2014 came with a variety of milestones. Germany won the World Cup. Psy’s Gangnam Style became the first video to reach two billion views on YouTube. Apple released the iPhone 6 and 6+ – the biggest iPhones yet. And the Giants won the World Series (with our headquarters located in San Francisco we had to).
While reflecting on this year, we were also reminded of the highlights within Yola. In celebration of a successful 2014, let’s take a stroll down memory lane.
Yola Buildathon
At the beginning of the year, we held a site-building contest to give Yola users the opportunity to build a business website with our new templates for a chance to win a great range of prizes. With a fantastic turnout, we came up with three winners based on quality of design, functionality, quality of content, and their supporting story:
1st Made by Hol
2nd Hannah Walker Jewellery
3rd Porirua Church
Site building ebooks part 1 and 2
To aid Yola users in their site-building experience, we created the two-part Get Started Building your website eBook. This workbook-style guide is broken into two categories – planning and design. Check them out:
Get Started Building Your Website – Part One: Planning
Get Started Building Your Website – Part Two: Design
5-minute website fixes
Back in January, we started the 5-minute website fixes blog series. These articles, initially intended to aid users for the Yola Buildathon, were such a hit that we still continue them to this day. Each post highlights ways Yola users can easily change the look of their sites in a few quick steps. They range from creating logos with transparent backgrounds to adding custom buttons to your contact forms.
Next year, we plan to release something special around this popular blog series. Be on the lookout, you won’t want to miss it!
The Button Widget
In March, we gave Yola users the ability to build their own custom call-to-action buttons in a matter of seconds. With a few simple clicks, users can create their own custom buttons to match their business website. These buttons can be customized by choosing a size, style and color of button, then adding a link location.
9 million users
Back in April, we were very excited to announce that the Yola Family was 9 million users strong. We absolutely couldn’t have done it without all of you!
Web analytics with SiteWit
A huge accomplishment we were pleased to announce was our partnership with SiteWit. Now, Yola users have the access to premium analytics right from the My Yola Dashboard for free. Have you found where your site visitors are coming from with SiteWit?
Stay tuned for more from SiteWit next year.
Online Store setup and education
We had two great successes that helped make building an Online Store with Yola easier than ever. We implemented a new Yola Online Store Setup Wizard to give users step-by-step guidance on how to setup their Online Store. We also started monthly Get Started Building Your Online Store webinars with a live Q&A session. Register your spot today! Have you checked out our Online Store Webinars? Register your spot today!
Five changes in one month
Back in June, we had a busy month, creating five new features! These new features included:
– The ability to add images to custom panel widgets
– Styled maps that match your site’s color scheme
– Even more banner customizations within Style Designer
– The ability to add padding to column dividers
– Online Store SEO improvements
Read more about these five features here.
New Yola Mail
This year, we made Yola Mail even easier. We upgraded to a new intuitive design and added the ability to sync with mobile devices.
You can learn more about these upgrades here!
Template gallery
One of our biggest accomplishments of 2014 was the Template Gallery. Each website template has placeholder content for users to customize and make their own. These flexible and modern website templates are available in our new Template Gallery. Check out the Template Gallery here or see some of our templates by category: for
- templates for churches,
- templates for real estate agencies,
- templates for photographers,
- templates for restaurants,
- templates for construction businesses.
New homepage
Whilst building each of these great new features, we even managed to give our site a bit of a makeover. Have you checked out our dazzling new homepage?
Yola website services
We realize that there are some parts of site-building that users may need an extra hand with, whether it is SEO help, graphic design or copywriting. And for that, we’ve got Yola Website Services. Gain help from the Yola experts and email services@yola.com with your request, and we’ll send you a quote.
Blogging ebook
We are under the firm belief that every business should have a business blog, as they give your company credibility and a personality. And for that reason, we created a blogging eBook to get business owners who are new to the blogging realm a jumpstart. Give it a read through.
10 million users
We are ecstatic to announce that we’ve reached 10 million users! While we typically hit 1 million new users each year, our growth this year has doubled! Thank you to each of our users!
As you can see, it’s been an exciting and successful year for all of us here at Yola, and we hope these changes have brought you great success as well. Here’s to another successful year and many more to come.