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TP digital are proud to announce the expansion and development of our Latin American Wix design agency business, with dedicated South American based design teams and Spanish and Portuguese customer support. Since the end of March, when lockdown for COVID-19 began, we have been working hard to grow our team so we can help business owners based in South America get their businesses back up and running and making money during these difficult times. COVID-19 has been difficult for business owners worldwide, but we feel it has had a particularly devastating effect for those based in South America as many have little if any online presence. For founders, Julie London and Raúl Schweizer, who were based out of the Argentinian office when Argentina closed borders and introduced mandatory quarantine, they saw first hand how the lockdowns were causing problems for businesses and causing many to shut up doors for good. With Argentina facing one of the longest lockdowns in the world, they were keen to help support business owners and give them affordable solutions to getting their businesses up and running online and continue trading throughout quarantine, whilst still obeying government restrictions. By July 2020, we had put our team together and since then we have already helped 30 South American businesses building, editing and redesigning their Wix websites to help them increase their online presence and offer their products online. We have seen a huge increase in South American based visitors to our site and in South American Wix Marketplace project requests as a result and are looking forward to working with many more in the coming months. TP digital now offers a range of Wix services to Spanish and Portuguese clients in South America, with direct communication via email, WhatsApp and zoom calls in these languages. South American services include: Wix web design, Wix website redesign, Wix website editing/troubleshooting, Wix SEO setup and social media management services. Don’t let COVID-19 stop your business aspirations this year, instead maximise your online presence with a great Wix website and great social media posts and we are confident this will help you maintain and grow your customer base. To find out more on how TP digital can help your South American business, please contact Raúl Schweizer, LATAM Project Director here.

Interesting video from The World Economic Forum which discusses some of the key changes to come out of COVID-19 are: social contact, green economy and “technology is very much advanced now by COVID. Everything with the ability to be digitalised, should be digitalised.” - Klaus Schwab. Get your business online with Wix today. We can help you build a beautiful website that gets you new customers. Get a quot find out more by emailing our team at tpdigital@thepolera.co.uk.

Whether you are starting out as a freelancer, new business owner or are forced to work from home due to the Coronavirus, it can be a little daunting knowing how to start or carry on business from your home effectively. We’ve put together a few top tips to help get you started: 1. Routine Working from home has many benefits but it is important to establish a strict routine early on. If you are usually office based, use the same routine as you would do when you work at the office - start work at the same time, take your usual lunch break and finish work at the same time each day. One of the pitfalls of working from home for some is that it can be tempting to be always working. And to keep working until that project or email or design is finished, which can lead to super late nights. Not good for you, your health or your personal relationships, so maintain your regular hours! 2. Set up a designated working area Work in the same place in your house each day, whether that is in your study, guest room, kitchen or dining room. Set up your work space so that you have everything you need - a table to work from, your laptop and plugs close by, stationery etc. Doing this will make you more productive than sitting working on the couch (as tempting as it may be). Plus it will also reduce any potential back or neck strain. 3. Liaise with your team via WhatsApp or Skype Use technology to keep in touch with your team and colleagues when working on projects. Setting up a WhatsApp Group can be a great way of keeping contact with your team, when you cannot physically see them to discuss the work you are doing (especially during scenarios such as Coronavirus quarantine). 4. Set ground rules with the other people that share the space If you have other people in the house while you are working, you need to set some rules in place of what they can and cannot do during that time. This prevents you from having to work in a noisy environment or from being constantly interrupted. 5. Ask for the equipment and support you need If you’re working from home for a company or organisation due to the Coronavirus, make sure you ask for the equipment you need. Even if you are only working from home for a few weeks, you should still be comfortable so consider asking for a mouse and keyboard and some kind of back supporting cushion. 6. Take sick days if you need to When you’re working from home and get sick it can be tempting to keep working. However, its best to let your company and client know you are sick and won’t be working that day or days. Not resting when you are sick can make your symptoms worse and take you longer to recover, plus when you are ill you are not always working at your most productive.

Do you often forget to post your blog posts? Perhaps you've written them in advance but always forget to post them when you had meant for them to go live? Or perhaps you are struggling to get into a good blogging routine. Well the new Wix blog now has the ability to preschedule your blog posts at a time to suit you. You can now schedule the exact time and date that you wish to have your blog post to go live and once it's set up you don't have to log back in to publish it. To find out exactly how to schedule your blog posts in the new Wix Blog, check out our YouTube tutorial down below.

Wix is known for being a great free website builder that allows you to quickly and easily build your own website, but it also has a great range of premium plans for startups and established businesses. We often get asked what are the benefits of upgrading to a premium Wix hosting plan when Wix allows you to have a free site, so we thought we would look at the benefits in more detail and why they would be important to your business. We will also look at the advantages of pay yearly subscriptions versus pay monthly and which one would be right for your business. Free Wix sites: Wix allows you to test out their Wix builder platform and even publish a site (on a wix website address) for FREE! This is great for when you want to play around with different design ideas, perhaps test out ideas with consumer research or to present to potential investors. It is also great for personal websites such as your own travel blog that you share only with friends and family. The problem with the free sites is that these are not easy to find in search results due to the Wix website address you are given and so it doesn’t perform well with SEO. The other problem is that you willl have Wix ads all over your website, which doesn’t look very professional if you are trying to promote your business to customers. Benefits of upgrading to a premium site: You can connect your own website address (domain name), instead of using the assigned URL Wix gives you. This means people will be easily able to find your site and it will appear more easily in Google and other search engines. Remove Wix ads. Premium plans mean you have no Wix branding on your site making your site appear more professional and sleek. Over 500MB storage available on Wix Premium plans - perfect for those sites who have lots of image and video content Larger bandwidth from 1GB and up on Wix premium plans so your sites will load faster than the free plans. Google Analytics is included in Wix premium plans - meaning you can track exactly which pages are most poplar and tweak your content and promotions to achieve the best results. It also means you can see where your customers are visiting from which allows you to have a greater understanding of your customer base and shopping habits. Different types of premium plans: There are many different types of Wix Premium Plans to choose from depending on your needs. They are divided up into Website Plans and Business & eCommerce Plans. Website Plans contain the minimum features you need to get your site up and running and are the cheapest option of the premium plans - often perfect for startups. Business and eCommerce plans have many more additional features than the standard Website Plans, including the ability to accept online payments, have a checkout functionality, and the use of the advanced Wix Business app features such as email marketing and more. Pay monthly vs pay yearly subscriptions: Pay monthly is good for those of you who may be just starting out with your business and want to test out an idea before you upgrade to a yearly package or perhaps you may have limited funds. It may also be useful for those sites that would be only used for a short period of time - such as a special promotion, or marketing campaign or for an event (such as a wedding). For all other cases, we would strongly recommend upgrading to the yearly subscription as it will actually work out cheaper in the long run, saving you money. But also more importantly, annual subscriptions come with a range of additional free features (see pricing plans for further details: https://www.wix.com/store/plans?siteGuid=c7164866-1a6e-4d77-87f5-b7d99b02fb9e) that can help you boost your business potential.

Website accessibility has hit the news headlines recently, especially in the USA with many big corporations falling victim to their websites not being fully accessible to people with disabilities and as a result having large lawsuits filed against them. We thought we would take a look at just why website accessibility is so important for any business, big or small, wherever you are in the world. Making your website accessible not only protects you from similar lawsuits as Dominos in the USA recently experienced, but also allows you to attract more customers. According to UserWay, one in five of your customers need help with viewing your website in an accessible way due to a disability. Have a think about that for a moment. That’s potentially a fifth of your customer base. If they can’t access your website easily and correctly and make a purchase, that means that you may lose a fifth of the potential sales you could make. We found this video from blind YouTuber Molly Burke, particularly insightful in just how blind and disabled visitors may have trouble navigating around websites and making an online purchase. Take a look at the video and see where she had trouble using a website for online shopping - would your own business’s website have similar problems? How to make your Wix site accessible: 1. Use Wix accessibility tools: https://www.wix.com/wix-lp/accessibility?fbclid=IwAR2FEYaZM9s3AQ1Dh_Q7iXMisuieaK67SBxae3o6870Nr5HshpnWTvlBQGc 2. Add an accessibility widget such as UserWay - we can install this for you alongside an Accessibility disclaimer page and text for a flat fee of £35.00, book this service via our 1-hour site editing service here https://www.tpdigital.co.uk/wix-editing-packages .

This week saw the Supreme Court in the USA hand victory to a blind man who sued Domino’s over site accessibility. Guillermo Robles sued the pizza chain after he was unable to order food on Domino’s website and mobile app despite using his screen-reading software. His attorneys argued that “the Americans with Disabilities Act requires businesses with physical locations to make their websites and other online platforms accessible to those with disabilities.” According to accessible technology firm UsableNet, this lawsuit is one of an increasing number of lawsuits filed over website accessibility in the last few years. They said that “last year, more than 2,200 such suits were filed in federal courts.” Read the story in full here: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/07/dominos-supreme-court.html . This may have happened in America and to a large company, so you may think it doesn’t relate to your small business or startup. That’s where you’re wrong. Each country around the world has its own rules and regulations that stipulate a requirement for businesses to make their websites accessible to those with disabilities especially if you are in the public sector or offer a public service. Make sure you check the regulations and laws for your own country, but also don’t forget if you have a strong online presence, you are likely to get international website visitors. These visitors may expect you to have the same regulations and accessibility as in their own country. “On 23 September 2018 new regulations on the accessibility of websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies came into force in the UK. These regulations implement the EU directive on web accessibility and require public sector websites and mobile applications to achieve specific accessibility standards. This applies to all publicly-funded higher and further education institutions. The government will be monitoring affected websites and apps to check they follow the rules and aren’t breaking the new legal requirements.” [source: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/accessibility] For UK companies and businesses, you can find details on website accessibility and what is expected of your business here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/make-your-website-or-app-accessible-and-publish-an-accessibility-statement . Did you know that according to Userway “One-in-five users require web accessibility to use your site”? We think its better to be safe than sorry and we now recommend all of our clients, no matter how big or small to have an accessibility widget installed on their website that uses the latest accessibility software (including screen reading technology, text enlargement and more other features), as well as an accessibility disclaimer clearly listed on their website. We have added such technology to our own website to ensure that it is as accessible to everyone as currently possible with today’s technology. We use the Userway accessibility widget and can install this on your Wix website for you alongside an Accessibility disclaimer page and text for a small fee of just £35.00, book this service today at https://www.tpdigital.co.uk/wix-editing-packages . We will be recommending all of our Wix website clients to install such software to their Wix sites from now on.

If you built your Wix website a while ago, you may have the old Wix Blog format and so you will need to switch to the new Wix Blog with a whole host of new features and designs to make your blog look better than ever. Steps to start the transfer process: (see https://support.wix.com/en/article/information-on-switching-from-the-previous-wix-blog-to-the-new-wix-blog for full details) 1. Copy your old blog posts 2. Update the URLs of your blog posts 3. Delete your old blog and publish the updates (see https://support.wix.com/en/article/deleting-the-old-wix-blog for instructions on how to delete the old blog).

TP digital have been listed on the Wix Arena as Wix Pro Designers for over five years now. Every day we get many Wix Arena quote requests from people around the world needing help with their websites. We spend a lot of time every day responding to these requests. A lot of the requests we receive are very vague when it comes to a brief and so we have to ask more questions to fully understand what the client is looking for to give them an accurate quote. This can be time consuming both for the Web Designer and the potential client. To try and help you and your Web Designers speed up the Wix Arena request process, we have put together a quick checklist to help you get the information ready that you will need when you look for a Wix Web Designer in the Wix Arena. This will help ensure that the Wix Web Designer will fully understand your requirements and reply quickly with a quote so you can start work as soon as possible on your new website. Things to prepare/think about before contacting designers in the Wix Arena: 1. What do you want your site to do? Do you want your site to be a basic information site? Should it act as your online portfolio if you are an artist or designer? Or do you want to sell something and have an online store? 2. What do you want your site to look like? Do you have an idea on what you want your site to look like with regards to colour scheme, graphics etc. Mention this in your brief to your Web Designer as it may mean that the site will be quicker to produce for them and so you may get a cheaper quote. 3. How many pages do you want on your site? This is something Web Designers need to know as it determines how much time will be need to be spent working and designing your site and so will affect the quote. The more pages you need, the longer the site will take the Web Designer to build and therefore the larger the quote generally. 4. Do you need any special functionality or coding on your site? This is something your Web Designer needs to know so they can make sure they can do the coding work and all factor this into the estimated delivery time and quote. Complex coding can take a while to create and test. 5. What is your budget? This is important to think about, as you can search Wix Designer by budget level and also when you put in your work request you can add your budget. If your budget is too low, some Wix Designers will reject the work as their fees are higher than your budget. Please be realistic with your budgets, even simple small websites can take at least a full day’s work to produce. If you have a very small budget it may be better to build the site initially yourself and then hire a Wix Designer to edit your site for you for a few hours (at an hourly editing rate - this is a service we offer) or perhaps just redesign the homepage to start with. 6. When do you want the site to go live? Please be realistic about this. If you want a large site of over 15 pages and have over 100 products to be loaded, a Wix Designer will not be able to do this within two days. Our estimated turnaround time is usually two weeks, which allows for one round of editing per page, but if additional edits are required then this may take longer. When posting your Work Request, you should fill out as many details as possible about the project as this will greatly help your potential Web Designers get back to you quickly with an accurate quote for the work and not keep emailing you asking for further details. Most Web Designers will reply to your request in the first instance by email, so be sure to also check your junk email folder just in case a reply has gone astray. We always send quotes by email rather than on the phone, so that each party has a physical written copy of the quote and terms to refer back to. Lastly, one thing we feel we must point out: Wix certified Web Designers that are listed in the Wix Arena will not produce your website for free. Wix may be a free platform in which you can build you own site for free, but if you want a Wix certified expert (who have many years of experience, training and knowledge in this specific area) to build a site for you on Wix they will charge you at an industry rate.

News came out at the end of August of a new type of attack on WordPress sites of all sizes by cyber criminals. The ongoing attack comes in the form of a website hacking campaign that started sometime in July 2019. The attack started out by redirecting browsers to sites with dodgy adverts and malicious software. However, it has now developed further with a researcher at the Defiant Threat Intelligence team reporting that the attack has now added additional scripts that tries to install a backdoor into the target site, meaning the hacker would have have full administrator rights of your site and be able to change or add anything they wish to your site without your knowledge. Scary right? It is reported that attackers are accessing WordPress sites through third-party WordPress plugins, so be sure to update all your plugins and themes and check your site for updates regularly. To read the full article, please check the link listed below. We would recommend actually scheduling time in your calendar to make sure to check for these. You should also consider using two-factor authentication for admin access. If you are thinking of switching from WordPress to Wix (where all security updates are handled for you by Wix themselves), get in touch with us today for a FREE quote. Source: Forbes article

You’ve built your website, you’ve had a successful launch … so your website work is done, right? ... Wrong! ... A good website needs to be properly maintained and updated regularly. Here’s our quick weekly maintenance guide for your website (feel free to print this off and keep it next to your computer or in your planner): 1. Blog 🔲 Have you written and scheduled your blog posts this week? Ideally you want to be blogging regularly at regular times for maximum SEO benefits. You should be blogging at least once a week. Posts should be related to your business announcing your latest news, as well as things/debates/news related to your industry as a whole. Don't forget to add hashtags, alt tags and categories to your blog posts to make them easy to find in search results. 2. Is your e-Commerce store up to date? 🔲 If you have an e-Commerce site, you will need to check your products regularly (at least once a week - perhaps a Monday to ensure your week starts off on the right foot). Do you have new services you want to promote t? Then don't forget to add them to your site - whether it is creating a new section or a dedicated page to the new section. hing, this needs updating on your online store). Keeping on top of these things will make for smooth running of your e-Commerce store and avoid unnecessary delays or problems with supply for customers. 3. New services? 🔲 Do you have new services you want to promote to your customers? Then don't forget to add them to your site - whether it is creating a new section within your services page or creating a whole new dedicated page to the new service. Customers like updates, so be sure to promote the new service on your homepage, as well as your email marketing/newsletters and of course on your social media posts. 4. Booking system 🔲 Are you available every day this week for people to make appointments? Do you need to revise the calendar if you or another staff member are already pre-booked? Don't forget to block out your holidays when you book them. 5. Mobile site 🔲 Have you made some design changes to your desktop site? Don’t forget to update these on your mobile site. It’s always worth checking your mobile site once a week to ensure everything looks and works how you want it to

Wix is a great tool to build your own website quickly for your event, new product or startup business. But it can also be overwhelming to know where to begin, especially if you've never designed a site by yourself before. We often have clients come to us asking for help designing their site or redesigning their site, after they felt lost and overwhelmed designing it themselves. To help you get started, I thought I’d outline some design mistakes to avoid when designing your own site. These will help ensure your site looks beautiful, sticks to your branding and is easy to use and navigate around. 6 web design mistakes to avoid: 1. Complicated cluttered homepages There is nothing worse than a homepage that is overly complicated, cluttered and has no structure or order. Think about when you are looking online and you come across a site like that, you quickly click away and use a competitor's site - not what you want your site visitors to do! I originally trained as a journalist and during my journalism training, my lecturers always pressed the acronym KISS on us - "Keep It Simple Stupid". Writing in a simple style that anyone can understand is the best way to get your news story across and the same can be said for website design. Now I’m not certainly not calling anyone stupid, but keeping homepage designs simple and clutter free means your site visitors can quickly and easily find the information they want and then easily explore the rest of your site. This is the best way of converting site visitors into paying customers, by making sure they can quickly and easily find what they want. 2. No navigation menu When you are designing your website, you always need to make sure it is easy to navigate for your visitors. If you make it too hard to explore beyond your homepage, how will they find the rest of your content, purchase your products or get in touch with you? You have to make it easy for them and guide them through your site. Every site needs some kind of navigation menu - whether this is the traditional menu that appears at the top of every page, a side menu or a more minimalistic burger menu that then opens the full menu in a lightbox pop-up. Even if you are going for a super simplistic minimalist style, you MUST have some kind of navigation on your site (I would recommend some kind of burger style menu for minimalist sites). 3. Too many colours Colours should be used that reflect your branding, but this doesn't mean you should use every colour in the rainbow. Not every colour goes well with other colours and you certainly don't want to turn off site visitors and potential customers by a poorly thought out colour scheme. Instead, you should think carefully about your colour usage and create a colour scheme for your site (check out colour scheme generator sites such as Coolor). Different colours have different meanings and can create different reactions from your site visitors - check out articles on colour theory when deciding on the best colours you want to use on your site and branding so you create the right message. Think about how you will use the colours you choose for best effect and impact. Yellow for example is not always the best colour to use for body text as it can be hard to read depending on what hue you use and the background colour it is placed against. 4. Too many different fonts Wix has a huge range of fonts you can use as well as the ability to upload your own fonts for use on your website. BUT this doesn’t mean you should or need to use them all (yes I have actually had a client in the past who wanted to use all of them). Using too many fonts actually makes your branding less powerful and impactful and can make your site look messy and unprofessional. Instead, I always recommend our clients to stick to around three fonts (you can have less if you prefer). Three fonts is plenty - one for your main headings, a different one for your sub-headings and a third more basic one for your body text that is easy to read. If you are using Script style fonts in your main branding such as your logo, it is fine to use these also in your main headings, but we wouldn't recommend using them in the smaller body text. This is because more fancy script style fonts can be hard to read when they are in a smaller font size and you always want your body text to be easy to read for anyone. 5. Too much animation A bit of movement and interest on your site can make your site engaging, but too much can leave visitors feeling like they've either just got off a rollercoaster or that they don't know where to look next. Instead, I would recommend using animation and parallax scroll effects sparingly for effect or to highlight key things on your site. When I design sites for clients, I like to use the parallax scroll effect for images as it gives great 3D effect and depth to sites, but I always make sure they aren't over used and also are surrounded by white space and non-moving text, headings and buttons. This also makes sure the images with the parallax scroll effect really make an impact. 6. Animation that is too fast If you are using animation on your site to make text appear as a viewer scrolls down the site or to highlight a CTA, make sure you set the animation speed so that it isn't too fast. Slower animation speeds work better and also create less confusion for site visitors. 7. Forgetting to set up the mobile version Once you have designed your Wix website desktop version, Wix will automatically brings over all your design elements to your mobile site. But, this doesn't mean you have an automatic mobile site version. Instead, you will often have to move things around and put them back into place. Don't forget to do this, otherwise your mobile site visitors will be presented with quite frankly a messy mobile site version of your new website, which will be a BIG turn off! 8. Forgetting to update the mobile version Every time you change something on your desktop version of your site or add something new or create a new page, you will need to also make sure it is set up correctly on your mobile site. Wix will automatically add the new content to your mobile site but it won't necessarily keep it in the correct order or display it how you would like it to. So make sure you always double check! Have fun! Website design should be fun and if you get stuck, we are only a message away! #ThursdayTopTips #Design #webdesign #webdesigntips #howtodesignyourownwebsite #designadvice #wixadvice