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2020 is here, and while we predict that 2020 will show increased interest in web accessibility, we also are keeping our eyes on what seems to be trending recently for web design. While you don’t have to latch onto every trend you read, some trends are worth keeping, and others you can probably do without. Let’s take a look at trending web design for 2020.

You may have heard of this phenomenon. It can happen anywhere, to anyone at all with a reviewable presence, whether it’s on Facebook, Yelp, Google, Bing, Steam, Amazon, or even somewhere else. A review bomb, or review bombing, is when the internet turns against you.

At hasOptimization, one of our primary services is search engine optimization. It’s a service that many of our clients come to us in need of help with. The thing about search engine optimization, otherwise known as SEO, is that there’s a lot of minute things you have to consider when it comes to “ranking”. Search terms, trends, search location, Google’s algorithm, page responsiveness, mobile first indexing, are just a few things to consider when working on SEO.

We love our clients, and we think you should too! This week we’re highlighting long-time client Morr Interiors, an interior design firm in Portsmouth, NH that focuses on contemporary style interior design, staging, and more.

One very interesting thing about SEO is the science that happens behind it. Whether it’s psychologically crafting content in a way that makes people click (i.e. clickbait), or it’s understanding how people navigate a page, understanding usability and the flow of any web page is important to crafting your perfect optimization approach. We were excited to read about this study by Nielsen Norman Group which tracked user eye movement on the search engine results page (SERP). A few years back, it was common to have ten blue-link results in a list. That required customers to read and examine what they were clicking. Now, especially on Google, the SERP can have all kinds of more visually appealing bits of information, such as business listings to the right, rich snippets highlighted at the top — sometimes even with pictures, or even accordion answers to questions. How can we know where a user’s eye travels, and what listing is most important to optimize for? The Pinball Pattern NNG compares the way they found a user’s eye to move about the SERP to be similar to a pinball inside of a pinball machine. That means that they found users aren’t consuming information on the SERP in a linear fashion — instead the eye can be moving left, to right, to left again, causing a “pinball pattern” effect. What’s it look like? Let’s get into the nitty gritty about what a typical SERP looks like and what the pinball pattern suggests. You will see in…

Have you ever gotten a piece of mail, or an email, that looks like this?

If you communicate with a hasOptimization staff member regularly, you may have noticed that we recently added pronouns to all of our email signatures. You may be wondering why that is…and don’t worry, I’ll get there. First, though, I’d like to give you some background. What IS a pronoun, anyways? A pronoun is a word which stands in for a noun. It would be a little odd if you used someone’s name every single time you referred to them: “Jennifer has gone to Jennifer’s car to get Jennifer’s jacket because Jennifer is cold”. Strange, huh? “Jennifer has gone to her car to get her jacket because she is cold” seems much more natural to the average English speaker. “She” and “her” are pronouns, standing in for Jennifer in that second example sentence. They (a word which here is standing in for the noun “pronouns”!) make our language flow more smoothly and be less repetitious. Why are pronouns important and why are some people so upset about them? Here’s the deal. Calling someone by a pronoun that is not theirs is just as bad as calling them by a name that is not theirs. It’s careless, and repeated it becomes rude. It makes the person you’re speaking about feel not-known, not-seen. If that happens to someone constantly, every day, it wears them down. It’s tiring. It’s painful. Don’t do that to people! So why’d hasOptimization put pronouns in our email signatures? Well, half of the hasOptimization core team uses an uncommon…

hasOptimization is proud to announce the launch of a new website for drain cleaning and unclogging service provider Dash Drains. Dash Drains is located in NH and serves NH, though has a partner in MA who operates in MA. This business owner came to us looking for help building their very first website. They needed a basic website which says what they do and how to contact them. We were happy to help! After providing the business owner with a few solid themes to choose from, we then went into modifying the colors, putting the logo into place, and making the site itself unique to Dash Drains. We were able to create a responsive, modern web experience for browsers of all sizes while delivering the content that customers need to make an informed decision about hiring Dash Drains. We also built in a contact form for easy contact between business owner and customer, protected by Google’s reCAPTCHA. Along with a brand new website, Dash Drains also can enjoy the benefit of SEO so they can hit the ground running. We regularly help businesses revamp their old websites, or create brand new ones. If you need help with your business’ website, contact us today!

hasOptimization is proud to announce the launch of a new site for Peterborough, NH chocolatier Ava Marie Chocolates. Ava Marie Chocolates came to us with a simple request: they wanted to have a new look and feel for their website that was something a little more graceful, and they needed it fast before the crunch of holiday orders started to come in. Determined to lighten up their website to fall more in line with their brand, we set to work. With a tightened timeline, we did everything we could to oblige their request. As we built, we also restructured the Ava Marie Chocolates menu, which will help future customers find their orders faster. Additionally, we removed a slew of duplicate products, incorrectly priced products, cleaned out plugins, and a variety of other things including loading great top level SEO to help this chocolatier rank better in the SERP. Their new website is beautiful, serves information on the front page (which is better for users and crawlers alike) about the business, and places the important information at the top, along with helping guide customers to where they need to be to purchase. Be sure to check out their new website on your own, and snag some delicious handmade chocolates in the process!

Did you know that a 5-star rating on Google My Business is not actually the best star rating for your business? It’s something we’ve been saying for a long time, but this time we’ve got a report to prove it! A study conducted by Uberall determined that businesses who had 5-star ratings on Google My Business suffered from less conversions than businesses with less than a 5-star average. For this study, Uberall compared data from 64,000 third-party managed business listings for the first half of 2018 with the first half of 2019. The Sweet Spot While we can understand why businesses would strive for a perfect 5-star review score, the sweet spot for Google My Business reviews seems to lie between 3.7 stars and 4.9 stars. Many businesses “freak out” when a bad review comes in, but as long as the business is not actively being review bombed, those business owners should take the lower rating in stride. One bad review, or some lower rated reviews, can actually be good for increasing business. What is this phenomenon? Why is the jump so signifcant? Perhaps consumers view anything below a 3.7-star rating as untrustworthy, which would position a 3.7-star rating as the moment where consumers decide that a brand may be worth the risk. Regardless of the reason, the fact remains that a 3.7 rating should be the minimum benchmark that all business locations strive for. Uberall There’s no telling exactly why this phenomenon occurs, but we can take an educated…