Worcester Business Journal

24 Worcester Business Journal | January 22, 2018 | wbjournal.com O ne of the first steps we take when we work with new clients is to ask them what key metrics they want to increase. Website traffic is among the top responses. We implement a lot of different strategies to increase qualified website traffic to our clients' sites (paid adver- tising, content marketing, public rela- tions, social media). But all that effort is wasted if our clients' websites aren't in tip-top shape. You see, while many things could – and do – impact website traffic, one of the most common culprits is site speed. Without getting too technical, site speed is, essentially, the amount of time it takes search engines to load your website. This time is measured in fractions of microseconds. Still, any type of delay will cause engines like Google to drop your page's ranking and replace it with a faster site. Engines like Google want to deliver the best possible user experience And users have no patience for slow-load- ing sites. How's your site speed? Go on, see for yourself. Go to tools.pingdom. com and test out your speed. How does slow site speed occur? With so many websites now built on platforms like WordPress or 10 T H I NG S I know about . . . Managed IT services By David S. Markey David S. Markey is a senior systems administrator for Worcester-based AVATAR Computing, Inc. K N O W H O W Website traffic down? Might be your site speed! T hey happen in boardrooms, hallways, lawyers' offices and in car dealerships. They are, of course, negotiations – seen by many as a means to an end to wrap up a trans- action of some sort, ideally involving give and take on both sides. Here are some ways to better negotiate with another party. Code word: BATNA. BATNA is a "Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement," a term coined by authors Roger Fisher and William Ury. In other words, what is the most you will give in negotiation and the least you will accept? In a LinkedIn post on negotiation, Tania Gomez says it's cru- cial to know your BANTA – and beyond. "It is what we are going to do if we cannot reach agreement and how good that option will be for us," she writes. "We must also know our coun- terpart's BATNA." Get creative. A person who is skilled at negotiations can develop and present myriad options, writes Deborah M. Kolb at Harvard Business Review. "When you present many ideas, you're framing the negotiation in a way that encourages the other party to join … consider what matters to your counter- part and find multiple ways to satisfy both of you," she advises. When com- ing up with options, it helps to try and think of what reasons the other side could have for turning down any of your suggested arrangements. Shhhhhh. Jeff Haden of Inc.com is a fan of listening more than you talk during negotiations. "If you make an offer and the seller says, 'That is way too low,' don't respond … The seller will start talking in order to fill the silence. Maybe he'll list reasons why your offer is too low. Maybe he'll share why he needs to make a deal so quick- ly." This silence can yield fruit in the form of usable information. BY SUSAN SHALHOUB Special to the Worcester Business Journal 10 1: N e g o t i a t i o n s 10) Cost – Managed service providers (MSP) offer technical support and monitoring for a fraction of the cost a full- time IT employee or IT department. 9) Active monitoring – MSPs offer the unique benefit of software tools actively monitoring for issues. This software flags and notifies IT staff of an issue, often before the end user even realizes there is a problem. 8) Patch updates – MSPs can download and send software and security patches to your computer, schedule reboots for patch installations after hours and more…all in the background. There is no interruption of workflow for the business. 7) Anti-virus – Managed anti-virus tools allows technicians to actively monitor for threats ranging from spamware to viruses, trojan worms and ransomware. 6) Backups – Backups allow for recovery of data and operating system files in the event of malfunctions. 5) On-call support – On-call support and staffed call centers allow your business to stay in touch with IT staff, even if you are in different time zones. 4) Knowledgeable staff – IT staff can be trusted to know and learn about your business model, network infrastructure, and custom software. 3) Preventative maintenance, checks & services (PMCS) – This is an old U.S. Army adage. PMCS prevents critical hardware failure for the moments when it counts most. Good IT staff will conduct physical hardware cleaning to remove dust/ debris from building up in components. 2) Hardware lifecycle – Eventually as technology progresses, software requires better hardware specifications to run appropriately. Have you thought about what happens if your business doubles in size? Having a hardware lifecycle plan can help you plan your budget, thus keeping immediate knee-jerk-reaction impacts on your budget to a minimum. 1) Peace of mind – Having a reputable and well-known MSP on your team can help you relax. BY KHAM INTHIRATH Special to the Worcester Business Journal W W Squarespace, it's become incredibly easy for the average joe to update and man- age their website. That, for the most part, is a good thing. But it has drawbacks. Whenever we do an audit of a client's website, here are some things we look out for (and almost always find): Non-optimized large images Folks upload images to their site without considering the size of these images. They upload images that are 4,000 pixels wide and are larger than 1 megabyte in file size. That's overkill. Before uploading any image to your website, you must optimize. Sites like Tinypng.com make it quick and easy. Kham Inthirath is the founder and president of Inthink, a Worcester marketing agency focused on helping local businesses find and connect with their target audiences. However, the free version of that site has its limits. Your best bet is to use a photo editing software such as PhotoShop. Rule of thumb: Web images should be 72 DPI (not 300), and shouldn't be larg- er than 2,000 pixels wide. Nor do they need to be in .png format, unless you have a transparent background. .jpg files are smaller. Make those changes, and you'll reduce the size of your images some, but you'll still need to use Tinypng.com or PhotoShop to reduce your file size even further. Too many plugins If your website is built on WordPress, there's a good chance you use plugins to help run your site. Plugins are used for a number of reasons, such as to create an events calendar, for contact forms, heck, even to reduce the size of images that you upload to your site! These plugins are awesome, but they slow down site speed. Here's my best advice: Use the least amount of plugins you need. And, for those you don't use, delete them. It's not enough to deacti- vate them. You should remove them from your site completely. Not only will that boost your site speed, it'll also close off any potential site vulnerabilities. If, after these two tips you go back to tools.pingdom.com and your site speed still hasn't improved, it's time to bring in the pros. Let us know how we can help. If your site speed is slow, you'll never get the traffic you need to grow your business. W

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