Tree Top Web Design Blog

In 2023, over 4,600 ADA-related website lawsuits were filed in the United States. That number has continued to climb. And while big brands grab the headlines, small businesses are increasingly in the crosshairs, including businesses with fewer than 15 employees.

If your website is open to the public, ADA website compliance isn't a "nice to have" anymore. It's a legal exposure, a customer service issue, and when done well, a competitive advantage.

A new website is one of the bigger investments a small business makes. Get it right, and it works for you around the clock, generating leads, building credibility, answering questions before the phone even rings. Get it wrong, and you've spent thousands on something you'll want to replace in a year.

The difference usually comes down to the process, not the price tag. We've seen what separates a smooth, successful build from the ones that go sideways. Here's what to look for, and what should make you pause.

Here's a number that surprises most business owners: the average website faces dozens of automated attack attempts every single day. Bots don't care whether you're a Fortune 500 company or a five-person shop in Santa Cruz — they scan for weaknesses indiscriminately. If your site runs on WordPress, Joomla, or any popular CMS, you're already on the list.

That's why website security monitoring isn't a luxury. It's the difference between catching a problem at 2 AM and discovering it when a customer calls to say your site is redirecting to a pharmacy ad.

You're paying for hosting. You might be paying for ads. People are visiting your website. But the phone isn't ringing, the contact form is quiet, and you're wondering if the site is actually doing anything.

It probably isn't — and here's the frustrating part: the problem is almost never that your business lacks potential customers. It's that your website has friction points that push visitors away before they ever reach out. Here are the five most common ones we see after 15 years of building and maintaining small business websites.

Google recently announced it has started to use HTTPS as a ranking signal in order to “make the Internet safer more broadly.” HTTPS is a language code that secures the information being passed back and forth between web servers and clients.

Many websites are accessed by HTTP, which means that these websites are talking to your browser using the regular 'unsecure' language. In other words, it is possible for someone to "eavesdrop" on your computer's conversation with these websites that are served via HTTP. This is why you would never want to enter personal or financial information into a website unless you notice that the web address begins with https://.