John Woods, Author at - Page 9 of 11

Google is bringing a big dose of science to web user experience…and it matters to anyone with a website

April 22, 2025June 9, 2020 by John Woods

Subheading

Google has announced a new set of standards for measuring “page experience” – that is, whether a particular web page delivers its content in a way that gives a positive experience for the user.

Introducing Core Web Vitals

Google is calling the new standards “Core Web Vitals”. You’ll start to see them appear in various Google tools and reports. For example, here’s how they show up in Google Search Console:

There are three separate measures in Core Web Vitals:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): a measure of how long the page takes to display, when first loaded

• First Input Delay (FID): measures how quickly the page becomes interactive

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): measures what Google calls “visual stability”, in other words how much the page elements flicker and move around during the initial loading process.

Each of these measures has its own specific benchmarks on a traffic light system. For example the LCP needs to be below 2.5s to score as “good”. Between 2.5s and 4.0s LCP means “needs improvement”. And LCP above 4.0s means “poor”.

I’ll drill into these three measurements in a future article. For now, it’s enough to say that they measure separate and largely independent aspects of user experience: so for example a page that scores very highly on LCP could still score badly on FID or CLS. So each measure will need individual attention.

Why Core Web Vitals matter

Page experience has been important for SEO for a long time. Google and other search engines naturally want to feature pages that will provide a positive experience for users. But to date the exact impact of page experience on SEO rankings has been hard to understand.

This is great news for all of us when we use the web: by providing an explicit incentive to avoid poor page experience, Google is helping to encourage higher standards for user experience across the web.

It is also good news for site owners: with Core Web Vitals, Google is making the impact of page experience on SEO much more transparent. A website owner can use the Core Web Vitals benchmarks as a reliable guide to whether their page experience is good enough to avoid SEO penalties, and can target specific improvements if they are needed.

But there is some bad news for site owners: the Core Web Vitals benchmarks are pretty demanding! It is likely that many websites will need to make significant technical changes to meet the new benchmarks and avoid SEO penalties. This is especially true for niche B2B websites which have often been designed and implemented with relatively little concern for page experience.

Although Google haven’t said so explicitly, I predict that page experience will become a much more significant ranking factor for SEO as Google rolls out these standards. So B2B marketers who pay attention to Core Web Vitals and who take action to ensure their websites meet the new benchmarks will be rewarded with higher levels of organic search traffic. And those who do not take action are likely to see their organic traffic decline.

Google’s announcements so far only relate Core Web Vitals to organic search. But I would not be surprised to see Core Web Vitals quickly becoming a factor in quality score for paid search (PPC/SEM). Google Ads already has a component of quality score for “landing page experience”, so it would be entirely logical for Google to take Core Web Vitals into account in the future. If that happens, Core Web Vitals scores will have a direct bearing on PPC costs: because a higher quality score reduces the amount paid for each click, and vice versa.

There’s time, but the clock is ticking

Google acknowledges that website owners will need time to improve their page experience. Their announcement says that the new measures will not be incorporated into SEO rankings until 2021 at the earliest, and that there will be a minimum of 6 months’ notice of the specific date.

Google has introduced similar policies in the past designed to encourage improvements in user experience. In particular, Google encouraged site owners to move from non-secure http: to secure https: connections, and pushed for mobile-friendly page design. Both of these were introduced gently with a small SEO impact at first, increasing over time. I predict we will see the same with Core Web Vitals: a small penalty for sites that don’t meet the benchmarks at first, but rising to a much more substantial penalty over time – to the point where, like https and mobile-friendliness, it will become inconceivable to attempt any meaningful SEO strategy on a site that does not meet the Core Web Vitals benchmarks.

What to do now – find out where you stand

You can see how your web pages score against the Core Web Vitals benchmarks right away. Check your website with Google’s free Pagespeed Insights tool. You’ll see your current scores highlighted with a blue icon, like this example:

Some things to consider when using this tool:

• Each page will have its own scores. You should check more than one page: important pages like the homepage and the “contact us” page, for example, and any pages that you have built specifically to bring in organic traffic.

• Pagespeed Insights ranks mobile and desktop versions of your page separately. Make sure to look at both. Many B2B sites are built primarily for desktop, a great set of Core Web Vitals on desktop won’t help you much if you fail every measure on mobile.

• The report shows both “Field Data” and “Lab Data” – concentrate on Field Data if it is available. If your page has small numbers of visitors (like many niche B2B pages) there may not be enough data for the “Field Data” report to show. In that case you can use the “Lab Data” report as a backup.

What to do next – plan to pass the benchmarks

You may be lucky enough to find that all of your important pages already pass the Core Web Vitals benchmarks. If so, congratulations! You should still remain vigilant, especially if you plan any technical or design changes to your pages, but it’s unlikely you will need to do any major work.

But it is much more likely you will find that your pages fail at least some of the benchmarks. This is especially true for B2B websites, where page performance and user experience are typically not given high priority in the design and implementation stages. In that case you’ll need to plan and budget for technical or design changes, or brace yourself for an eventual SEO penalty and consequent loss of organic traffic – and perhaps other negative implications too.

For some B2B website implementations it may be impractical to meet the Core Web Vitals benchmarks even with very large amounts of work. If your site is one of those, it may be time to consider a redesign or a complete replatform – with compliance with Core Web Vitals benchmarks an explicit goal for the project.

If you’d like help understanding the impact of Core Web Vitals on your B2B digital marketing strategy, or with any other aspect of B2B digital marketing, contact us today for a no-obligation consultation.

Stuffed, Starved or Satisfied

John Woods December 11, 2025

Help yourself to a glass of bubbles and I’ll explain how you can apply your party planning skills to improve your LinkedIn Ads budgeting.

What longer B2B decision-making cycles mean for digital marketing best practice

Jennifer Esty October 15, 2025

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Is the B2B Buying Journey Really Changing?

Jennifer Esty September 3, 2025

The B2B buying journey is changing at a fast pace, and B2B marketers must evolve their brand’s digital footprint now or risk obscurity in this new world.

Using Google Optimize to implement a COVID-19 notice in a sticky header

April 22, 2025May 7, 2020 by John Woods

Subheading

There is no “business as usual” at the moment. Even if your business is operating normally, you can’t assume that your clients, prospects and other stakeholders will realise that. So it’s important to proactively communicate how your business is responding to COVID-19.

If you are lucky, your website’s content management system may already have support for a sticky header. But if it doesn’t, Google have provided a simple way to implement a COVID-19 notice using Google Optimize. This can be done with the free version of Google Optimize, so there’s no technology cost, and the steps are simple enough that you should be able to implement this in an hour or so.

Here’s a walkthrough of the steps needed to implement a COVID-19 sticky header, using Google Optimize:

1) If you already have Google Optimize set up and working on your website, you can skip ahead to step 5. Otherwise, start by signing up for a Google Optimize account at https://marketingplatform.google.com/intl/en_uk/about/optimize/.

2) Follow the prompts in Google Optimize to create a new account, and a new container within that account. You will end up with a container ID that will look something like OPT-ABCDEFG.

3) Advance warning, this is the only tricky part – proceed with coffee. You will need to install the Google Optimize snippet in your website, and it needs to be added to every page. Ideally it should be included in the HTML <HEAD> section of the page, but that isn’t essential for this particular usage. You may need help from your web developers to do this. If you have Google Tag Manager, you can use that to install Google Optimize much more easily. (If you don’t have Google Tag Manager – why not? It’s a key productivity tool for digital marketing teams!)

4) For the next bit, it is much easier to work within the Chrome browser. So switch your browser if need be, and then install the Chrome extension for Google Optimize (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-optimize/bhdplaindhdkiflmbfbciehdccfhegci).

5) In your Google Optimize container, select “Create an experience”. Give your experience a name, provide the URL of your homepage and choose Google’s built-in “COVID-19 banner” experience type:

6) If everything is set up correctly, you’ll see a preview of your homepage with Google’s default banner in place, like this:

7) That default banner is a good start but most likely you will want to change the content and appearance somewhat. Use the on-screen editor controls to change the banner’s text and colours to get it the way you want it. The Optimize editor is powerful but takes a bit of getting used to. The live preview at least means you can see the impact of your changes right away. You might need a bit of trial and error – if you get lost, you can always shut down the editor screen without saving and start again! Here’s an example of how to change the background colour of the bar to “COVID-19 Red”:

8) Once you have the banner reading and looking exactly how you want it, hit the Save button in the top right of the editor screen and then click Done:

9) If all is well, you’ll see the Optimize details screen with your banner experience showing as “Draft. Some setup steps must still be completed.”:

10) You can leave most of these settings unchanged. In the “Measurement” section, click on the “Link to Analytics” button and follow the prompts to set up that connection.

11) You should now see the status change to “Draft. Ready to start.”:

12) Hit the “Start” button to put your banner live!

Google Optimize does a pretty good job of laying out and sizing the banner for various devices, but it’s a good idea to test the end result on both a computer and a phone to make sure you are happy with it.

When things change

Google Optimize doesn’t allow an Experience to be edited after it has been put live. So if you need to change your banner, log back into Google Optimize and make a copy of the Experience. Make your edits to the copy, then stop the original banner and start the new copy.

Speak to an expert

If you are concerned about the impact of COVID-19 on your paid media strategies, or on any other aspect of your B2B digital marketing, speak to an expert at Sharp Ahead today. We offer a free 30-minute remote consultation.

Stuffed, Starved or Satisfied

John Woods December 11, 2025

Help yourself to a glass of bubbles and I’ll explain how you can apply your party planning skills to improve your LinkedIn Ads budgeting.

What longer B2B decision-making cycles mean for digital marketing best practice

Jennifer Esty October 15, 2025

It’s a tough market out there with sales cycles continuing to lengthen over the past year

Is the B2B Buying Journey Really Changing?

Jennifer Esty September 3, 2025

The B2B buying journey is changing at a fast pace, and B2B marketers must evolve their brand’s digital footprint now or risk obscurity in this new world.

Considering webinars? 10 top tips and 2 alternatives.

April 22, 2025March 27, 2020 by John Woods

Subheading

If you’re considering the pivot from face-to-face events to webinars, you’re not alone. In the era of social distancing webinars are an obvious choice for facilitating interactions between customers, prospects and suppliers.

Here are our top 10 tips for running a webinar from home– and 2 alternatives to consider.

A webinar is not a hard sales pitch. People have given up their time to learn something not to hear your sales spiel. Use case studies, ask a customer to join you remotely for a Q and A, share your expertise. Think of it as an opportunity to position yourself as a thought leader.
Don’t give away too much! A webinar should open conversations, build trust and facilitate the next steps. There should be a clear call to action at the end of the that moves attendees down the sales funnel.
Check WiFi speed – have you managed a general video call before at home on your laptop that was relatively smooth? Test video quality from room to room and find where the strongest signal is.
Sound quality is even more critical than video. If possible, use a microphone. If you don’t have one, sit as close to your laptop microphone as possible. Make sure you are in a quiet, calm environment. If possible having children, noisy housemates or pets around as they will distract you and your attendees.
Always have a practice run! Ask someone to dial into the practise webinar listen in to check quality. Plan it for the same time of day as the live webinar for the most accurate test. If you have no one to help, simply record your test run and make sure you are happy with the sound when you listen back.
Familiarise yourself with your webinar software (we like Zoom and GoToWebinar). Make sure you know how to mute yourself, start the webinar, end the webinar and take questions (and practice these steps!).
Prepare questions. You probably have a good idea of what kind of questions your customers tend to ask so have a couple prepared in case your attendees are reluctant to ask their own.
Avoid using long videos in your webinar. They often result in a mixed experience for attendees, who have signed up to hear and interact with people not watch videos (which you can always send out after the webinar)
Don’t panic if something goes wrong. Stay calm, keep the audience informed and mute yourself for a few seconds to compose yourself if you need to.
Follow up. Always email your attendees to thank them for their time and post the recording on online (the content isn’t sensitive). Not only does this allow your attendees to re-watch or share their with colleagues, it also is a useful resource for future prospects. (You can also listen back to the webinar yourself and make notes of any improvements you might want to make for future webinars.

Not sure if webinars are right for you? If you’re not comfortable running a webinar, or if you’re (rightly) worried your customers are being bombarded with them right now, here are two alternatives:

Short instructional videos: consider creating some short, helpful videos on your product, service, or area of expertise. Use the same tips above on sound quality and practice. Keep them under a minute or so and amplify them through your social networks, inviting prospects and customers to follow you and signup to receive future content.
Interviews: if you have a friendly customer or influencer willing to be interviewed, you can use the same software and principles above to record your conversation and provide that content to your prospects and customers. Again, amplify it throughout your networks and consider creating short teaser versions to repurpose for more content.

And of course, if you need any help defining your webinar strategy, want some coaching or hands on assistance, or just have some general questions on webinars, please get in touch.

Stuffed, Starved or Satisfied

John Woods December 11, 2025

Help yourself to a glass of bubbles and I’ll explain how you can apply your party planning skills to improve your LinkedIn Ads budgeting.

What longer B2B decision-making cycles mean for digital marketing best practice

Jennifer Esty October 15, 2025

It’s a tough market out there with sales cycles continuing to lengthen over the past year

Is the B2B Buying Journey Really Changing?

Jennifer Esty September 3, 2025

The B2B buying journey is changing at a fast pace, and B2B marketers must evolve their brand’s digital footprint now or risk obscurity in this new world.

HTTPS encryption – time to act or face damage to your brand

April 22, 2025February 23, 2018 by John Woods

Subheading

A security warning isn’t the end of the world, but at best it is distracting for web visitors.

Does your website use HTTPS yet?

HTTPS is not just about security: it is also essential for many modern browser features.

For several years, Google has been gently encouraging websites to move to secure HTTPS. Google has offered a gentle nudge with the carrot of somewhat-improved search rankings.

But the carrot hasn’t worked very well. In our most recent research, a whopping 87% of our sample of B2B companies were still using non-secure HTTP for their websites.

So Google has reached for the stick. If your website is not using HTTPS by July 2018, visitors using Google’s Chrome browser will see a “not secure” warning:

Blogspot

Google Chrome is by far the most popular web browser at the moment, with about 65% market share on desktop and about 50% on mobile (see http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/). So if you don’t move your website to HTTPS by July 2018, more than half of your visitors will see a “not secure” warning on every page.

A security warning isn’t the end of the world, but at best it is distracting for web visitors. It’s an ongoing blot on your website’s user experience which will result in lost conversions and drip-drip damage to your brand.

So it’s time to act: get a plan in place to switch your website to HTTPS before July 2018.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you!

For advice about switching a website to https – or replacing your outdated B2B website with a new one with https built in! – contact Sharp Ahead today.

Stuffed, Starved or Satisfied

John Woods December 11, 2025

Help yourself to a glass of bubbles and I’ll explain how you can apply your party planning skills to improve your LinkedIn Ads budgeting.

What longer B2B decision-making cycles mean for digital marketing best practice

Jennifer Esty October 15, 2025

It’s a tough market out there with sales cycles continuing to lengthen over the past year

Is the B2B Buying Journey Really Changing?

Jennifer Esty September 3, 2025

The B2B buying journey is changing at a fast pace, and B2B marketers must evolve their brand’s digital footprint now or risk obscurity in this new world.

Sharp Ahead Highlights of 2017

April 22, 2025January 2, 2018 by John Woods

Subheading

I’m writing this in that quiet time between Christmas and New Year. It’s a great time for reflection. It has been a busy year for us at Sharp Ahead with some significant achievements of which I’m really proud.

Digital marketing driving expansion at the Fareham Innovation Centre

The launch of the Fareham Innovation Centre was one of our first lead generation projects in the commercial property sector. Using a mix of paid media and conversion-optimised landing pages we helped the new centre build its community of local entrepreneurs and growing businesses in specialist sectors such as advanced engineering, marine technology and aerospace. As a result the building was fully subscribed within a year of opening – two years ahead of schedule.

In 2017 we learned that the spectacular success of the launch has led to a second phase of investment. Construction is now well under way to double the size of the centre, and the new space will be opening in Spring 2018.

The results of B2B marketing are often intangible, so it’s really satisfying to see the real-world impact of our work in the form of a brand-new building!

Ultra-modern lead generation for a long-established business

CLEAN Linen Services can trace its history to a single family-run laundry established in 1886. Today it is a market leader in textile and workwear laundry services, serving over 5,500 customers across the UK. CLEAN has invested in modern technology to deliver its services, including RFID tagging for inventory control and highly efficient new laundry facilities to reduce environmental impacts.

So perhaps it is not surprising that this highly innovative “traditional” business has also been willing to invest in the latest digital marketing techniques. Our work with CLEAN has seen its online lead generation accelerate by 50%.

It’s great to be part of a project that proves how even businesses in “traditional” industries can benefit enormously from modern digital marketing techniques if – like CLEAN – they have the confidence and vision to embrace new approaches.

New market segments for YPO

Another Sharp Ahead client with a somewhat “traditional” history is YPO, a procurement specialist providing over 30,000 products to schools, local authorities and other customers – mostly in the public sector.

Our work with YPO has focussed on cost-effective strategies for new client acquisition. The results have been excellent in their traditional market segments, with in excess of £1M incremental profit attributable to the campaigns. A particular highlight for me is that our work has allowed YPO to identify new market segments (such as childrens’ centres and prisons) that offer opportunities for strategic growth outside their traditional core sectors.

Other highlights in brief

Many of our projects are confidential, so some of our most exciting projects have to stay under wraps. Amongst the highlights I can’t describe in detail: this year we’ve helped a major global manufacturer enter the UK market with a new B2B ecommerce product; we’ve worked on a massively successful long-term lead generation for one of the UK’s fastest-growing professional services companies; and we’ve developed a super-efficient tactical lead generation campaign for a niche B2B consultancy company that uses some of the most precise targeting for digital marketing that I’ve ever seen.

It has been a great year where our clients’ successes have really shown the value of the work we do as an agency.

Are you thinking about how to drive increased B2B business success in 2018? If so, get in touch to explore how Sharp Ahead could help you.

On this page:

Introducing Core Web Vitals

Why Core Web Vitals matter

There’s time, but the clock is ticking

What to do now – find out where you stand

What to do next – plan to pass the benchmarks

On this page:

Subscribe

On this page:

When things change

Speak to an expert

On this page:

Subscribe

On this page:

Here are our top 10 tips for running a webinar from home– and 2 alternatives to consider.

On this page:

Subscribe

On this page:

Does your website use HTTPS yet?

On this page:

Subscribe

On this page:

Digital marketing driving expansion at the Fareham Innovation Centre

Ultra-modern lead generation for a long-established business

New market segments for YPO

Other highlights in brief

On this page:

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