Christmas Support
As usual, we only provide technical support over the Christmas period, namely server and uptime monitoring, starting 12pm on Friday 23rd December. Regular advice, support and project services will be resumed at 9am on Tuesday 3rd January.
Please log any calls on our ticket system as the office will be unmanned for this period.
The Year In Review
2016 was a busy year for the REC team, working on a lot of new features for the software and pushing out 16 enhancement releases in the last 12 months. This also included the new Admin Centre redesign and the introduction of REC+ packed with premium features which existing users can still upgrade to for free till the end of January 2017.
As ever, REC was continuously worked on with security updates and regular software maintenance to keep everything up to date and protected from hackers.
A major server infrastructure was undertaken with a significant hardware upgrade, version updates on system software so we always remain within supported versions, plus we migrated to a better backup and failover system.
Recently, we invested in an in-depth database and server analytics tool which has helped us to further optimise REC and improve page load performance.
A separate project saw us create our HTTPS mixed content checking app for scanning websites and identifying issues that break HTTPS. This is an important step in moving to HTTPS everywhere on a site, something which Google is driving hard for everyone to adopt. Our app is now in worldwide use by leading companies, charities and universities including Symantec, BBC Studios and HTTPS experts in Google.
The Impact Of Google Algorithm Changes On Traffic
The past 12 months has seen Google continue to push paid adverts ahead of organic results. This has inevitably led to some customers losing traffic. Recent changes have also made it more difficult for website owners to ensure they only get visitors from Google Ads who are likely to convert into customers. This makes working with an experienced Google certified agency such as ourselves absolutely critical to the ongoing success of your business. Remember Google Adwords exists to make Google money, our services are there to make sure you do too!
Any customers who feel they have been impacted by these changes can contact us to request a complimentary consultation from one of our experts.
Looking Ahead To 2017
HTTPS migration will become increasingly important in 2017 as browsers continue to warn users of pages not operating fully on HTTPS. We are able to help you with the migration and monitoring process using our tools and processes.
Lead generation is also an area of focus, helping you to nurture and convert more visitors to prospects and then sales. We expect this to be used by companies who sell services, as well as on- and offline retailers with telesales teams. This has already started with improvements to the email system plus a number of other features. We will offer services to work alongside growing businesses to implement this next year.
Additionally for online retailers, we are looking into improved merchandising features to help drive more sales in the store. We also hope to trial a price comparison tool to track how your promotions and a basket of products measure up to your competitors' pricing strategies.
And on top of this, we will continue to look at how to make REC even simpler to use and more intuitive so you gain maximum advantage from our software.
And Finally...
Thanks for using our services, wish you and yours a very merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!