Multiact Media

Professional quality website templates without the agency price tag

Articles

Google Ads Location Targeting: The hidden setting that can waste your budget

by

If you’ve ever set up a Google Adwords (now Google Ads) campaign, you know you can target specific locations. Within a campaign, you go to the tab Locations and you can Add or Exclude specific locations.

So far so good.

You might even check the metrics for your targeted location and see that all clicks are from your targeted area.

So you’re all good, your ads are only showing to users from your specific location. Right? Wrong!

Here is what Google actually does: they show your ads to “people in, or who show interest in, your targeted locations”. What does this mean? It means that they are showing your ads not only to people from your location, but also to people who showed interest in your location. And your advertising budget for you local business could easily be wasted on people from other cities, countries or even continents.

Here is what you need to do next.

Head over to the Settings tab > Locations > Locations options then, instead of default option “People in, or who show interest in, your targeted locations (recommended)”, make sure to check “People in your targeted locations”. Now you’re done. Until the next setting Google comes up with to try to take your money.

Why is my WordPress website so slow?

by

I’m getting this question more and more lately, so I thought I’d compile here a list with the main issues I find on most client websites.

1. Low-quality hosting service

Although shared hosts are appealing due to their low-cost offers, if performance and speed are important for you, then a shared host is not the way to go. Even if they advertise unlimited disk space or bandwidth, they usually have a lot of hidden limitations on the resource usage to make sure they can accommodate a large numbers of websites on a single server.

Solution:
With web hosts, just as with anything else, you get what you pay for. So my recommendation is to invest in a high-performance hosting service that’s suitable for your needs. My top picks at this point are Kinsta Cloudways and xCloud.

2. Too many plugins

With so many plugins on the market offering so many features, it’s tempting to forget about performance and find yourself installing plugin after plugin until the website becomes almost unusable. I’m constantly seeing websites with 30-40 or more active plugins, and website owners that wonder why their websites have suddenly become slow.

Solution:
Obviously, not all plugins are created equal, and some use a lot more resources than others. So here are a few tips on how to handle plugins:

  • do your research, find out which plugins are better performing and go with those
  • ask yourself if you really need the plugin you want to install and if you really can afford the extra load time that plugin might bring
  • correctly deactivate and delete all the plugins you are no longer using. It’s not unusual for me to find on a client’s website 2 or 3 active page builder, 3 social plugins, 2 caching plugins and so on.
  • clean up old plugin data or get a developer to do this for you. When a plugin is deactivated and deleted, this means its files are deleted from the plugins folder, but most of the times, the database entries and tables remain. And you might end up with a huge number of options being autoloaded by WordPress from plugins you no longer have.

3. Heavily bloated theme

Multi-purpose themes are in high-demand these days due to the very large number of options and features they offer. But if you’re only using a small percentage of their features – and I don’t see why anybody would ever use ALL the features – you’re left with a heavy, complex theme that’s slowing down your website.

The solution?
Always ask yourself if you really need all the bells and whistles that come with multi-purpose themes, and if you don’t, go with a lighter, optimized, SEO friendly theme or framework. My top picks have been Genesis and GeneratePress.

4. High-resolution, uncompressed images and other multimedia files

Another culprit when it comes to slow loading pages are large images and multimedia files. I’ve seen web pages that tried to load 7-10MB self-hosted videos or used a lot of extremely large images (5-6MB each).

Solution: optimize, optimize, optimize!
If you can’t optimize images before you upload them, use a plugin that does this for you. Some good options are

  • Smush – the free version can optimize images that are under 1MB, while the Pro version can handle images up to 32MB.
  • reSmush.it – the free version can optimize images that are under 5MB
  • ShortPixel Image Optimizer – it optimizes and also resizes images with no size limit, but the free version can only be used for 100 images/month.
    NOTE: All these plugins won’t use your server resources for processing the images, so they won’t slow your server down.
  • Imsanity – it resizes all uploaded images to a maximum width and height set by you

5. Too many external services

What are external services? Everything that’s loaded from another website: the facebook likebox or comments, the entire list of Google Fonts, Yelp reviews, ads from various ad networks, YouTube/Vimeo videos, analytics and tracking scripts etc. Each external service you use will add to the loading time of your pages.

Solution:
As tempting it is to have everything integrated into your website, make sure you also consider (or even measure) how much loading time they add and if it’s worth it.

 Speed optimization is a complex subject with many layers to it. I’ve only listed 5 potential problems that I encounter more frequently, but the list is far from being exhaustive. If you still can’t get your website to run faster, you might need to hire an expert to look into it.

 

A Codeable review: My 3.5 years with Codeable.io

by

Freelancing sites reviews

My freelancing journey started in 2005 and for several years I got to experience both sides of the outsourcing world.

  • As a freelancer, working through freelancing sites was no picnic: most of the projects had ridiculously low budgets, the competition was fierce and was driving prices even lower. Clients were calling the shots – so it could take forever to get them to mark the project as complete.
  • As a client, it didn’t seem much better either: you had to select from dozens or hundreds of applicants, most of whom were just throwing at you canned replies without reading the brief. Plus, without a vetting process in place, selecting a developer was a gamble, you had no guarantee of the quality of work delivered.

That’s why for a long time I stopped using freelancing sites altogether. Until September 2014, when I ran into an ad of a company called Codeable who was looking for WordPress developers for a new freelancing platform. I wasn’t very optimistic about it, but decided to apply anyway. One week later, I got an email I was accepted. And three and a half years later, I’m still working with them.

So I thought I’d share what working with Codeable has been like and how it differed from my previous experiences.

Codeable reviews

As a freelancer

These are the aspects that will come as a (pleasant) surprise, particularly if you’ve worked on other freelancing platforms.

  • Developers are colleagues, not competitors
    When I first joined the platform, I saw older members always greeting new members, giving them pointers on how to get more jobs or deal with clients. But the most shocking thing for me was this (sort of a) shared custom among experts: whenever a new developer – with 0 tasks completed – estimated on a new project, all the other developers refrained from estimating, so that the new developer could get his/her first project.
    Moreover, developers are all connected via Slack. So, whenever you have a question, run into an issue you just can’t figure out, need feedback or some quick advice, the other devs are always willing to help (and send a pretty giphy :P). This was another shocker for someone used to working alone.
  • Support team means more people who are helping you
    If you have a personal problem and you can’t complete a project, you notify support and they’ll find you a replacement so the project gets finished and the client is still happy.
    If you’re new, the support team will help you land your first job.
    If you’re struggling or if you just ask, they’ll give you feedback on anything that you could improve: your communication, your estimating, your planning, your portfolio, your expectation management skills and the list can go on and on…
    If you need help with anything, support will step in and try to help.
  • Steady stream of high quality, well-paid projects
    The projects posted on the platform are varied: from small CSS tweaks, migration, speed optimizations, plugin or custom theme development, to highly complex builds. Even though we do run into the occasional “I want a Facebook clone for $500“, there are enough projects to make a living out of Codeable. And if you’re looking for inspiration, I suggest you read my colleague Nathan’s post on how he managed to earn $300,000 in 2 years.
  • There is no bidding and no competing on price
    On Codeable, developers post their estimates and clients get one price averaged out of all estimates, no matter which developer they choose to work with. So there is no “race to the bottom” on pricing.

Apply as a developer at Codeable

As a client

These are some of the things that might make you appreciate freelancing platforms again:

  • All 300+ developers are handpicked and thoroughly tested
    Codeable is not an open freelancing platform, meaning a developer can’t just create an account and start interacting with clients. There is a rigorous testing process for developers where only 2% succeed, so you don’t need to worry about the quality of the work.
  • You don’t need to worry your favorite developer is going on vacation or is too busy for your next project
    When a developer becomes unavailable, support steps in and reassigns any client requests to other developers with similar skills.
  • You get an entire team with an extremely varied skillset
    Since collaboration, and not competition, is encouraged, developers start to do a strange thing: they recommend other developers who are better suited for a particular task. Even though we’re all WordPress developers, each one tends to specialize in certain areas – some specialize in design, others in SEO, or speed optimization, or Genesis, WooCommerce, LearnDash, membership plugins etc. So when one of our clients comes in with a task that’s not right up our alley, we just put him in contact with another colleague who specializes in that area.

Post a project on Codeable

Negative Codeable Reviews

71,225 has been completed through Codeable and 98.9% of them are rated with 5 out of 5 stars. That’s all great, but this means 1.1% are not rated with 5 starts. How does this happen? Here are a few situations I’ve encountered:

  • Chemistry
    Sometimes there isn’t enough chemistry between client and developer and the communication keeps get worse, while frustrations rise on both parts.
    How is this handled? If the project is still a long way from being finished, support can step in and assign another developer on that project.
  • Unclear scope
    This usually happens because some requirements have not been clearly and explicitly stated, so each party considers different things to be implied. As a rule of thumb, what isn’t explicitly asked for by the client or offered by the developer shouldn’t be expected to be delivered.
    How is this handled? Support steps in and tries to clarify the situation; depending on the case, the client can either understand that the parts not specified were not included in the estimate, or they get a refund, or they get another developer assigned.
  • Extra work requested for free (aka scope creeping)
    This is probably the most frequent situation which results in a rating < 5. After the project is complete, a client might request additional work not covered by the initial scope. In some cases, the client understands and funds an additional task; in other cases, the client gets offended and just gives the developer a bad rating.

As with anything, try to keep an open mind and get different perspectives from different people. Not all freelancers are the same, just as not all freelancing platforms are the same.

 

 

 

Recommendations for Best WordPress Hosting

by

UPDATED: June 2025

There is no one-size-fits-all solution and every host has their ups and downs and pros and cons, so depending on a client’s particular needs, I might recommend one host or another.

With that in mind, these are the hosts I end up recommending the most to clients (but I do reserve the right to change my recommendations based on how these hosts evolve and perform). In the past, I used to recommend some of shared hosts as well, but due to latest experience (and not the pleasant kind), I’m not longer recommending them.

Managed WordPress hosting

Managed WP hosting means the setup is optimized for hosting a WordPress site and the host takes most of the configuration load off of you. They handle security, speed, caching, backups, they have 1-click staging so you can first test things before going live and 1-click backup restore in case something goes south.

XCloud – plans start at $5 / mo
They have both regular, budget-friendly servers, and premium servers with higher speed and performance.

Kinsta – plans start at $35 / mo
It’s a managed WordPress hosting based on Google Cloud Platform. Unlike WP Engine, the resources for each site are private and are not shared between sites or accounts.

Cloudways – plans start at $11 / mo
Discount coupon: 20% Off for 1st Month with coupon MMEDIAFEB20

WP Engine – plans start at $47 / mo.
It’s a managed WordPress hosting based on Google Cloud Platform and AWS.

Important Note:

None of these hosts offer email hosting, so in case you want to use emails with your  domain name, I recommend specialized email hosting services such as Google Workspace ($7 per user per month), Zoho Mail (free for up to five users and 1 domain), Rackspace ($2 per user/month, already integrated with Cloudways) etc.

Avoid Generic CTAs

by

Each CTA (click-to-action) link should be explicit and clearly state what users should expect. When users see a generic CTA like “Learn More” or “Get Started”, they expect to find out more about what your product and how it works; they don’t expect to be introduced to a purchasing form.

A study conducted by NN Group showed that, when users clicking on “Get Started” are taken to a register or subscribe form, they “ended up lost, uninformed, and frustrated to the point where they were no longer interested in the service, gave up, or moved onto a competitor.”

Tricking people by using a “Get Started” link may get more clicks on the CTA, but […] sets the wrong expectation

“You may reach superficial conversion goals but you won’t keep customers happy or loyal in the end. It’s better to be forthcoming and let users engage and commit when they’re ready for it.”

Usability Research: How Users Look at Photos

by

1. Users ignore stock photos

If you’ve decided to build a new website, you might be tempted to use large, pretty stock photos of happy people either offering your services or receiving them. They look better than the photos you took of your business and cost less that what a professional photographer would charge for a photo shoot.

However, research shows that “big feel-good images that are purely decorative […] are completely ignored“.

2. People photos: use real people, preferably smiling

In a study by Nielsen Norma Group, users spent 10% more time viewing the portrait photos than reading the biographies, but ignored stock photos of generic people.

usability study: photos of real people

Another study by Specs shows that a photo of a person smiling gets a lot more user attention than that of a non-smiling person.

usability study: smile in photos

3. Product photos: use photos with plenty of details

Another study by NN Group comparing 2 ecommerce category pages showed that photos with enough details got 5 times more fixations than generic photos that didn’t allow for any differentiation between products.

usability test: compare ecommerce product pages