2 min read
Google Analytics 4 Is Ready. Are You?
Google Analytics 4, or GA4, is Google’s latest analytics property. It is very different from Universal Analytics or 360 and pulls different reports than those you have grown accustomed to over the...
4 min read
What Makes for Great User Experience?
A great user experience, or UX, ensures your website visitors will know what to do with every click, and intuitively understand every element of your site with ease. Building a great user experience...
1 min read
Ring In The New Year With Our Top 10 Blogs from 2022!
With holidays rolling in full swing and headed for the new year – we have taken a look back to feel some nostalgia with the top ten articles our readers found most helpful over the course of the...
3 min read
California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) Part 3
What Can I Do To Stay Privacy Act Compliant Under CPRA? Part 3 of 3 in the Privacy Act Series. Go back to Part 1 or Part 2? We know – Consumer Privacy Act information is a lot to absorb. Without...
3 min read
California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) Part 2
I’m Not In California, So Why Does Their Consumer Privacy Act Apply To Me? Part 2 of 3 in the Privacy Act Series. Go back to Part 1 or Skip to Part 3? If you do business with anyone who lives or...
2 min read
California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
Consumer Privacy And Your Business – What You Need To Know Part 1 of 3 in the Privacy Act Series. Skip to Part 2? Are you a business that sells products or services to consumers online? If so, then...
3 min read
The Balance Between Web Design and Usability
In the realm of web interface design, there is a constant game of tug-of-war between creativity and usability. On one hand everyone wants to build a beautiful site that stands out from the crowd...
3 min read
How to Improve Your Website's SEO
As with anything, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can benefit from continuous improvement. SEO can also be a very intimidating task to tackle. There are so many myths about SEO, and the rules seem...
6 min read
Ten Tips for Building a User-Friendly Website
User friendly web design is as the name suggests – friendly or easy for people to use, navigate, find information, and know where to go. Today’s users have high expectations when it comes to website...
3 min read
Build an In-House Team or Partner with a Web Development Agency?
Many of our clients have been faced with the decision as to whether they should manage and maintain their website internally or have a professional web development agency like CommonPlaces manage it...
3 min read
5 Tips To Improve Your Website's Accessibility
Web development projects and conversations can be complex, focusing on topics like technology used, clear branding, engaging content, responsive design, and custom functionality. One aspect that is...
3 min read
Six Ways Content Marketing Will Benefit Your Business
Are you participating in content marketing? You might be, without even knowing it. Social media influencer Chris Brogan defines content marketing as 'the ability to produce useful and entertaining...
4 min read
How to Attract Job Applicants Through Your Website
The past few years have seen a drastic change in the way companies are attracting, finding, and hiring new employees. Employers are finding it difficult to fill open positions, and are making...
4 min read
Six Common Misconceptions About Website Security
Do you know your way around your website’s security better than a hacker? This is a real question to consider because hackers are out there, and they’re sneaky. They know their way around the world...
4 min read
What is Cybersecurity?
The past few years have shown an accelerated increase in security breaches and attacks, especially for those in the healthcare, financial, and pharmaceutical industry. With the volume of such attacks...
3 min read
Does Changing Website Hosting Affect SEO?
The decision to switch to a new website hosting company often comes with many benefits, and so we would assume that it would also positively impact our site’s SEO – our visibility across search...
3 min read
What to Look For in the WCAG 2.2: June 2022 Release
Updates to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Scheduled to be finalized in September of 2022, WCAG 2.2 covers the latest updates from the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web...
4 min read
The Crumble of The Third-Party Cookie: Google's Upcoming Cookie Ban
If you’re anything like us, and keep up on online marketing news, you may have caught the buzz of Google’s plan to ban third party cookies. While this may seem like quite a setback for your marketing...
2 min read
Intranet vs. Customer Portal – What is the Difference?
Sometimes the terms “Web Portal” or “Customer Portal” and “Company Intranet” can get lost in translation when working on a web development project for your business. We are here to guide you, and...
4 min read
What's the Difference Between Website Hosting & Website Maintenance?
Website hosting services provide a “home” for your site to live so that visitors can come to see it – comparable to a chunk of land with a house and a street address.
2 min read
Should My Business Create a Customer Portal Website?
What do non-profit and community-based organizations, local businesses, and e-commerce businesses all have in common? They can all benefit from creating a branded membership website. While non-profit...
4 min read
Is Your Website Ready for the New Year?
The new year brings a wealth of simplicity to the web with new trends appearing in the spotlight for online branding and functionality. As a society, we have begun to adapt daily life to the tried...
5 min read
Benefits of Building a Website with Open Source Software
When it comes to building a website, you are faced with a variety of decisions that need to be made. The most important is partnering with the right agency. (Bit of a sales pitch, but I stand by that...
1 min read
The New Year is Upon Us! Our Top 10 Blogs from 2021
With the holidays ramping up – and just as quickly winding down, we decided to have a look back through to reminisce on the top ten articles our readers found the most interesting or helpful...
2 min read
Five Helpful Drupal Modules You May Not Be Using
One of the real strengths of the Drupal community is the wide variety of superb contributed modules that make development tasks easier -- or just make life easier for your client. In this blog post,...
2 min read
Is It Too Late to Fix Your Website?
We get calls every week from people asking us to fix their website. We're asked to finish projects or to rescue them from the money pit they have fallen into. As we investigate, we frequently...
3 min read
How to Develop a Content Strategy for a Website
What is a Content Strategy? Content strategy is the game plan for reaching your organizational goals through your online content. Content strategy can be intimidating, but that should not stop you...
4 min read
What is Content Marketing and How Does it Work?
Content marketing is a method which drives traffic and conversions from targeted audiences by answering their questions and addressing their pain points. This type of marketing has been around for...
5 min read
Hosting & Maintenance 101: Managed Hosting vs. Self Service Hosting
Have you ever done a search for self-service cloud based web hosting options (or something similar) to see if you can get your site up and running on your own? Trying to research and evaluate all of...
4 min read
Measuring 'Voice of the Customer' to Create WOW Web Portal Experiences
Let's talk about How to measure the Voice of the Customer to create WOW experiences on your web portal. A strong understanding of who your customers are, what they enjoy, and what they struggle with...
1 min read
Planning a Successful Website
In our many years of web development, the greatest lesson we've learned is the value of planning a project thoroughly and completely. This means making sure all of the details are sorted out before...
3 min read
What Should be in Your SEO Strategy?
You’ve spent all this time, effort, and budget redesigning and rebuilding your website, but you aren’t seeing the traffic come through. Or, maybe you are seeing the traffic but it’s not the right...
4 min read
Six Reasons to Keep Your Web Development in the USA
A business website has become the primary point of contact for customers today, especially for businesses with a Customer Experience Portal. It’s your main sales force, your storefront, and even your...
3 min read
Five Reasons to Seek a Fresh Perspective on Your Business Strategy
As the year comes to a close, it is time to reflect on the past three quarters and create a strategic plan for the upcoming year. The plan should include evaluating what worked, what didn’t work,...
4 min read
Evolutionary Site Redesign: The Alternative to Total Website Redesign
The Evolutionary Site Redesign Approach: A Safe and Effective Alternative to a Complete Website Redesign What is Evolutionary Site Redesign? Evolutionary website redesign (ESR) is a type of agile...
2 min read
Benefits of Using Google Analytics G4
Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Google Search Console are the heartbeat of every marketer. If you have a website, you should care about its performance, which means Google Analytics should...
2 min read
A Case for Drupal Community Support in the Open Source World
Community isn’t a word many think about when they consider software. But many software solutions like Drupal, WordPress, and Laravel have their own communities of a wide range of people. From those...
6 min read
My Favorite Web Projects Through Twenty Years of Drupal
My Favorite Web Projects During Drupal’s 20 Years Of Community Driven Innovation Drupal, the world’s leading open source digital experience platform (DXP), celebrated 20 years of community-driven...
3 min read
CommonPlaces Approach to Web Development – It All Just Works
Getting your site from concept to the public is technically the “easy part”. Ensuring that it continues to function as intended is what I’m going to talk about today, and give you a little bit of...
3 min read
Creating Amazing Customer Experiences with CX Portals
A Customer Experience Portal is not just a place for an account login, but a place to provide a holistic experience for all who enter. One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned is that to be truly...
2 min read
Google Tag Manager: How and Why to Use This Free Tool
In the world of web development and marketing, hundreds of tools are at our fingertips to make life easier. As a marketer, you probably already have your plate full managing SEO, social media, email...
4 min read
CommonPlaces Works with New Futures to Rebuild Company Website
New Futures: Improved Company Website Enhances Site Navigation and Provides Ease of Content Management. October 5, 2021; New Hampshire; Merrimack County – CommonPlaces Interactive is pleased to...
3 min read
Five Reasons Why There is No Replacement for a Website
Today, with the huge popularity of social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, there are some people out there who are wondering if they even need a website. Can't they just set...
4 min read
Why Drupal Maintenance & Support is Crucial for Security & Stability
Protecting and maintaining your website is one of the most important aspects of managing your online presence. Keeping your code up to date is the key to protecting and enhancing your site. One of...
3 min read
Google Search Console: How It Can Benefit Your Marketing Strategy
Google Search Console (or GSC for folks who love abbreviations as much as the next guy) is a handy analytics tool that Google offers for free to anyone who owns or manages a website. GSC can help you...
3 min read
Page Speed Optimization – From the Ground, Up
Our buddy, Googlebot, has become a stickler for a quick loading page just like you and me. In a world of instant gratification, no one wants to sit around waiting, so sites with get-up-and-go...
4 min read
Why Wireframes are Vital in Website Planning
Website Wireframes are crucial to getting clients, designers, and developers all on the same page, and ultimately save time in the big picture. They present a snapshot of the first “look” at a page,...
4 min read
Avoid picture ping-pong with your designer – Resizing images for web.
Resizing images for your website to balance the fastest possible page load speeds with clean aesthetics is something that is often overlooked by website owners. If you have ever worked with a web...
3 min read
SEO vs User Experience: What Does Google Care About?
Over the years of research and development for clients, we at CommonPlaces have seen the evolution of SEO from pure keyword stuffing into the holistic online user experience we know today. Let’s dive...
3 min read
Website Hosting & Maintenance: What is it, and why is it so important?
If you are fairly new to owning a website, you may have seen a lot of terms that you wonder about. Terms like: web hosting, domains, DNS, nameservers, plugins, CMS, CDN, and more.
3 min read
Mobile First: Is Your website designed with Mobile in Mind?
With over half the population using mobile devices to access the internet in today’s world, it seems like perfect sense to make your website friendly to mobile users. Many of these users are – you...
2 min read
What Makes CommonPlaces Special?
One of the most enjoyable parts of my job is sitting down with individual employees each month to discuss their views on the company, goals, issues, victories, projects, and anything else on their...
5 min read
Ready, Set, Go! What to Expect During Your Website Redesign
So, you’ve been in business for quite some time now and your site is looking a little ‘meh’ – a little tired – a bit outdated. You finally bit the bullet and decided to hire a great development...
2 min read
Why You Should Hire Someone to Manage Your Website
CommonPlaces doesn't just design and build websites, we also maintain them. Maintenance is key to giving your users confidence in your organization and creating a consistent user experience for them....
4 min read
How to Stand Out with Customer Experiences that Shine
Customer experience directly impacts loyalty, and customer loyalty can rise and fall quite quickly with each stage in the customer journey. Lately, many brands have been catching onto the customer...
6 min read
Top 10 Integrations for Your Customer Experience Portal
Creating new customer portals will make it easy for your customers to understand and access your services. Engaging and satisfying your customers help you remain competitive in your market. A...
2 min read
Why is My Website Traffic Down?
You spent the time to plan and design your website. You monitor interactions, pay for ads, prioritize customer experience, but your website traffic is still down. Nothing is more frustrating! You may...
2 min read
The Lion’s Share: How Does Sales Survive?
Offices are empty. Businesses are closed. Uncertainty fills every CEO, COO, CIO, and every other C-Suite you can think of. You can’t even call it a “suite” anymore. It’s more of a failing think tank...
4 min read
Agile or Waterfall? Which Development Approach is Best for Your Goals?
This Agile vs. Waterfall decision boils down to whether you know exactly what your end goal is, or if you are open to lots of collaboration and adaptation. So, why not just use both? If only it were...
4 min read
Firms Risk Litigation for ADA Website Non-Compliance
Government regulation has caught up with technology; businesses that were first impacted in their physical space by ADA Title III accessibility regulations will be some of the first ones faced with...
3 min read
Are You Technology Agnostic?
How to stay "out of the box” when it comes to choosing a Content Management System (CMS)
5 min read
What is Page Experience? Google’s Latest Algorithm Update
How to put Google’s latest algorithm update to work for your site Google is at it again with its algorithm updates. The Page Experience Update is the newest on the list, and while a Google update is...
4 min read
Spring Cleaning: 8 Ways to Refresh Your Website
It’s officially Spring! With spring comes an intuitive desire to start cleaning up, cleaning out, and starting fresh. Why limit that just to your house? Now is the perfect time to take a closer look...
4 min read
Issues Arising with Drupal 6 & 7: What You Need to Know to Stay Secure
There is so much involved in growing and sustaining a business. From marketing to sales to accounting to inventory to meetings to projections to… you know – it’s constant hustle and upkeep, right? If...
2 min read
GDPR: What It Means For Your Business
Security is key 🔑 When was the last time you ordered a product online? Or sent an email to a colleague with information about a company project with private data? These actions all require a level...
1 min read
Referral Program: Earn Money For Your Next Web Project
At CommonPlaces Interactive, customer success and satisfaction is the top priority. As we continue to expand our client base, we are constantly looking for other organizations that need help...
5 min read
Why Are Core Web Vitals So Important?
What are the Core Web Vitals that Google is measuring? Core Web Vitals are a set of three main metrics that Google factors as important in your webpage’s overall user experience. These Core Web...
5 min read
Don’t be a Hostage to Ransomware: How to Prevent a Malware Monstrosity
Ransomware is a form of malware or malicious software, and the goal of it is to lock and encrypt a victim’s computer or device data, then demand payment or “ransom” to restore access. This can be...
4 min read
CommonPlaces Works with SNHS to Rebuild Company Site & Portal
SNHS Improved Company Portal Enhances Job Posting Process, Content Management, and Staff Workflows May 21, 2021; New Hampshire; Hillsborough County – CommonPlaces Interactive is pleased to announce...
3 min read
10 Best CRM's [2021 Update]
What is a CRM? CRM stands for customer relationship management and is software that helps you manage and track your pipeline, contacts, and content. CRMs help you track the many ways you communicate...
2 min read
Google Algorithm Update: June 2021
If you have a website then SEO is always on your mind. Engagement on your site results in more leads, and more leads mean new clients. None of this would be possible without SEO, and Google is king....
3 min read
ADA Website Compliance
With the wide variety of technology that is available to us, websites have no excuse to have limited accessibility. During the process of web development, ADA compliance is an important factor that...
2 min read
What is Staging?
Staging is a copy of your production environment (your current live website) on a private server. This is a safe place that allows you to test any changes - major or minor - that you plan on...
2 min read
Are You Ready For The Drupal 9 Upgrade?
Saying Goodbye to Drupal 8 Drupal 9 has made its grand entrance, which means web developers must prepare to say goodbye to Drupal 8. In the world of web development, we are used to adapting our...
2 min read
What Is Design Thinking?
What is Design Thinking? Design Thinking is an essential and innovative process of solving real-world problems. In order to make our daily lives better and meet our human needs, we are always looking...
2 min read
What is the Customer Experience Journey
Today, businesses have high expectations for a great experience when working with other businesses to buy products and services. The customer journey is the complete sum of that experience they go...
3 min read
What Is Git?
Git: A Content Versioning System Git is a hugely popular Content Versioning System dating back to 2005. While it’s not actually an acronym, “Get It Together” does fit rather nicely. With a git...
5 min read
WordPress vs. Drupal: Which is Better?
WordPress and Drupal are two of the most widely used Content Management System (CMS) platforms in the world. Knowing which CMS platform is right for your business depends on your short and long-term...
2 min read
8 Simple Ways to Improve your Website Security
Sometimes the best methods to tackle any tasks are the simplest ones. You know that you need to keep your website safe from the bad guys, but once you venture down the rabbit hole of website...
2 min read
How to Choose the Right CMS for Your Organization
Whether you’re looking to upgrade your existing content management system (CMS), or you’re a first time shopper, the process can be quite overwhelming. With so many platforms to choose from, how do...
2 min read
6 Common Website Security Vulnerabilities
Even the most experienced CIO and web security expert must stay vigilant and guard against the bad guys. No one is safe without knowing what to look out for. Here are six of the most common security...
3 min read
What is a Digital Agency?
In a world where marketing and advertising are now primarily digital, the term ‘digital agency’ almost seems redundant, doesn’t it? However, with print, radio, television, and other traditional...
6 min read
A Complex Tool for Complex Websites, Why Drupal Is the Right Tool
Let’s talk about Drupal. Drupal is the tool that has allowed me to build monumentally complex websites for clients that perfectly fulfill their needs. And the same tool that sometimes causes me to...
2 min read
Why Every Drupal Portal Project Needs Planning
All technical projects begin with a plan, or at least we like to think so. More often than not, we tend to start swinging our hammers before we even know where it should be landing. It’s also in our...
1 min read
The New Normal Reopening Your Business, Customer Portals
As the COVID-19 pandemic winds down we, like many of you, are planning to reopen our business under the New Normal. After months of working at home, face-to-face meetings will be significantly cut...
2 min read
Should You Fix Your Website or Start From Scratch?
Over the past 20 years, CommonPlaces has worked on a variety of projects from web development to customer experience portals. Time and time again we come up against the same question, “Can you fix...
3 min read
Configuring DNS for email: A nontechnical beginner's guide
This article was written to help non-developers understand some of the technologies we use to help emails you send reach their intended recipients.
1 min read
5 Tips on Choosing the Right Keywords
Picking the right keywords and keyword phrases is one of the most important steps in successful search engine optimization (SEO). Increasing traffic to your site is a priority, but attracting the...
1 min read
Should I Blog?
Should I blog? Yes. Yes. Yes. Here is my list of reasons to start blogging for your business. You've heard all the talk about blogging and its benefits for over a decade, and now you're wondering if...
5 min read
Top 10 Reasons Why Website Projects Fail
I often wonder why so many of our clients come to us after their Web Projects fail. About 75% of our business comes from projects where someone else couldn't get the job done. The most common...
1 min read
Why You Need a Redesign Now
Your customers and prospects are searching online looking for ways to improve their business while the economy has slowed; they have time on their hands.
2 min read
The Five P's of Successful Web Project
Here at CommonPlaces, we follow The Five P's to be successful: People, Plan, Protect, Performance and Promote. We help all of our customers reach their digital goals, and each 'P' represents an...
1 min read
Our Top 10 Blog Posts of 2019
This has been an exciting year for all of us at CommonPlaces. 2019 has brought growth and change to our team, and we have enjoyed reflecting on all that we have learned and accomplished. This year,...
3 min read
Should You Upgrade to Drupal 8 Now?
If the Internet is important to your business, what are you waiting for? Now is the best time to upgrade your website from Drupal 6 or Drupal 7, to Drupal 8.
1 min read
The Summer is Over, My Last Day as a Marketing Intern
This summer I had the pleasure of being the marketing intern at CommonPlaces. During my time here, I learned so much more about agencies, technology and marketing than I had ever expected.
2 min read
Why Customers Don't Want to Talk to You
It’s all in the title: Customers don’t want to talk to you.
2 min read
5 Ways to Measure CX Success
It’s no surprise that Customer Experience (CX) is vital to a company’s success. But how can you measure it? How do you know if your customers are having an enjoyable experience on your website and...
1 min read
Does Your Drupal Website Need CPR?
Is your Drupal Website "broke"? Missing functionality? Crashing?
2 min read
CommonPlaces Summer 2019 Intern: Laura Bannister
Hi! My name is Laura Bannister, and I am the marketing intern at CommonPlaces for Summer 2019. I just completed my junior year at Cedarville University in Ohio and am excited to graduate next year...
2 min read
UX vs CS vs CX, The Customer Experience Journey
You’ve been hearing the buzz words: customer experience and user experience.
2 min read
Five Reasons Why You Need HubSpot Workflows
Do you want to increase customer and prospect engagement on your website? HubSpot workflows are a great way to automate email messages to stay in touch and nurture prospects, customers and partners....
3 min read
The Difference Between Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing
For most businesses, regardless of the industry or the products and services being offered, lead generation is a critical component of a successful sales and marketing strategy. But not every...
3 min read
The Importance of Website Planning
One of the most important stages and oftentimes consuming tasks of building a website is the Planning Phase. If you neglect to plan a project thoroughly, the odds of an unhappy finished project are...
3 min read
The Pros and Cons of Rebranding: Is It Worth It?
Have you been thinking about rebranding? Rebranding a company is no longer as simple as tweaking your logo and slapping the new version onto your website. With so many online marketing channels...
3 min read
CommonPlaces Spring 2019 Marketing Intern, Taylor Burke
Welcome to my first blog post! I wanted to share a little bit about myself and how I got to where I am today. I am a senior at Southern New Hampshire University majoring in business administration....
2 min read
Top 4 Reasons Why You're Not Generating Qualified B2B Leads
Are you getting a good B2B leads, but none of them seem to be converting? Don't give up. Here are some tried and true methods to get those leads to convert.
2 min read
How to Increase Private Equity Valuation through Website Development
Investors, whether venture capitalists, private equity firms, or angels are all looking for the same thing – where to invest their funds to maximize their returns. Investors are looking for high...
1 min read
Our 10 Most Popular Blog Posts of 2018
This is the last blog post of 2018. Over the past 12 months we have written about digital marketing trends, SEO, website vulnerabilities and tips for increasing website security. What are the most...
3 min read
5 Reasons to Include Video Marketing in Your 2019 Budget
We can’t believe 2018 is already coming to a close. It seems like just yesterday we were talking about what to expect for marketing trends in 2018. And now here we are, trying to predict the future...
2 min read
CommonPlaces Wins 2018 Web Development Award for Forest Explorer App
CommonPlaces Interactive is excited to announce winning the Web Marketing Association award for Outstanding Achievement in Web Development with their entry of the Forest Explorer App built for The...
3 min read
How to Plan a Marketing Budget; Where to Spend in 2019
It's that time of year to finalize your marketing budget. In the budget process, management needs to view marketing and sales as an investment, not an expense. As such, investments are predicated on...
3 min read
5 Tips for Designing Better Landing Pages
Landing pages are truly one of the most essential components to an effective marketing campaign. Whether you want to generate leads, sell products, or collect data, a well-designed landing page is...
2 min read
Benefits of Using Marketing Automation in Healthcare
Traditional marketing tactics are no longer enough to grow and maintain a business as a healthcare professional. Marketing automation providers like Hubspot, Pardot, SharpSpring and Marketo make...
1 min read
5 Key Questions to Ask When Developing Buyer Personas
By now, you probably know that developing buyer personas can be critical to your business success. All layers of marketing are dependent on having a detailed picture of your target audience. For the...
2 min read
Writing ALT Tags for Images
What are ALT Tags? ALT tags or ALT attributes are "alternative text" for an image. ALT tags are used to describe the image or what the image is representing. One of the main purposes of ALT tags is...
1 min read
The Misunderstood Meta Description
The meta description is an often misunderstood piece of the digital marketing puzzle. You know it as that snippet of text which is displayed below the page title in search engine results, and with...
2 min read
Surprising Social Media Marketing Statistics, 2018
Common reactions to the facts we’re about to share include: “No way!”, “Really?”, “These can’t be true.”, “You’re NOT serious?” …and so on. While these social media marketing statistics are so...
2 min read
Understanding Bounce Rate
A bounce is whenever a user visits your website and leaves without looking at any other pages or connecting with you. The percentage of visitors who leave your website without taking any other action...
2 min read
How to Improve Your Local SEO
Local search engine optimization is focused on making it easy for prospective customers to find information about your company online. Whether they are searching specifically for your company, or for...
2 min read
How to Create SEO-Friendly URLs
Well optimized URLs are important for both search engine optimization and user experience. Search engines factor many variables into their decision making process and URLs are high on the list. As...
Planning a Successful Website, Part 1 (video)
Watch our new series,What You Need to Know, to learn about CommonPlaces Interactive and the services we offer to help you Communicate, Connect and Convert new customers.
2 min read
What is Evergreen Content? And Why You Should Create It
You may have heard the term before, but aren’t sure exactly what it means, or how it can benefit your business. So what is evergreen content, and why should your business create it?
2 min read
Why You Should Monitor Crawl Errors in Google Search Console
Crawl errors have a significant impact on how your website ranks in Google Search. If left undetected or ignored, your site could be invisible to your target market. The first step to ensuring that...
3 min read
Marketing Solutions for Manufacturing
There are still many manufacturing organizations that rely on cold-calling reps, attending trade shows, and publishing glossy catalogues to sell their product. For generations, because many of these...
2 min read
What is Your Domain Authority?
Domain authority, while it relies on an amalgamation of factors, is all about where you place in search engine rankings compared with your competitors. There was a widely held belief among digital...
2 min read
User Testing Vs. Usability Testing
For any business building a new website, the terms user testing and usability testing might seem like a case of semantics, or even po-tay-to/po-tah-to. However you look at it, everybody is a user of...
2 min read
Show Me the Cache! Server Cache vs Browser Cache
If you’ve ever been part of a web development or web design project, odds are you are quite familiar with the question, “Have you cleared your cache?” Often times when changes are made on a website,...
1 min read
Why Typography is so Important
For any website, the most important component would be the content. So naturally, you would want it to be as simple and straightforward as possible, and not have to worry about visitors trying to...
2 min read
Top 2017 CommonPlaces Blog Posts
At CommonPlaces, we’re dedicated to partnering with our customers to provide them with helpful information and insight into industry standards and best practices. We stay up to date ourselves,...
What is a Style Guide (Video)
Watch our new series, What You Need to Know, to learn about CommonPlaces Interactive and the services we offer to help you Communicate, Connect and Convert new customers.
5 min read
Design for Drupal 2018, Boston D4D
Beginning in 2009, members of the Drupal community seized on the notion of promoting Drupal design and theming. The leaders of this movement created a group called Design 4 Drupal, or D4D. Fast...
2 min read
How Important is SEO in 2018?
With Google’s search algorithm changing on a regular basis, it can sometimes be hard to tell how well our SEO efforts are actually working. Many business owners may even be wondering how important...
3 min read
5 Tips to Write the Best About Us Page
Many companies make the mistake of thinking that writing the About Us page will be the easiest part of creating their website content. But, unless you are a professional content writer, it may be...
2 min read
GDPR - What You Need to Know for Your US Website
By now, you’ve probably seen the acronym GDPR show up in your inbox, in addition to popping up on websites left and right. Seemingly out of nowhere, the term has begun cluttering our screens, begging...
2 min read
What are Retargeting Ads?
For most websites, only 2% of web traffic converts on the first visit. Retargeting is a tool designed to help companies reach the 98% of users who don’t convert right away. (Source: Retargeter.com)
2 min read
Can Live Chat on a Website Help Increase Conversion Rate?
Today’s Internet searchers expect instantaneous service. If a business isn't prepared to respond to searcher's needs immediately, they’re likely to find a business that is. And most of the time, it’s...
2 min read
Why You Need a Lead Nurturing Strategy
As a business owner, consistent lead generation will always be one of your top priorities. Continuing to generate interest in and demand for the products/services you sell is part of the ongoing...
3 min read
Should You Encourage Your Employees to Use LinkedIn?
While you may be uneasy about the thought of your employees using LinkedIn, many companies have actually begun to recognize and leverage the potential of this professional social network. If you...
8 min read
What is SSL and why do I need to use it?
In the dark ages people would sometimes communicate using a thing called "pen and paper". You sat down at your desk and wrote your message to a friend. You placed your message in an envelope with...
3 min read
What is a Verified Social Media Account (and How Can You Get It?)
Will the real [insert celebrity/authority figure here] please stand up? In a world where anyone can create an online account, it can be difficult to know for sure whether the social media accounts we...
2 min read
Top 5 Google Analytics Reports You Should Be Analyzing
Google Analytics provides users with the ability to measure every aspect of a website, from unique visitors to referral sources, to bounce rates, device types, time on page, click through rates, and...
2 min read
CommonPlaces Interactive names Colby Johnson Director of Development
Colby Johnson was named Director of Development at CommonPlaces Interactive, a digital agency specializing in B2B and nonprofit custom web experiences in Manchester. He is a UNH graduate with a...
2 min read
Best Analytics Tools 2018
Digital marketing has become the center of our marketing and advertising efforts today, and it isn’t slowing down any time soon. With the number of tools available to help you track and analyze your...
2 min read
How To Rank, Local SEO Business Listings
Google doesn’t always make it easy to rank high in the search results, but we’ve got a secret. There’s one area of SEO that you can focus on that will make a huge difference in where your business...
3 min read
Five Drupal 8 Modules You Aren't Using
Drupal 8 brings along with it a whole slew of quality contributed modules. The alphas are slowing becoming betas and release candidates; moving into production-capable tools that site builders and...
4 min read
How to Measure Website Performance Using KPIs
Like most businesses today, you’ve probably invested a lot of time and money into the development of your website and other online applications. You may have hired a team to design the layout,...
3 min read
Branding Best Practices to Improve Revenue & Reach
By thoughtfully defining and sharing your company values, mission, image, messaging and overall personality – you can build a strong brand for your business. If you listen, you can hear people...
2 min read
2018 Web Trends – Part II
Our last post about 2018 web trends covered site security, accessibility compliance, mobile-first web development, and the use of animations, but there are many more factors to consider when building...
3 min read
4 Top Web Trends to Watch Out For in 2018
Year after year, trends in web design and development advance and as technology gets smarter. Staying on top of these updates can be challenging, being ahead of the curve is even harder. Each year,...
3 min read
How to Create Product Videos That Improve Conversions
In the past, businesses were able to put up a website that included some buzzwords, a list of product features and photos and hope people would find it and buy it. In today's world, we now know that...
3 min read
Why You Should Use Product Videos to Improve Conversions
Video marketing is all the rage right now and the statistics around this trend are staggering. If you aren't using or haven’t considered including it in your marketing arsenal, you are missing out on...
3 min read
The Future of Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots in Business
By 2020, Gartner estimates that “consumers will manage 85% of their relationships with enterprises without ever interacting with a human.” So, the question becomes, who will they interact with? The...
3 min read
What Makes a Great Website? 6 Web Design Trends for 2017
Web design trends are ever-changing, evolving and adapting to the latest user behaviors. Each year, marketers learn a little bit more about how to design remarkable, highly functional websites that...
3 min read
Mobile-First Indexing is Here – Is Your Website Ready?
As if SEO wasn’t already complicated and time consuming enough, Google has changed the rules of the game once again. Googlebots are crawling your website a little differently now, and it’s important...
3 min read
How to Build Your Sales Funnel Using Facebook Lead Ads
Facebook lead ads are a great way to generate leads to build your sales funnel. In this article, we will take a deeper look into what exactly they are, how they work, and why they should be a part of...
3 min read
The Importance of Designing for Mobile First
Are you a startup looking to build a new website to be the digital face of your company? Or, are you an established business looking for a simple website refresh? No matter where you are in the web...
3 min read
The Case for Including Video Marketing in Your 2017 Budget
The holidays have come to an end and 2017 is off to a running start! If you haven’t already, now is the time to focus on your digital marketing efforts for the year, and decide where you are planning...
4 min read
HEO or SEO? What Is More Important When Creating Content?
By now I'm sure you are familiar with the term SEO (search engine optimization) and understand the importance of following best practices in order to improve your placement on search engine result...
3 min read
Should Content Marketing Be in Your 2017 Marketing Budget?
With 2017 just around the corner, it is natural to be filled with high hopes for growth, change, and success. No matter what type of business or industry you’re in, one common goal year after year is...
2 min read
Tis the Season to Be Thankful!
This time of year is the perfect time for families, friends and loved ones to gather together and give thanks. It's a time to reminisce on old memories and cheers to new ones. With the eve of...
4 min read
Ecommerce SEO Trends We Learned From 2016
Ecommerce has been growing at an exponential rate over the past decade or so. In 2014, in the United States alone, ecommerce sales reached well “past $300 billion — a growth of 310% in just...
2 min read
6 Tricks to a Spookily Successful Website for Your Startup
With Halloween on our minds today, we can’t help to think of some of the frightening, unfriendly and downright ugly websites that exist today. We want to make sure you are on the right track to...
3 min read
Is It Time to Give Your Website a Check-Up?
Be honest - when was the last time you took an in depth look at your website to see how well it is performing? With every day business to attend to, it’s easy to forget about checking on the...
3 min read
How to Avoid 6 Common Pitfalls of Homepage Design
As a creative person I am always seeking inspiration for my client projects, which ultimately leads me to spending too much time on the Web “researching.” As I’m sure you know there are lots of great...
3 min read
Why Your Inbound Marketing Strategy Isn't Effective
Everyone’s heard that developing an inbound marketing strategy can be beneficial to your lead generation efforts and the overall success of your marketing endeavors. Regardless of how much time,...
4 min read
5 Web Traffic Metrics You Should Keep Your Eyes On
Your web presence is a way of showing prospective clients who you are as a brand, how your business operates, and an introduction to the products and services you have to offer. Today’s consumers are...
1 min read
Team Outing - Take Me Out to the Ballgame!
Here at CommonPlaces we place a high value on balancing work and personal life. Every year we try to host at least one family outing. It gives us all a chance to let loose, have fun, and meet the...
2 min read
The CommonPlaces Team Gives Back to American Red Cross
Last week, a few members of the CommonPlaces team took a few hours out of there day to give back to the American Red Cross at the Gail Singer Memorial Blood Drive in Manchester, NH. We had a mix of...
3 min read
Improving User Engagement is Vital to Today's Success
Creating a powerful user experience today is vital to the success of your business. If you aren’t consistently focused on ways to improve user engagement in all of your customer interactions, it will...
2 min read
How Writing Good Meta Descriptions Can Help Click Through Rates
If you’re looking to increase click through rates, there are many ways to do so, one of which is by writing good meta descriptions, also known as meta tags. Whether you know it by name or not, you...
3 min read
DrupalCon New Orleans
The Big Easy Back in May, I was lucky enough to attend DrupalCon New Orleans, and it was nothing less than extraordinary. The NOLA experience is unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. The “Big Easy” is...
2 min read
How to Successfully Manage Your Local Citations
Monitoring and updating local business listings (also referred to as local citations) has become a critical component of online reputation management and local search optimization strategies for...
1 min read
Nauset Construction Launches New Website After 10 Years
Nauset Construction, a construction management and design-build firm in Needham, MA, reached out to CommonPlaces to redesign and redevelop their website that they first built for them ten years ago....
2 min read
PHP 7 and Drupal 8 Can Help Improve Website Speed
Drupal 8, the latest release of the open source CMS, has already proven to have many new and improved functionalities and capabilities. One of the main advantages of investing in an upgrade to Drupal...
3 min read
What is Open Source Software?
A common question we get asked as a web development agency is, what is open source software? In its simplest definition, open source software is software with coding that can be shared and modified...
3 min read
Beautiful Websites Might Actually Be Hurting UX
For longer than I can remember, I’ve been hearing the term, “keep the website light and efficient”, however I feel this isn’t as high enough priority as it should be when planning a website. It seems...
3 min read
What Local Citations Mean to Your Business
Having consistent and accurate local citations online are a critical part of a successful SEO strategy today. Regardless of how big or small your business may be; having a variety of quality local...
1 min read
Monarch Medical Technologies Launches New Website
Monarch Medical Technologies is a privately held medical technology company founded by clinicians with a vision of improving hospital-based glucose management. Providing the safest option on the...
1 min read
Words of Wisdom From a 5th Year DrupalCon Attendee!
For the fifth year in a row, Lemu Santos, a Senior Web Designer & Developer for CommonPlaces, will be making his way to DrupalCon New Orleans next week. I sat down with Lemu to get his take on...
2 min read
Why We Chose Mavenlink as Our Project Management Tool
One of the best things about working here at CommonPlaces is our team’s dedication to improvement. It’s so refreshing to work with a team that is passionate about the success of the company! We work...
2 min read
5 Tips When Choosing Project Management Software
Project management software is the heart of most agencies. It helps to ensure projects are running smoothly by allowing us to assign tasks, communicate with clients, efficiently allocate resources,...
3 min read
Make Your Website a Better Salesperson
What's the goal of your website? To sell a product? To gain registered users? To solicit donations? Regardless of your goal, a great way to succeed on the Web is to think of your website as your...
4 min read
Lessons Marketers Can Learn From Star Wars' Success
Let us begin by addressing the obvious fact that Star Wars definitely has a leg (or two) up on many of the films being released into today’s audiences. The unique series has had a strong following...
2 min read
Should I Upgrade to Drupal 7 or Drupal 8?
As Drupal 6 gets dangerously close to its End of Life Date, users currently running on that version are left wondering what to do next. Should you upgrade to Drupal 7 or Drupal 8? Your decision will...
4 min read
What Makes A Great Website? 10 Website Trends
Your website is the first digital impression from your company and you want to make sure it’s a great one. It should reflect everything you want potential customers to know and remember about your...
3 min read
Our New Year's Resolutions for 2016
The New Year is the perfect moment to start fresh, make changes or find time for things you've been putting off. Making resolutions, both personal and professional, is a way to hold yourself and...
CIOReview's Most Promising Web Development Providers in 2015
CommonPlaces has been recognized by CIOReview Magazine as one of the 20 Most Promising Web Development and Design Solution Providers in 2015.
2 min read
End of Life Date for Drupal 6 Announced: February 24, 2016
Last month, the widely used open source website development platform, Drupal, dropped some good news and some bad news. The amazingly good news was the release of Drupal 8, on November 19th, 2015....
3 min read
How To Generate Quality Leads Sales Will Thank You For
It’s that time of year again, when we all start thinking about the people and things in life we’re truly thankful for. Many of us are thankful for our friends, families, and co-workers (which, in the...
2 min read
Retargeting Ads Got You Creeped Out?
In today’s world of marketing automation, Internet users are getting ads thrown at them left and right, and there are definitely those out there who have said they think it's really freaky that they...
3 min read
What You Need to Know About Scope Creep
Scope creep is when the original plans and goals for a project are in some way altered while in progress. It isn’t an unusual problem, because there are a wide variety of occurrences that can have an...
3 min read
The Importance of Building a Credible Sales Forecast
Creating an accurate sales forecast, is anything but simple. It involves quite a bit of research, data collection and analysis, and it can be a very time consuming process. However, a credible sales...
1 min read
Should Your Business Use Twitter?
Twitter’s stock just hit an all time low of $25 (NASDAQ: TWTR). Remember the days when Twitter was all the rage? More and more people are asking me “What am I going to get out of Twitter”? Twitter...
3 min read
Smarketing: 5 Steps to Successfully Align Sales and Marketing
What is Smarketing? So, what the heck does the fancy term, “Smarketing” mean, anyway? Actually, Smarketing is essentially just what it sounds like. Simply put, Smarketing is the alignment of sales...
2 min read
Why a Mobile-Friendly Website is Critical for SEO
Have you noticed a drop in your search traffic over the past few months? It could be your website isn’t mobile friendly. Search traffic is important, so when creating or editing your website, you...
3 min read
A Checklist for Creating a Successful Blog Post
Stop! Before you even sit down to write, you need to do some thinking. Ask yourself the following questions:
1 min read
Syncing Environments Using Drush
Now that you have learned what a helpful tool Drush can be for all Drupal developers, let's think about how this, in combination with other command line tools, can make your jobs even easier. Any...
2 min read
Using Drush to Check Site Status
We recently discussed how you can use Drush to maintain modules on your site. You can also use Drush to learn important configuration information, or discover errors that have been logged, without...
2 min read
DrupalCon Los Angeles 2015 Highlights
The biggest Drupal event of the year took place where the artists of the movies gave place to the artists of the Web: Los Angeles, California. The second largest city in the United States was a...