Category Archives: Blog

What is Structured Data?

Structured data is a way to convey information to search engines. In simple terms, it makes your website easier to understand for Google, Bing and the other major search engines.

For example, when searching for “World’s Best Cookies” here is today’s top result:

If you were to visit this cookie recipe page, you would have a large amount of text to wade though. This is what the major search engines would have to use to decide on what is most important to show you when you search. However, if you have structured data, you can help the search engines decide what to show.

For example, on this site they chose to feature some of the main ingredients, rating, number of votes and how long it will take you. Much more useful than the first few paragraphs of the site:

Why is Structured Data important for SEO?

Structured data helps search engines understand your website better. The better you ‘talk’ to google, bing, etc, the better your search engine results will be. Not only that, but also the snip of information shown in a search result will be more optimized for your customers.

Rather than the first few sentences of your page being shown, search engines will prefer to show your more specific condensed information you have in your structured data. Making it easier for them to see what the page is about.

The less barrier to clicking on your link, the more potential customers will click, and the more likely your SEO rankings will go up for that page too!

Which Structured Data format should I use?

Currently, all of the search engines recognize Schema.org‘s approach to structured data. There are others out there the search engines support too.

The most popular method is to use Schema.org’s JSON-LD format. This uses JavaScript to insert all of your markup into the head of the page, which is many times a cleaner and simpler solution to implement.

Previously Schema.org’s microdata was the way to go, however major search engines now support the JSON-LD format much better.

How do I know if I already have Structured Data?

Both Google and Schema.org provide testing tools to review the structured data on your site. We recommending using one or both of those tools listed at this link:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/structured-data

Evaluate some of your key landing pages first to see how your site does.

I don’t have Structured data or don’t know if it’s correct, Now what?

If you don’t have structured data or aren’t sure if it is correctly conveying the information you want on your website, we can do an evaluation for you! Just Contact Us and we’ll be happy to send you a quote to evaluate your site.

This entry was posted in Ecommerce, SEO on March 8, 2022 by Carrie Saunders.

Three Core Web Vitals: LCP, FID & CLS

If you are a business owner, marketer or web developer, Core Web Vitals can help you quantify the experience of your website and identify areas to improve.

In the summer of 2021, Google rolled out a new page experience update powered by Core Web Vitals. The intention for these new measurable quality signals is to rank sites that give users a great experience higher. Allowing Google and other search engines to deliver better websites to the top.

When you first think if Page Experience, you may be thinking of general website speed. However, speed isn’t the only part of the equation when factoring in page experience. Not only does your site need to be fast, it must also feel fast.

Optimizing for great user experience is key to long-term success of your website. If you are a business owner, marketer or web developer, Core Web Vitals can help you quantify the experience of your website and identify areas to improve.

What makes a website feel fast?

OK so what makes a site actually feel fast? Currently Google is focused on three specific points:

Visual stability
Loading
Interactivity

These focal points will likely change over time and/or more points will be added to measure a website’s perceived speed and experience. However currently Google uses these to help evaluate your website.

So what are the Three Core Web Vitals?

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – measures visual stability. Put simply, does your website shift the content around when loading
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – measures loading. Specifically, how long it takes for the largest piece of content to appear on the screen
First Input Delay (FID) – measures interactivity. How fast can a user click on a link and have it respond to their input

These core vitals don’t simply look at how fast items on the page load, they also look at how read those elements are for display and/or use! When websites shift, large chunks of content get delayed in displaying or when you click on something and it doesn’t respond right away, you have a bad experience with that website. Could be as simple as clicking the wrong link if elements shift suddenly.

Where do you stand on these core vitals?

When analyzing a site for speed and user experience, we always use at least these tools together to get a good idea of the improvements needed:

One thing to caution, when you run these metrics many variables come into play and you will not get the exact same results each time. It will depend on where the test is being performed from (which server is connecting to yours) as well as what your server is doing at the time (i.e. is it already busy)? Getting wildly different results though each time could be an indication that web server optimization is needed. You should get about the same results each time if your server is healthy and not overloaded.

What should I do next?

First off, we recommend using one or all of the tools above to see where your website stands. Look through the recommendations and decide which ones you want to fix/look into. Once you’ve made some changes, retest! This is best done as an iterative process so you can figure out what adjustments helped and what didn’t.

Need help optimizing your site?

We love a good challenge and website optimization can certainly be one of them! If you are stuck, or overwhelmed with optimizing your site, Contact Us today and let us help guide your site to a better user experience!

This entry was posted in Ecommerce on February 23, 2022 by Carrie Saunders.

First Input Delay (FID)

Good fid values are below 100 milliseconds, poor values are greater than 300 milliseconds and anything in between needs improvement.

What is FID?

First Input Delay (FID) is a Core Web Vitals metric that site owners and developers can use to assess user experience. It measures the time it takes for the browser to respond to the user’s first interaction. For example, clicking on a button, link, etc. The faster the browser reactions, the faster your site will appear to the end user.

Why is First Input Delay (FID) Important?

While a page may appear to load quickly, if the user clicks on an item or tries to interact with the page when it appears loaded, it will be very frustrating if that interaction is not immediately responded to.

Input delay happens if the browser is busy in the background finishing up tasks and cannot respond to the user’s request. One of the common reasons this can happen is if the browser is busy parsing and executing large JavasScript code. While it is finishing that, it cannot run any event listeners because the JavaScript code being parsed and executed might tell the event listener to do something else.

Google, as well as other search engines, look at this FID element to gain insight on user experience. If the user experiences fast responses to input requests, then it will perceive the site as being fast. It is a major website quality indicator.

What is a good FID time?

Now that you understand what First Input Delay is, knowing what a good load time for FID is important as well as how to optimize it.

According to Google, you should aim for the FID to be 100 milliseconds or less. Anything between 100ms and 300ms needs improvement. Anything above 300ms is considered to be poor.

(Source: Google)

How to measure First Input Delay (FID)

The easiest way to measure FID is using Page Speed Insights. In Page Speed Insights, you simply put in the page you want to evaluate and have it analyze that page. You will see results similar to the below.

How to improve FID

Review your Total Blocking Time (TBT) score that also can be found on the Page Speed Insights tool. Many times improving the TBT score will also help your FID score. FID is a bit more of a complex metric to optimize.

In general you should:

Break up long tasks
Optimize your page to be ready for input
Reduce JavaScript execution time

Need help with your Website Speed?

This entry was posted in Ecommerce on February 15, 2022 by Carrie Saunders.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

According to Google, you should aim for the LCP to load within 2.5 seconds or less of the page loading.

What is LCP?

Largest Contentful Paint is a Core Web Vitals metric that site owners and developers can use to assess user experience. Put simply, it measures how long it takes for the largest piece of content to appear on the screen. Typically, your largest piece of content is an image, but it could also be a block of text.

A good grade on this metric means your site has a feeling of loading fast. Whereas a site with a bad LCP grade will appear slow to the user, causing frustration.

Why is Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) Important?

In the past, there were simpler metrics for measuring page speed and performance. It was found that waiting on a large piece of content to load hinders the user’s experience even if the first content of the page loads fast. LCP measures when your most important part of your site loads by looking at the largest content.

Google, as well as other search engines, now look at your perceived largest content from a user’s perspective. The goal is to have a measurement of site speed that the user perceives. Search engines are constantly on the look out for ways to optimize their search results and give users the best quality websites first. Perceived site speed is one major quality indicator.

What is a good LCP time?

Now that you understand what Largest Contentful Paint is, knowing what a good load time for LCP is important as well as how to optimize it.

According to Google, you should aim for the LCP to load within 2.5 seconds or less of the page loading. Anything between 4 seconds and 2.5 seconds needs improvement. Anything above 4 is considered to be poorly performing.

(Source: Google)

How to measure Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

The easiest way to measure LCP is using existing tools like:

In Page Speed Insights, you simply put in the page you want to evaluate and have it analyze that page. The results will look similar to the image below and you can click on the LCP link to see what elements are affecting your speed for that Core Web Vital.

How to improve LCP

According to Google, LCP is primarily affected by four factors:

Slow server response times
Render-blocking JavaScript and CSS
Resource load times
Client-side rendering

Slow server response times is usually one of the easier factors to adjust. You can contact your host to see what optimizations they can do on your server. Sometimes it is a good idea to contact someone like us to evaluate if you need a larger server/hosting plan.

The other three factors generally need a developer to help with. If you do not have a preferred developer, you are welcome to contact us to see if we are a good fit.

Google also provides some guidelines on their website here: https://web.dev/lcp/

Need help with your Website Speed?

This entry was posted in Ecommerce on February 1, 2022 by Carrie Saunders.

PSD2 SCA Requirements for eCommerce

What is PSD2 SCA?

PSD2 stands for Payment Services Directive 2 and is a new EU regulation that originally was proposed to go into effect on September 14, 2019. The new rules from the PSD2 are referred to as SCA, Strong Customer Authentication. The new rules are intended to enhance the security of payments and limit fraud during this new authentication process. The requirements apply to customer-initiated online payments and online banking transactions made within Europe.

Does SCA apply to me?

Strong authentication is required for customer initiated online payments within Europe. For online card payments, SCA applies if both your business’s bank and the card-holder’s bank are located in the EEA (European Economic Area).

There are some areas where transactions fall outside the scope of SCA, or are an exemption if the customer bank approves.

What is Strong Customer Authentication?

SCA means authentication based on the use of two or more elements that are independent from each other. Being independent from each other means that if there is a breach of one element, it does not compromise the reliability of the other element. i.e. the other element can not be obtained from breach of one of the elements. The customer has to provide at least two of the three elements:

Something the customer knows (like a PIN or password)
Something the customer has (like a mobile phone or hardware token)
Something the customer is (like facial recognition or their fingerprint)

When will SCA be required?

The SCA requirements were originally to be in effect by September 14th, 2019, however the enforcement has been delayed. The initial delay was to allow time for technology to catch up and be ready and a second delay came out due to COVID-19.

If your business’s bank and your customer’s bank are in the EEA, you must be ready by December 31st, 2020.
If your business’s bank and your customer’s bank are in the UK, gradual enforcement started in June of 2021. Full enforcement is expected by March 14th, 2022.

We recommend you start supporting SDA as soon as possible to be ready for the appropriate deadline.

How do I know if I’m SCA compliant?

Most main merchants support 3DS2 (3D Secure 2) which is the new authentication solution that complies with the SCA regulations. Your first step is to ask your merchant bank if they support 3DS2. Your next step would be to contact your developer or contact us to make sure your eCommerce platform is using a modern version of your merchant’s payment gateway that supports 3DS2.

Help! I’m not compliant!

Worried you aren’t compliant? Just drop us an email and we will help get you straightened out!

This entry was posted in Blog, Ecommerce on January 18, 2022 by Carrie Saunders.

GoDaddy Breach November 2021

GoDady Breach - 1.2 Million WP accounts at risk!

Up to 1.2 Million WordPress Accounts At Risk in Latest Breach

GoDaddy has announced in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that up to 1.2 million managed WordPress accounts are at risk.

An unauthorized attacker managed to breach a “legacy” WordPress management tool still in use at GoDaddy.

The attacker used a compromised password on September 6, 2021 to access the tool. However, the breach wasn’t discovered by GoDaddy’s internal security team until November 17, 2021.

Over the six-week period of unauthorized access up to 1.2 million active and inactive managed WordPress customers had their email address and customer number exposed to the attackers.

Additionally, major customer credentials and secrets have been exposed:

Customers’ original WordPress Admin password (set at the time of account provisioning)
Customers’ FTP and database usernames and (plaintext) passwords
And, for a subset of these customers, their SSL private keys.

Immediate Consequences of the GoDaddy Breach

GoDaddy has implemented a series of changes to remediate the effects of the breach, including resetting any potentially compromised passwords.

While GoDaddy is still investigating the causes of the compromised accounts they are also reaching out to impacted customers to issue appropriate advice regarding resetting passwords.

They’re also attempting to raise awareness of the compromise of their users’ email addresses, so that those users can be conscious of phishing scams.

It is unclear whether GoDaddy has fully accounted for all potentially exposed private keys.

Long-term Consequences of the GoDaddy Breach

The attackers were able to gain access to raw passwords for sFTP and database accounts. It would therefore appear likely that at the very least GoDaddy was storing FTP credentials in a majorly insecure manner.

This is a huge security practice failure on GoDaddy’s part.

Storing passwords in plaintext is a major no-no. It’s unclear at this point why GoDaddy didn’t remediate this relatively basic flaw with their “legacy” managed WordPress service. This service – which makes up a sizeable portion of GoDaddy’s income – was fundamentally insecure.

It’s unclear what GoDaddy means by “legacy” and whether GoDaddy intended to move these customers off of this platform eventually. However it is clear that they did not do so soon enough.

GoDaddy is also keen to point out “best practices” for securing WordPress instances in a (long) series of posts. However, GoDaddy’s own mistakes here have lead to a massive customer exposure.

That does little to instill a sense of trust in GoDaddy who will need to do some reputation management in the coming months.

What should you do?

If you’re a GoDaddy Worpress user you should immediately reset all passwords associated with your account. Note: don’t re-use passwords, ever!

Users should also look to their email for notification from GoDaddy as to the status of their SSL certificates. At the time of this writing GoDaddy was still “in the process of issuing and installing new certificates for those customers.”

And it never hurts to consider alternatives when looking for WordPress hosting. We offer a low-cost basic hosting package that’s more than suitable for hosting a small WordPress site / blog. We also offer a wide variety of larger hosting packages that would perfectly suit the needs of a higher-trafficked site.

This entry was posted in Ecommerce, Hosting on November 23, 2021 by BCS Engineering.

Three Product Page Must Haves

Product Page Conversion Tips

Feeling lost about how to structure your product pages and what information to provide to your customers? With the holidays upon us, making sure your product pages have the key elements needed is vitally important.

Product Page Description

One of the main keys to conversion rates on product pages is how effective the description is. Think here in terms of what solution does your product solve, or what pain point does it relieve? What emotions or feelings will your product evoke upon the user when they have or use your product?

Rather than listing the benefits and features, tap into a person’s emotional side when creating your product descriptions. For some product it is important to list features and technical descriptions as well, but having the emotional aspect of the description first is important to those not needing/wanting any of the technical description parts.

Product Page Reviews

Product page reviews are key as well. They help build trust in the product and your brand/company for those new to your site. Think about how much time you spend reading reviews when you are shopping. I bet you read at least 2-3 for products or sites you are not familiar with. They really can seal the deal on a sale.

Product Page Images

High quality, detailed images really help sell a product. With so much shopping being virtual and online, you really need to bring the in person experience to the online world. Making sure you have clear detailed photos with multiple angles when possible is key. Having a few manufacturer images is fine, however adding in your own personal images really shows the potential customer, you are highly detailed and care about the sale, as well as provides more views and angles than manufacturers typically provide.

Summary

Having these 3 key Product Page elements optimize will greatly increase your conversion rates for your product pages. Helping turn your visitors into customers giving them the confidence to buy on your site!

If you have an eCommerce store and would like more info on how to further optimize your pages, Contact Us today and see if we would be a good fit for you!

Want to learn more about Converting your Website Better? I created an online course!

Have you ever wanted to learn more about optimizing your site? Have you worried potential customers were leaving your site too quickly? Worried it’s too much tech for you to dig into?

Then I have a course for you! We will be simplifying the tech, giving you step-by-step guides, and helping you along the way.

This course is designed for Business Owners, Entrepreneurs and Web Managers regardless of technical knowledge. Interested in learning more? Sign up to be the first to know when it is released!

https://learning.bcsengineering.com/the-converting-website

This entry was posted in Ecommerce on November 8, 2021 by Carrie Saunders.

How to Move Hosting Companies

Have you ever been fed up with your current hosting provider? Do they keep going down or have poor customer service?

Sometimes moving to a new hosting company is the answer. The biggest thing is, how do you do it, especially with eCommerce sites, with minimal to no down time?

The key is someone skilled at moving sites and DNS preparation.
How do you know if someone is skilled at moving sites? Ask them how long it takes for your site to come up on the new server during the transition. If they tell you a day or two, or even three, then they do not know how to properly prepare DNS. The answer should be an hour or less if they know how to prepare everything in advance.

Steps to moving to a new hosting provider

Create an account on the new hosting provider and copy your site to the new hosting provider
Use a development subdomain for this so you can test it. For example: dev.yourdomain.com
Once everything is set and working, start preparing DNS by turning the TTL (time to live) down on the DNS server settings. Put it as low as your DNS hosting will allow, however note what it is set to before you change it. We like to put it to 5 minutes.
After the time has past for the old DNS TTL setting you can get started doing the actual live move!
Start by copying the site again to the new hosting and re-test everything. This is your ‘dry run’ to make sure the copy will work seamlessly.
Note any issues, fix and try the dry run again until there are no issues.
If you have an eCommerce or dynamic store of any kind, close the store/put it in maintenance mode.
Copy the site to the new hosting provider and test one last time.
If everything works correctly, update your DNS to point to your new IP at your new hosting provider.
Open up the eCommerce store on the new hosting provider and you should be good to go!
If everything is good, you can later update the DNS to have a longer TTL if you’d like.

Summary

With this proper preparation, the only down time should be copying the site that one final time to the new hosting provider and then the minimal time for DNS to propagate! So it should be about 5-10 minutes depending on the speed of the copy of the site!

Keep in mind, sometimes bigger is not better when it comes to a hosting company. It really is the service that matters and level of support they provide. If you have an eCommerce store and aren’t happy with your service, contact us today to see if we would be a good fit for you!

This entry was posted in Ecommerce, Hosting on October 26, 2021 by Carrie Saunders.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Have you ever visited a website and as you were reading it, the website content shifted and moved? Have you been ready to click on a button or link and the page shifted causing you to click on something else or not click on anything at all?

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is Google’s new metric that has rolled out the summer of 2020 and will be in effect in 2021 as a ranking factor. This will be come a very big deal for ranking and honestly fixing it will improve user experience; which is what Google aims for. To present to you, the user, with websites that are a good user experience with relevant content.

Why Does CLS Occur?

Some common reasons for CLS include:

Images without dimensions
Tables without dimensions
Embedded elements, such as iframes and ads, that have no dimension defined
Dynamic content that doesn’t have a preset size on the page and loads after the page is mostly rendered

What is a Good CLS Score?

You should strive for a CLS score of less than 0.1. There are many tools out there that can help you measure this including Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

What Can You Do About It?

Make sure every area that contains content has dimensions to it. This includes images, video, tabled information, etc.

A properly designed site should have all areas of it pre-defined before the page starts to load. This gives the best user experience. So not only will you be helping your google rankings in 2021, but you also will be improving your user experience if you fix any CLS issues.

How we can help

Sometimes fixing CLS issues can be an involved task that you’d need a programmer to fix. We have been helping clients since this summer fix their issues and help improve their rankings in search engines. Contact us Today to help!

This entry was posted in Ecommerce on September 9, 2020 by Carrie Saunders.

How to Effectively Work from Home

Effectively working from home can be a challenge, especially if you are not already used to it. Our original BCS Engineering staff worked in my house or in their own house in the early years. Working from home has several positives and several negatives. Navigating those to create the proper balance will help you be able to effectively work from home.

Positives of Working from Home

There are many positives from working from home. From personal to professional and in-between. For example, you can throw in a load of laundry when you take a small break from work. This not only lets you take a nice mental break from work to refresh your brain, but it also helps you get a chore done you wouldn’t other wise be able to if you were at work.

Get more sleep because you no longer have the work commute time
Do small chores during your work breaks
Eat healthier because you can cook your lunch
Be home with your pets
Work from anywhere
Use your workout equipment while taking a brief break

Negatives of Working from Home

While there are many positives from working from home, there are also some downsides from both a personal and professional standpoint. For example, over achieving people can fall into the trap of working all waking hours and never truly getting a break and having down time. I originally fell into this trap. I was working from about 8am until about 5pm, then working again after the kids went to bed from 9pm until 12am. It took a lot of work and effort to break this habit of mine and realize, it was OK to not work that many hours in a day!

Potential to becoming a workaholic
Not taking time for yourself
Missing out on a work ‘family’
Distractions, especially if you have children at home with you
Becoming too distanced from others

Effective Work from Home Tips

If you do find the need to work from home, or even the want to work from home, there are some guidelines and tips that will help you have a productive and healthy home work environment.

Home Office Setup

In particular, to be effective at home and balance a needed rest time in your day, I highly recommend having a separate ‘work’ area from the rest of your house. This could be simply a specific desk that you only do work at, or it could be an extra room. Having a consistent place you sit down to work, and do nothing but work from this location, helps you keep a line between work and personal time. This doesn’t mean you can’t take your laptop and work outside if it’s a nice day, but having a consistent place that you normally do work helps you mentally.

I also recommend your office area be tidied up on a regular basis. This could be daily or weekly. I usually don’t recommend less often than that. And tidy doesn’t mean ‘perfect,’ it just means it needs to be, by your standards, uncluttered. I usually do have ‘that stack of papers,’ but I know what’s in my stack of papers and I know I’ll get to that stack when I need to. The goal here is to not have anything uncluttered and unknown in your brain. That causes internal conflict and stress while you are working as well as while you are not when you see that mess!

Keep things you need daily in arms reach! This will keep you more efficient. If you use it daily, keep it close. Weekly, a little farther away (maybe an office chair roll away). Something you only occasionally need? Keep that even farther. The main goal is to keep things you always need right there so you don’t have to get up.

Work from Home Schedule

Just like you would have a schedule if you worked outside the home, you need to have a schedule at home. This will help you be more consistent, efficient and allow you to give yourself permission to not work when it’s time to not work!

Get up at about the same time every day, eat your breakfast, brush your teeth, shower, etc. Put on comfortable clothes, but I recommend something more than just sweats. You’ll feel more like you are going to work if you do a normal morning routine and put on something more than just lounge clothes!

Plan for your lunch time, make sure you eat your lunch away from your work area. Just like it’s healthy when at work, to get up away from your desk for lunch, it is also healthy when you work from home. You need that mental break from work, so you can recoup your brain and be ready for the afternoon set of work.

Have a scheduled stop time. This can vary a little, but set a time range of when you will stop working. Maybe for you that would be between 5pm and 5:30. But have a consistent time frame. This helps give you permission to get up away from your work, and have time for your personal life.

Take Breaks when Working from Home

Just like you should take breaks in a work environment, you need to also take breaks when working from home. You could go for a 10 minute walk. You could put in a load of laundry. You could load the dishes. Think of something that you either enjoy doing, or something that if you did, you’d feel a sense of relief (which is why I have chores in there too!)

Get out of the House!

Like actually do it! Make sure you get out of the house regularly! You want to make sure you have enough social interaction. Even if you are more introverted, getting out with a friend (or friends) regularly is very good for your overall health.

Summary

In summary, weight the positives and negatives for you. This will vary based upon your personality and normal tendencies. Make sure you have a good home office area set up, have a routine, take breaks and get out of the house! If you feel overwhelmed or don’t feel like you are effective working from home, take a look at each piece, pull it apart, try something new or different and see what works best for you!

This entry was posted in Around the Office on March 25, 2020 by Carrie Saunders.