Malware

Would You Know If Your Website Had Malware? (Probably Not!)

This month, RWS Consulting has decided to give you a glimpse into the underworld of computer hacking. Not to scare you, no. Hacking is going to happen—it’s as inevitable as death and taxes, and if the largest and most secure companies in the world can get hacked, then certainly any network or website can—but to inform you and prepare you, in the rare event that you’re targeted.

But the first thing you should know is that it is not you personally who is being attacked. Hackers have no idea who you are—and if your website management company is doing its job, it’ll stay that way! Rather, cyberattacks are automated processes conducted by specialized computer programs that are sent out to every possible internet domain they can find. It’s as random as it is widespread.

One thing these specialized computers do is “ping” (send out a test signal) to as many computers as they can reach to see if the signal gets a response. If it does (meaning there is likely a live site there), these computers will then keep attacking the site with basic, usually dumb login names, like “admin.” (“Admin” is such an easily guessed login that WordPress doesn’t even allow it.)

Happily, most logins are more complex, so the hackers’ pings fail time and time again. So why do they keep trying if they almost NEVER succeed? Well, when a hacker sends a login attempt, there’s hidden code included in hopes of finding a weak spot (or what’s often called a “backdoor”). One way this can happen is if your “plugin” program modules aren’t current. Plugins are continually updated, whether to add new features or because the manufacturer found a weak spot (i.e., a potential backdoor) during testing updates.

So, again, what’s the point of hacking in the first place? If hackers can find a backdoor, the goal is often to copy and plant malicious software (usually malware) on the computer in question that they can then control when they need or want to. If your computer has been invaded by malware, you almost never know it and it rarely affects your website.

Okay, so maybe you’re really confused at this point. Hang on—we’re almost there! Something malware can do is send out repeated signals to another computer in what’s called a “DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack.” Now, this isn’t just ANY computer. Targeted computers are usually at, say, a bank, a large business (maybe some small ones too), financial institutions, and such. What happens next is that the business is flooded with attempts on their systems. We’re talking upwards of thousands of computers ALL trying to access a target computer at the same time.

Picture you’re a small mom-and-pop shop, something like a quick mart, with about seven or eight customers at any given time. Now picture a thousand or more people showing up at your door all the same time wanting service. Could you handle it? Probably not. You’d probably lock the doors and hide behind the counter. Not too good for business, huh? But then along comes a nice fella telling you he can fix your problem and get you back to business pronto. We’re betting your only response is going to be: “Okay. I’m in. What’s this going to cost me?”

We’ve got lots more expertise like this for the asking. Contact RWS Consulting today to protect you from hacking malware that can wreak havoc on your business: 202-409-8113 or info@rws-cc.com

Social Media

Businesses Need a Social Media Strategy

Experiencing the pandemic from the point of view of a digital marketing company has been dynamic! We not only were able to effectively communicate and grow throughout the crisis, but our day-to-day operations incorporated having creative conversations and implementing marketing plans for our clients that kept them in business. A key aspect of this ability to stay afloat and even to make significant progress in challenging times was the use of social media for communication.

Now, as we all move into the transition phase of companies fully opening back up after the lockdowns and quarantines, having a continued strategy for social media marketing should be at the top of every company’s business plan.

Step one is and has always been: be on social media channels. Social media channels are considered a natural SEO tool in that they give your business an additional URL address to be found while your potential clients are searching the web. Your business profiles and pages should have consistent branding, and you should schedule consistent postings to show that your business is active and to feed the natural SEO. Social media channels are the equivalent of television stations in the past—they’re where people spend their time and, in turn, how they find your web page.

When you become more familiar with social media strategy, you’ll start to see that what people react to on social media isn’t the content from your business—it’s the content from people they know. Social media is a SOCIAL medium. So the goal is a strategy that encourages an interaction—with your business directly, yes, but even more effectively, by having “friends refer friends” to your content.

That is why strategy and not just process is imperative. Working with a digital marketing company helps you avoid what doesn’t work and enact what does. Managing your social media strategy on your own can become very expensive if you’re trying to pay for reach and engagement every time. But by taking advantage of the experience and planning acumen of a professional company, you can get your company reaching the right audience faster and better than ever.

Learn how RWS Consulting can optimize your social media presence: 202-409-8113 or info@rws-cc.com

Content writing

How to Choose a Website Developer

As the marketplace keeps getting more complicated and competitive, small businesses need ways to simplify and streamline wherever possible, to conveniently outsource what can’t be effectively accomplished in-house, and to save both time and money.

One way to achieve those goals when it comes to your company’s website is to pick a website developer who can do it all for you: design, SEO, security, copywriting and content development, hosting, backups, maintenance, social media marketing—the whole enchilada served up on a single plate.

How do you find just the right full-service company to meet your individual needs and appeal to your personal tastes? Here are the primary factors to consider when you’re shopping for the best-suited website developer to help you grow your business:

Experience & Expertise

The best way to gauge a developer’s talent and proficiency is to assess work they’ve already done, so ask to see portfolio samples that showcase the developer’s abilities and that align with the type of site you envision for yourself. Most often, small businesses are looking for overhauls to their existing sites to modernize them and modify them in ways that will generate better outcomes, so you’ll want to zero in on the developer’s technical expertise by investigating:

  • What coding language(s) they use
  • What tools and strategies they employ for SEO
  • How they’ll track traffic metrics and UX measures
  • What security protocols will be put in place
  • How and how often they’ll back up your site in the event of a crash or a hack

Referrals

No matter how digitized the world becomes, word of mouth will always carry weight when people are making costly decisions. If you were building a house, putting in a pool, or retaining an attorney, you wouldn’t just hire the first nice guy or gal who walked through your door, and the same applies in the web sphere. Go beyond always-positive testimonials posted by the company itself by asking for referrals you can contact directly to research things like the developer’s track record, dependability, responsiveness, availability, and overall know-how.

Aesthetics

An adept website developer should express clear interest in how you want your site to look, feel, and operate. What branding elements do you want to highlight? What color scheme do you have in mind? What navigation preferences? Most importantly, what will appeal to your customer base—what first impression do you want to make when a visitor encounters your landing page? Do you want to come across as bold and edgy or classic and conservative? If the developer doesn’t ask you these kinds of questions, you’ll probably end up with a one-size-fits-all template that doesn’t fit you at all. A great shortcut here is to come to the consult with a small collection of websites that really speak to you—give the developer a launching pad, and you’ll get to successful takeoff sooner and more affordably.

Functionality

Underneath a website’s attractive exterior, of course, lies the actual mechanics of how things function. The ratio of static to active content. The inclusion of videos and animations that run smoothly and reliably. Incorporation of social media feeds. The behavior of input fields. If you have an online store, how will your customers’ data be secured? If you include a blog, how will notifications of new postings go out? What will protect you from phishing, cyberattacks, and malware? You’ll want to ensure that the website developer knows how to make happen what you need to happen. In other words, you want a site that has beauty and brains!

Cost

Finding a talented website developer is one thing; finding one you can afford is another. Discuss up front how the developer bills: by the task? by the hour? Will the developer pay the subcontractors brought on board, or will you be expected to pay them directly? What will the monthly or yearly retainer be once the initial development phase is complete? Are hosting and domain charges included or separate? How is invoicing done and what are the payment terms? What’s the cost of an after-hours S.O.S. intervention? “This job could run anywhere from $2K to $10K” is a red flag; an experienced developer will be able to give you a firmer estimate of what you can expect to pay throughout the duration of your partnership.

Good Communication

Finally, a good working relationship requires good communication. If you were a webmaster yourself, you wouldn’t need to hire one, right? So for those who aren’t technologically fluent, look for a developer who can explain things to you in language you’ll understand and who has clear justifications for why this step is mandatory or that step is recommended. The content and frequency of the communication matter, too: Is your developer interrupting your day too often with calls and emails about things you’d prefer they handle? Once your website is up and running to your liking, do they pull a disappearing act? There’s a happy medium between being talked down to by a pro who knows their stuff and being given too much responsibility to make decisions you don’t feel qualified to make. Find that sweet spot with a developer who listens to you at least as much as they talk, and it’ll be a win-win all around.

Get a free website development consultation from RWS Consulting today at 202-409-8113 or info@rws-cc.com

Website Design Improvements to Boost Your Impact & Your Clientele

It’s not enough anymore just to have a website. It’s not even enough to have a nice-looking, truly informative, fully operational website that properly collects visitor data and strategically incorporates SEO. To make your mark on the web today, you need all bases loaded, all hands on deck, all cylinders firing simultaneously: functionality, speed, credibility, content, interface optimization, logical organization and flow, security and privacy, automation, accessibility, and aesthetics. (And so much more.)

That’s a lot to ask of just one piece of your business, but since it’s arguably the most essential component of your marketing plan—visible to the greatest number of people to make the largest impression in the shortest amount of time—it’s worth considering some improvements you can make to enhance your site’s user experience and expand your customer base.

WAYS TO ELEVATE YOUR WEBSITE DESIGN
Looks Matter – How a website looks is just as important, maybe even more so, than what it says or does. Universal laws of attraction come into play when eye meets screen, and taking advantage of results-proven tactics will hold the eye longer and direct your visitors where you want them to go. Have fun here. Play with different color schemes, backgrounds, and design elements. Try new web fonts. Experiment with new layouts that assimilate negative space and balance words and images. Aim for clean and concise, welcoming and engaging, contemporary but timeless. You can always update text, replace photos, and post new content, but once you have a great-looking, attention-grabbing, visually appealing design in place, you’re three-quarters of the way to success.

Customize Your Site to Your Particular Business – Templates are great. Templates save tons of time, lay invaluable groundwork, and take the guesswork out of much coding. But templates are made for a general audience—to take them past the starting line, not necessarily all the way to the finish line. Make sure to put the “finishing touches” on your site by customizing it to your business specifically. If you’re a salon, change that “Make an Appointment” button to “Schedule Your Hair Coloring Now.” If you’re a master craftsperson, change the “Products” menu option to “Hand-Crafted Products.” Use stock photos specific to your industry (better yet, use photos of your own business, your own staff at work); use language aimed directly at your audience; and add features and elements that would be most useful to them. Imagine yourself as your own ideal customer: What would you expect to see to let you know you’ve come to the right place? Work samples from a writer? Before and after pictures of a home remodel? A questionnaire or checklist to zero in on precisely what service is needed? Whatever it is that would sell you on your own company, showcase that feature in your web design.

Broadcast Your Brand – Part of custom-tailoring your site, of course, is capitalizing on it as a platform to announce your brand loudly and proudly. All the design elements of your digital products and your print products should match precisely—the colors, typefaces, logo, graphics, taglines, even the voice you use and the flavor you concoct—so that there’s a seamless, utterly consistent look and feel to your business no matter where, when, or how an individual first encounters it. You want to become as familiar and as immediately recognizable as possible. Persistent and pervasive branding across all your marketing collateral is the shortcut to that destination. (And this means working your trademark characteristics into ALL pages of your website, by the way, so that regardless of what landing page is initially accessed, the page is undoubtedly stamped with your brand and your brand alone.)

Drive Home Your Messaging – Closely related to, and yet distinct from, your branding is your messaging: exactly what it is you want the world to know, what the world should know, about your business. This isn’t the place to be coy, humble, or vague. You can be clever with your slogan or motto—in fact, that’s desirable; but when it comes to your bottom-line messaging, you want to be clear, direct, transparent, and specific. If you can pull off inspiring and innovative to boot, all the better, but it’s most important for you to underline and underscore one or two standout features that make you stand out. If you have the lowest prices in your industry in your region, then every single page of your website should highlight that. If you’ve won an award, picture that award in an attractive graphic on every page. The greatest selection, stellar ratings, extensive experience, cutting-edge technology, a 24/7 hotline … make the central pillar of your messaging banner-worthy news across your whole site so that visitors distinguish you from the crowd with the words and phrases you choose to effectively encapsulate the need you meet and the value you bring.

Show, Don’t Tell – But words aren’t everything these days. Content may be king, but if so, then images are queen. Icons, infographics, photos, animations, illustrations, graphs, charts, tables, labels and tags and buttons and bars—use ’ em all and use ’em wisely, where they make information easier to process or where they convey an idea better than text alone could. An especially cogent and time-effective tool is a video. What used to be imparted via print ads, radio spots, tutorials, and slide shows can now be captured in a single video, accessed by a single click of a mouse, no suspicious connecting, downloading, or information-gathering required. The user simply watches your embedded video from your own web page to hear and see exactly what you want them to hear and see in the time they will allot you.

Leverage Your Social Media Presence – You want your social media networks to drive viewers to your website, but you also want your website to drive viewers to your social media networks to convert them to followers. The obvious step here is to include the normative links to your accounts, placed prominently in your design, so that you can leverage cross-platform performance and activity. That said, don’t include social media links unless or until you’re regularly active on those platforms. How many times have you clicked on Twitter’s blue bird or Instagram’s camera only to find the link disabled or the most recent post dating back to 2018? If you don’t know how to create content and schedule regular posts on your own, call in someone who does. Like having a mod website, having a social media presence is basically considered de rigueur in today’s marketplace.

Make the Call to Actions Clear – So you have traffic to your site. Great. Now what are you going to do with it? More to the point, what do you want your visitors to do? Make that plain. Make that easy. Make that a no-brainer. “Click here for a complimentary sample.” “Subscribe here for our free newsletter.” “Chat now with a representative.” “Call XXX-XXX-XXXX for a guaranteed callback within 24 hours.” This is the part of business that never changes: Once someone figuratively walks through your door, you’ve got to give them what they came for, making sure they either depart with a takeaway or leave behind valuable information you can use. If the CTA is answered, the visit won’t have been just window shopping; instead, it creates a hot lead you can follow up on.

Simplify Navigation – You want a robust and comprehensive site that properly and adequately represents your business, but you don’t want users to get lost trying to find their way to where they want to go. There’s a multitude of options out there for how to set up streamlined navigation, so if your current organizational blueprint isn’t producing the results you want, try another structure that’s more user-friendly and clear-cut. You don’t have to redesign your whole site—the links and pages are already in place—you just want to reconfigure your menus, tabs, clicks, and links in a way that makes the most sense to the user. It’s the difference between finding Aunt Helen’s house with a map unfolded next to you on the passenger seat versus having your nav system announce: “Turn right at the light.”

Properly Introduce Yourself It’s all about the client today, that’s true—what you can do for them, how you can ease their pain points. But the client is still a person, and a person likes to know who they’ll being doing business with and how that business is conducted. Include an “About” page that provides enough history on your company to assure the visitor that you’re legit and qualified. If applicable to your market, include a staff page with short bios and head shots that put faces to names. People also like to learn about other people’s experience with your business, so if you have testimonials, by all means put them to work. You don’t have to have a separate page for customer feedback—you can work quotes into the overall design or, even better, link to Google Reviews and other third-party review sites that you don’t control yourself. Word of mouth is another one of those business principles that will never go out of style.

That’s quite enough to start, wouldn’t you say? And although these steps might sound like a lot to undertake, they can all be done quite quickly and efficiently with the assistance of a skilled and talented web consultant. Sure, you can let your long-established website hum along out there in cyberspace waiting for the occasional traveler to bump into it. Or you can turn up the volume of your site with a few simple but targeted moves so that it reverberates, resonates, and clearly reinforces your mission and goals the moment someone lands on your personal corner of the digital universe.

Let RWS Consulting help you optimize your website design: 202-409-8113 or info@rws-cc.com

Fearless Chix Adventures

Fearless Chix

 

Please enjoy the following story from one of our clients, Cheryl Bailey, owner of Fearless Chix

My Secret Life with Fear
For years, I hid from many around me that I lived with a phobia of heights. I don’t know where this phobia stemmed from, but I learned how to live with it. I was too embarrassed to share with others for fear of being ridiculed. Thus, namely my family knew my fear, and they helped me hide my secret.

About 20 years ago, I met a couple of moms.  Each had a son. And, their sons were about the age as my son. We came together through sports and formed a bond. Through our bond we did many things together. Whether it was a movie night, going out to eat, shuffling our kids around, family time together, we spent a lot of time together. I’m not sure when it happened, but one day we took a trip to the local mall. It was during our first mall visit together that they learned I had a hidden secret. I was terrified to ride escalators or walk stairs located in the middle of a mall. My fear of heights stopped me in my tracks even when I thought I was capable. And so, they learned my secret life with fear.

A Secret Well Hidden
My embarrassment of letting people know I had hidden fears, created the platform for me to learn how to mask my reality. I mastered how to maneuver.  First, I rarely went to the mall. And, if I did, I rarely went by myself if the mall had more then one level. Typically, I went with one or two family members. My first choice to get from floor to floor at the mall was to use an elevator. If one was not available or close by, I had learned the trick of blending in with the people who were riding the escalator. If I was with family members. One family member would be in my front, while the other family was behind me. With me sandwiched in between the two people, I felt safe. When my girlfriends found out (because by then we had formed a tight bond), they wasted no time in ridiculing me. All in fun, my secret was out. Embarrassed or not, they knew. Through their teasing, it pushed me to look into facing my fears.

The Turning Point
Over the years, I had talked about facing my fears because I was a fan of the television series, “Amazing Race”. Since the show’s inception, I had dreamed of competing in the race with my college best friend as my teammate. My college best friend was probably one of the very few people I felt safe enough to discuss my fears with. And, I talked about it so much, that I finally decided to do something about it.

August 2011, I sent out an email to my closest female friends and family members. I also made a Facebook post. I was going to face my fears with a zip line adventure. On the day of the event, it ended up actually being (2) female friends I had attended high school with and my son. From the parking lot the adventure seemed doable, however when it came my turn the reality of my fear of heights and falling hit me front and center. 20 feet from the ground with the looming tight rope to be walked in order to reach the platform from which I would be zip lining, I literally cried on the platform. The attendant felt so bad for me, he gently guided me back down the ladder safely to the ground.

Do It Scared
My defeat on that day fueled my determination to face my fears, and ultimately became the catalyst for me starting my own community and online community center called Fearless Chix. I went home in search of group therapy sessions for people like myself seeking to face their fears. Through my research, I did not find such a group, however I did learn the best way to face a fear is to actually face it.

Fearless Chix organizes adventures to help individuals face their fears in a controlled environment. The group adventures offer the right mix of support, guidance and fun to step outside of one’s comfort zone. With Fearless Chix you face your fears one adventure at a time.

Come see more of our adventures at fearlesschix.com.