. The cost of just one security incident a year is probably more than you'd spend on managed WordPress hosting.

With managed WordPress hosting, you can focus on building your business instead of dealing with technical issues and maintenance tasks. It gives you peace of mind while also ensuring that your site operates at optimized performance and delivers the best speeds so that visitors are always satisfied.

As managed WordPress hosting experts, we know what we're talking about, whether you need advice on the pros and cons of regular vs. managed hosting, you want to know which plugins are critical, or you’re finding that your site is slow and you need help troubleshooting. You can trust us with the entire gamut of WordPress questions, so the only one left is... why aren't we hosting your WordPress site yet?

Click here to get all the benefits of managed WordPress hosting

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You can reach a company website just by typing their web address, and it makes no difference whether or not you put www. at the beginning. So a lot of our customers ask us if it matters whether they use it or not.

In brief, the answer is "not really".

With or without www, that is the question - click here

Why is there a difference between www. and non-www. web addresses?

Traditionally, the website address like website.com, without www. before it, is your server name. When you use www.websitename.com, it means your files are shared publicly on the web, in contrast to ftp.websitename.com, for example, which means that your files are shared internally.

But today we usually use the term "domain" to refer to your www. address, not your server, so you can use a www.domain or a non-www.domain, which is also called a naked domain. Technically, using a www. web address can help DNS to limit cookies in sub-domains, but that would only concern you if you're a techie web developer.

As a business and website owner, all you need to know is that both www. and non-www. website addresses work equally well.

Which type of web address is best for WordPress SEO?

For most of our managed WordPress hosting clients, the real question is which formulation is best for WordPress SEO purposes. They want to know if search engines will find them better with a specific type of domain name, or if they could be penalized for using (or not using) www. at the beginning of their URL.

We have good news for you here too. When it comes to WordPress SEO, there is no difference between the two types of web addresses.

Just like your visitors don't pay much attention to whether or not there's a www. at the beginning of your web address, nor do search engines. Using a www. web address is really only a matter of personal preference, not WordPress SEO.

Even Google says that your choice is down to your own preferences, not about WordPress SEO. The only thing that really matters is consistency.

Consistency is key

If you seesaw back and forth between using a www. address and a non-www. address, you'll end up paying for it with your WordPress SEO. Google and other search engines won't know which web address to use when attributing link juice, or which one to suggest when people search for your business' keywords.

You'll end up competing with your own website for WordPress SEO love.

So whichever you choose, be consistent. If you've already got a web address with (or without) www. just keep on using it.

Setting a primary domain

If you're undecided about which address formulation to use, you don't have to make a choice. You can use both www. and non-www. if you think that people might have trouble remembering your correct web address.

But to keep your WordPress SEO going strong, you'll need to set one of them as your primary domain. Otherwise you'll weaken your WordPress SEO for all the reasons we mentioned above - search engines won't know which one to suggest for search queries, so your ranking will be split between the two web address versions.

Here's how to tell Google which domain address to use and maintain your WordPress SEO.

1. Use Google Webmaster Tools

If you didn't add your website on Google Webmaster tools, now is the time to do so. Login to your Google Webmaster Tools account and click on your website.

Then click on the Settings Icon and choose Site Settings.

Under Site Settings, choose Preferred Domain.

2. Use Yoast WordPress SEO

If you'd prefer not to use Google Webmaster Tools, there is an alternative, and that's the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin. Just click on the link and hit the Download button to add the WordPress SEO Yoast plugin to your WordPress dashboard.

Once you've installed Yoast WordPress SEO, you'll see that it automatically defines the canonical URL in your website header, which lets Google know which is your preferred URL formulation.

Now you're all set and your WordPress SEO is protected.

In case you were wondering, at uPress we prefer to use www. in our domain names. It's not because we think they are better than non-www. domain names, it's just the approach that we like best. You can still use a non-www. web address if you prefer. We won't judge, and it won't affect your WordPress SEO.

We hope we managed to explain the differences between websites with www and those without www in their domain address, and to reassure you about your WordPress SEO.

As managed WordPress hosting experts, we know what we're talking about, whether you need us to walk you through the SEO ramifications of using www, or you want to talk about how much bandwidth your business really needs. If you're asking what is managed WordPress hosting, it means you can trust us with the entire gamut of WordPress questions, so the only one left is... why aren't we hosting your WordPress site yet? Click below and join us.

With or without www, that is the question - click here

The post With or without WWW – which website address is better for SEO in WordPress appeared first on uPress.