Website Accessibility & the Law: Why Your Website Must Be Compliant

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 wrote into law the right of all persons to have access to public facilities, spaces, and resources regardless of visible or invisible disability. While this legislation has been very helpful in increasing physical accessibility through initiatives like ramp-building, TTY programs, designated parking areas, and more – the ADA was drafted before the internet became a mainstay of daily life, and does not provide clear guidance on how to adapt accessibility to the digital and virtual realms. Because general accessibility liabilities apply equally to your business’ physical store or office location and to your company website, it’s important to understand how the ADA applies to your digital presence. Learn more about accessibility law and how to be in compliance in this article.

Read the full article at: www.searchenginejournal.com

The negative impact of an outdated firm website

A common mistake that a business can make is creating their website and never updating it again. When visitors come to a site that is out of date, it creates a very poor first impression: if you don’t care about your business why would any prospect? Regularly updating a site’s content helps with its search engine ranking and ability to retain visitors and generate leads. Scheduling time to check for updates, bugs or sharing a post will help keep your site safe, up to date and welcoming to visitors.

WordPress Dominates the CMS Space

Best of Growth Spurts – Our Favorite Posts from January

We regularly update our Growth Spurts blog with actionable marketing & technology advice, news and information. These articles are often hand-picked to address issues and projects we’re working on with our clients, but they are relevant to most business owners involved with any aspect of marketing their business. Here are our 5 favorite posts this month:

On Content Marketing

10 Content Marketing Goals Worth Pursuing – Content marketing – your blog, downloads, white papers – is quite often one of the biggest marketing expenses, and one of the most difficult to measure.

Adwords and email gives the satisfaction of seeing immediate, measurable results. But your investment in “content”? It’s often a big unknown.

The goals in this article help put that investment in context: Invest in content, and you invest in your business. Consider: building trust and rapport with your audience; attracting new prospects; deepening loyalty with existing customers; helping with SEO; and even attracting strategic partners.

And to help you develop your 2017 Content Marketing plan, this article – B2B Content Marketing 2017: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – gathers 25 content marketing stats all in one place … dive in, explore and learn.

On Email Marketing

13 Things to Start, Stop & Keep Doing With Your Email Marketing in 2017 – Email marketing is a powerful tool to encourage your audience to engage with content and to nurture leads in your database along the buyer’s journey. Understanding the points made in this article will ensure that your email marketing is 2017-ready.

On Exit Planning

First Impressions are Critical in the Sale of a Business. What Impression Does Your Website Give? – For business owners contemplating selling their business, one of the many factors that can help them achieve their exit revenue goals is better and more cost-effective marketing. This includes their online presence, which starts with the company website. Not sure if your website will help or hurt your ability to sell your business? Our alliance partner at Business Transition Academy outlines five factors to take into account.

On SEO

8 SEO Trends You Need to Pay Attention to in 2017 – SEO is a constantly changing landscape. This article highlights eight trends to be aware of as we start 2017, including:

• HTTPS is no longer just an option. Security issues aside, Google has confirmed it’s a ranking signal.
• Social media will be an even larger referral traffic goldmine.
• Mobile-first strategies have become a necessity.
• Links will continue to be important, but they should be a by-product of excellent content.

Continue reading for details on these and 4 more SEO trends for 2017.

The Most Effective SEO Tactics – According to recent research from Ascend2, marketers say creating relevant content is the most effective search engine optimization (SEO) tactic. Results also show that it’s the most difficult to execute. Read the article.

On Analytics

How Google Analytics Ruined Marketing – Strategy => Content => Channel. This article reinforces the need for all marketers to understand the difference between a marketing strategy (what message are you trying to convey) and a marketing channel (what’s the best method for conveying that message).

It also reinforces one of Sales Renewal’s key beliefs that “there is no ‘digital marketing’ and ‘traditional marketing.'” Sure, there are digital channels and traditional channels, but they all should be used to support the marketing strategy. Read the article.

Sales Renewal Develops Multi-Dimensional, Visual Search System for Non-Profit Client

The Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation of Harvard Law School (CHLPI) advocates for legal, regulatory, and policy reforms to improve the health of underserved populations.

Two years ago, Sales Renewal worked with CHLPI to build a new WordPress website that was modern-looking, responsive and easy for the CHLPI team to maintain. A key component of the new website was the creation of a Health Library, which houses all of its published research, articles from academic journals, and legal documents like amici briefs and administrative complaints.

As the number of publications in this Library grew over the last two years, CHLPI realized it was getting more and more difficult for readers to find the content most relevant to them. and they identified the need to be able to search by:

1. Keywords
2. Geography
3. Type of document
4. Topic
5. Publication year
6. Combinations of the above

In addition, for the geographic search, they also wanted it to not only be textual (the name of a state) but also visual (clicking the state on a map).

When they approached Sales Renewal for advice, we understood that as a non-profit, they were budget-sensitive, so we looked at available WordPress plugins that would meet these criteria. Unfortunately, while their search requirements could be addressed by separate plugins, there weren’t any that would handle all at once.

Affordable, Custom Search System

Consequently, Sales Renewal created a custom search system for CHLPI’s Health Library Publications that integrated multiple off-the-shelf plugins to meet their requirements at an affordable price:

• A multi-faceted, term-based filtering system, allowing users to narrow their search by Geographic Focus, Document Type, Publication Topic, or Publication year
• A keyword-based search system
• A visual, map-based filter in which will automatically update to indicate which geographic regions have applicable publications

Other notable features include:

• The system requires no additional work on the web editor’s part when adding a publication to the library – all they do is include a specific tag to categorize it correctly
• The entire system runs on asynchronous JavaScript*, so the page doesn’t have to reload when filters or search terms are changed
• Filters are represented as query strings in the website’s URL (for example, http://www.chlpi.org/health_library/?fwp_geographic_focus=south-carolina), which means that specific searches can be bookmarked by users for future reference, or linked to from outside sources, such as other websites, blog posts, or e-mails.
• The system is responsive, and works on desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones.

Feedback on the new Library has been overwhelmingly positive and has been called a “fantastic addition.” We encourage you to visit the CHLPI Health Library and test out the features for yourself. And please contact us for your next custom development project – we’re happy to provide a no-charge consultation.

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* Synchronous code is executed in sequence – each statement in the code waits for the previous statement to finish before executing. Asynchronous code doesn’t wait – your program can continue to run. This helps keep your site or app responsive, and reduces waiting time, making for a better user experience.