Below are the links mentioned in the book, as well as some additional items.
Featured Case Study
We would like to give a particular shout-out to this excellent blog post How we made a better podcast website for Lingthusiasm. It’s a deep dive into how Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne revamped the website for their excellent podcast Lingthusiasm. The post is very detailed but we think it’s worth reading in its entirety whether you know anything about the world of podcasting or not. The process McCulloch and Gawne undertook ticks off a lot of the recommendations from this book, of particular interest is that:
- Their approach was very systematic: this shows you don’t need a background in digital marketing to do this well; having general knowledge about the online space you occupy and being organised will help you a lot.
- They precisely identified the problem(s) that the podcast website refresh was trying to solve, rather than just doing “a refresh”.
- They thought about several different user segments/personas and designed a website plan and information architecture around this.
- They undertook validation of their theories through extensive research. For most websites we’d recommend a combination of the qualitative approach (eg. polls, speaking to people) and the quantitative (eg. Google Analytics).
- The design factored in the different page types and didn’t just focus on the homepage, like most websites most of the expected traffic would land on a deep page, this refresh accounted for this.
- However the homepage was designed to quickly and easily spoon-feed all of the major user segments so that they can click on straight away for further action.
If you estimate how long you think it would take to refresh a podcast website and then read the blog post you’ll probably find that it describes a LOT more work than you estimated. Remember Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law!
Domain resources
- Domain name generator: https://instantdomainsearch.com/
- Another one: https://www.nameboy.com/
- And another one: https://domainwheel.com/
- WhoIs Lookup for Australia: https://whois.auda.org.au/
- Domain price comparison: https://tld-list.com/
- We tend to use this registrar for .au domains: https://www.onlydomains.com/
- Cloudflare provides free domains for some extensions, just pay the ICANN fee: https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/
- This search is good for helping you narrow down to one of the new top-level domains that exists (eg .charity): https://au.godaddy.com/domains/gtld-domain-names
Content Management System (CMS) resources
Self-hosted CMSes
- WordPress.org (ie. self hosted): https://wordpress.org/
- Joomla: https://www.joomla.org/
- Drupal: https://www.drupal.org/
- Adobe Commerce (Magento): https://business.adobe.com/products/magento/magento-commerce.html
- Statamic: https://statamic.com/
- Adobe: https://business.adobe.com/au/products/experience-manager/adobe-experience-manager.html
- Grav: https://getgrav.org/
- PC Mag’s best web hosting: https://au.pcmag.com/web-hosting-services/9189/the-best-web-hosting-services
Platforms with fully managed hosting
- WordPress.com (ie. hosted by WordPress): https://wordpress.com/
- Squarespace: https://www.squarespace.com/
- Wix: https://www.wix.com/
- Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/
- Hubspot: https://www.hubspot.com/products/cms
- Webflow: https://webflow.com/
Additional services
- Cloudflare CDN: https://www.cloudflare.com/cdn/
- Cyotek WebCopy for archiving: https://www.cyotek.com/cyotek-webcopy
Security resources
- Let’s Encrypt free SSL: https://letsencrypt.org/
- Cloudflare: https://www.cloudflare.com/
- Google Recaptcha: https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/docs/v3
- Why no padlock? https://www.whynopadlock.com/
- Google Authenticator app (Google Play) for 2FA: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.authenticator2
- Google Authenticator app (Apple): https://apps.apple.com/au/app/google-authenticator/id388497605
- Our blog post on why you should change your password: https://tacticlab.com.au/knowledge-base/strategic-marketing/change-your-password
- Passphrase generator: https://www.useapassphrase.com/
- LastPass password manager: https://www.lastpass.com/
- 1Password password manager: https://1password.com/
- Keepass password manager: https://keepass.info/
Freelancer resources
- Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/
- Fiverr: https://www.fiverr.com/
- Freelancer: https://www.freelancer.com.au/
Free to use media
- Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/
- Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
- Free To Use Sounds: https://www.freetousesounds.com/
Analytics resources
- Google Tag Manager for implementing any tracking tags: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/tag-manager/
- Google Analytics: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/
- Matomo: https://matomo.org/
- Cloudflare Analytics: https://www.cloudflare.com/en-au/web-analytics/
- Clicky: https://clicky.com/
- Yandex Metrika: https://metrica.yandex.com/about
- Adobe Analytics (enterprise): https://www.adobe.io/apis/experiencecloud/analytics.html
- Mixpanel: https://mixpanel.com/
- Heap: https://heap.io/
- Cookiebot: https://www.cookiebot.com/en/
Accessibility, usability + website feedback resources
- Accessibility requirements: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickref/
- Accessibility evaluation tools: https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/
- AU government usability resource: https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/disability-rights/world-wide-web-access-disability-discrimination-act-advisory-notes-ver
- US government usability resource: https://www.usability.gov/
- Chrome Lighthouse report has a usability section: https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse
- Accessibe: https://accessibe.com/
- Typeform: https://try.typeform.com/survey-builder/
- Hotjar Feedback Surveys: https://www.hotjar.com/feedback-surveys/
- Iubenda for an example of a free privacy policy generator: https://www.iubenda.com/
- An example of a T&C page generator: https://www.termsandconditionsgenerator.com/
- Falsehoods programmers believe about names: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) resources
- Google Search Console: https://search.google.com/search-console/about
- Bing Webmasters: https://www.bing.com/webmasters/about
- Moz free resources and content: https://moz.com/resources?type=guide
- SEMRush blog: https://www.semrush.com/blog/
- Title tag preview tool: https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag
- Schema.org entities: https://schema.org/docs/full.html
- Rich snippets in search results: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/appearance/search-result-features
- Robots.txt info: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/robots/intro
Website speed resources
- Core web vitals: https://web.dev/vitals/
- Chrome Lighthouse report: https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse
- PageSpeed Insights: https://pagespeed.web.dev/
- Pingdom: https://tools.pingdom.com/
Landing pages, testing and optimisation resources
- Visual Website Optimizer: https://vwo.com/
- Optimizely: https://www.optimizely.com/
- Hubspot: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/website-pages/run-an-a-b-test-on-your-page
- Adobe Target (enterprise): https://business.adobe.com/au/products/target/adobe-target.html
- Zoho Pagesense: https://www.zoho.com/pagesense/
- Hotjar: https://www.hotjar.com/
- Crazy Egg: https://www.crazyegg.com/
- Microsoft Clarity: https://clarity.microsoft.com/
- A/B test sample size calculator: https://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/sample-size.html
Website migration resources
- Google’s change of address tool: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9370220
- Information about 301 redirects: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/301-redirects
- A good website migration checklist: https://moz.com/blog/website-migration-guide
- And another one: https://searchengineland.com/site-migration-seo-checklist-dont-lose-traffic-286880
