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A problem with the internet, and with the world in general, is that we put preferential treatment into building things that work for people who are able and able-bodied. When we say able, we mean people who can walk (and walk easily), people who are sighted or can see well, or any other variety of person who can do a thing that another person might not be mentally or physically able to do. That means that we often build websites, apps, and even homes and businesses with the able person in mind while completely forgetting about people who may not be able to say, use a set of stairs or fit a wheelchair through a narrow door or hallway. On the internet, this accessibility problem mostly boils down to people who have limited vision or are blind. While we can design all we want for user experience to make the simplest and easiest experience for a user, if we do not take steps to make our websites and social media more accessible to those who cannot actually use visual elements, we are not only cutting out an entire market, we are also helping to contribute to countless years of preferential treatment to those who can, versus helping those who cannot. Thankfully, there is some push (though not enough, in our eyes) on the internet now to make things as accessible as possible to those who have trouble seeing or who cannot see at all. These examples can come in the…

When it comes to web accessibility, we may have new features such as Google’s ability to discern animals, shapes, and otherwise from images themselves, but much of a search engine’s ability to “see” images isn’t rooted in deep dream technology. Crawlers use a lot of contextual items to discern what your image is about and where it fits, and the big part of this is a simple HTML tag called alternative text.

hasOptimization is proud to announce the launch of a new website for Think Again Training, LLC a training and consultation services company that provides social awareness training for diversity and social justice issues. Owner Davey Shlasko came to us in search of a new layout. The old layout was not entirely mobile-friendly, and was a bit dated. Davey phrased updated web design quite nicely in an email to us: “…[it is ‘adult’/professional] to replace your website more often than your car.” We can agree with that! Generally you can get about five years out of a solid website design before new technologies start rolling out. You can only patch up a website so much before it needs a facelift. We wanted to give Davey’s website a clean, fresh, and professional appearance. We removed the boxed layout in favor of a responsive layout instead. We got Davey set up with a connected Google Calendar so all of Think Again Training’s events would automatically show up on site in an easy to use manner. Along with significant visual changes to ensure responsive design on mobile and other devices, we also loaded the site with valuable SEO content, made significant security changes, included a privacy policy for international users and GDPR compliance, and even rolled the website into SSL (which is something all sites should have in 2019!) so it would have the coveted lock when launched in a browser. Davey is excited to show off the new website to potential clients and…

hasOptimization is proud to announce the launch of a new site for Luce Contracting. Victor Luce is an independent construction contractor in Manchester, NH. He was referred to us through one of our fantastic partners Cast Iron Content (who we also did a small website facelift for a while back). Victor, like a lot of clients who are just starting out their business, didn’t have any web presence at all. We got to start fresh with this one! We dealt with Amanda at Cast Iron Content, who made the majority of the design decisions and came up with some fantastic on-site content. With help from partner Bradstreet Englert Creative, we were able to help Amanda and Victor come up with a brand new beautiful logo for the new business, and started their branding package with helpful magnets and business cards. We also helped them begin their Facebook business set up with a brand new cover image. Onward to the website! We wanted to make sure that as Victor continued his work and got more and more professional with it, his website had plenty of room to grow. We suggested a variety of templates that allowed for portfolio areas where Victor could show off his work. While Victor doesn’t currently have any photos of his work, he plans to have some professional photographs created for the future, which is an awesome thing we love to hear from our site owners. The functionality is there, though it may be “hidden” for now,…

We’re really excited for the new year, and we know you are too! That’s why we’ve compiled this quick video with some stats of what we’ve done for 2018 and what kind of absurdity we’ve been up to!

hasOptimization Receives 2018 Best of Canterbury Award Canterbury Award Program Honors the Achievement CANTERBURY December 6, 2018 — hasOptimization has been selected for the 2018 Best of Canterbury Award in the Web Development category by the Canterbury Award Program.

We’ve already gone through how to get featured images/blog post images to show in MailChimp with the Featured Image in RSS plugin, but perhaps you don’t want to use a plugin. Maybe you’re looking for a way to edit your RSS feed without putting yet another plugin into your WordPress install. Never fear! We can help guide you through this plugin-less route. It’s actually quite simple, and there’s a few different ways to do it. Let’s take a look!

Recently Google announced they were finally going to kill off Google+ (G+, Google Plus).

As a client of hasOptimization, we want you to do your best. We’re here to guide you on all things web, marketing, and social media. With that being said, there are some things that we can’t or shouldn’t do for you. Some of these are no-brainers: answering detailed customer questions, giving quotes or estimates, making sales pitches — those are all things you would want to take care of yourself, within the business, as you have the detailed information to give these answers as accurately as possible. Sometimes, the lines get blurred when it comes to social media. Most social media can be somewhat outsourced. We can provide good content for you to share, including ghost-writing blog content that will drive more traffic to your page. We can create fun graphics to share on social media. We can even answer basic questions about your product or service to inquiring customers. What we can’t do is create an authentic experience of your brand’s unique offerings. What this means is: your business is most effective on social media if you have a hand in it. Keeping a Toe in Social Media Since we can’t be with you at all times during all days, and we can’t be carbon-copied on all your emails, and we can’t know if you’re planning events if you don’t tell us, your social media footprint is most optimized when you have input, too. Posting small updates with what you’re up to (or sending emails to us to tell…

hasOptimization is proud to announce the launch of another new site. Tech Center Danvers is a tech repair kiosk located in the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, MA. They repair phones, computers, and even video game consoles! Yes, they’ll even repair iDevices including MacBooks and iMacs. hasOptimization acquired this client just as he was taking over the business from a previous owner. Wanting to make his business as ship-shape as possible, the new owner Kyle quickly set to work with optimizing his website, social media, and more. Tech Center Danvers’ site was previously a single-page site hosted on SquareSpace. While we love for business owners to get their hands dirty with DIY and create some sort of web presence for themselves, Tech Center Danvers’ site was not the greatest. It gave all of the information necessary to visitors, but all of the information was on a single page, which is detrimental to SEO. Along with hosting everything on one page, all of the content was placed as images rather than text, which means the only thing Google was indexing from the page was the single piece of text in the one-page navigation: “home”. Kyle had to make significant changes to the text within the images. Rather than modifying the existing SquareSpace site, Kyle said he was not married to SquareSpace and found it difficult to make changes properly, so we asked if he wanted to move over to WordPress. Kyle quickly agreed — he had seen a competitor’s website and very much…