Social sharing is here to stay. Social media platforms will come and go over time. However people are social creatures and love to tell their friends (and in some case families) what they are up to. Social media is great for marketers, but should your business join in the fun? Everyone online knows that social
A new small business index and report has been launched. It looks at how Australia’s small business landscape of more than two million operators and how they are faring. Not much has improved following an ATO initiative 12 months ago. The problems of getting paid is still a major concern for business owners. (see ‘Late
What should you write for your business blog? Business Blog publishing essentially needs to be interesting and relevant to your audience but also needs to be well structured and easy to consume. Grabbing attention and ensuring readers get to the end and follow through on your desired action are two goals for all online articles.
Using feedback from your existing customers Social proof from your current customers helps when potential customers are researching you online. They’re getting to know you by way of the content of your website. Understandably, many of them might be skeptical or hesitant to trust you right away. To prove the value of what you have to offer, why not let
How to make sure you’re found on Facebook search. Heard about Facebook Search? It’s true that Google reigns supreme with over 95% of the online search market. However social media giant, Facebook are actively making changes to grab their slice of the action. Yet despite the potential, Facebook hadn’t in recent years been able to effectively
Mature Age Investment in Human Capital In this post about SMEs employing mature age staff we highlight an excellent article from Inside Small Business. The article was originally written by Margaret Paton, Journalist/Copywriter, Communications: Keeping It Real. Taking on a mature-aged workers can mean reaping benefits. Knowledge and experience Hire a worker aged 50 + and you’ll tap
End of Financial Year (EOFY) has always been a tough time for small to medium size enterprises. A recent EOFY report published by the Bank of Queensland showed more than a third of small business owners say the end of financial year is the most stressful time of the year. Of the 520 small business
Okay so you have your website setup and are open for online business. Use a Contact Form to fulfill your site goal. You have decided you key goal is to have site visitors contact you. You spent a lot of time, energy and money getting potential customers on your page so achieving a completion
Electronic systems are in-favour with the Australia Taxation Office (ATO). They know that most business owners are honest and that running a business can be difficult. So they are looking at industry-wide patterns so they can see who may need assistance. The ATO say that, unfortunately, there are businesses that operate in the cash and hidden
Save Time Spent Answering the Same Old Questions. Save time you and your team spend handling everyday enquiries from existing potential customers. We suggest to business operators that they implement a good FAQ page on their websites. It can be a very powerful tool. In addition to helping establish your expertise, it can boost your
Everyone expects a responsive website whenever they are online. A ‘responsive website’ is one that delivers the visitor a pleasant visual and functional experience regardless of whether they are using a desktop, laptop, tablet or modern mobile phone. Any web designer worth hiring has the knowledge, skills and tools to produce a fully functional site
5 Essential Focus Points To Grow Business In Any Market Small business owners can’t change the macroeconomic market conditions in any given period. However, there are ways to not just survive but thrive even in downmarket times. Financial crises come and go and the geo-political landscape may look disturbing but local businesses continue to serve
NSW Small Business Commissioner research SME attitudes and views of cybercrime awareness. The purpose was to better inform stakeholders of cyber crime awareness amongst small to medium-sized business owners in NSW. While the report only included businesses based in NSW the findings probably exist with enterprises in all states of Australia. What is cybercrime? Cybercrime
On-page SEO – Why we use Yoast on all our client websites. From time to time we like to provide a peek behind the curtain in our web development shop by shining a light on the tools we use to build great websites for small businesses. We generally use WordPress for various reasons including how
Google My Business is Here and it’s free ! Anyone in business selling products or services have probably tried many ways to attract traffic to their websites. This includes via hits from the various search engines. ‘Page Rank’ particularly from the Google algorithm are impacted by various paid strategies. These include Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns
Your logo is a key asset for your business. They may only take up a small piece of your online real estate but your logo plays a big role in your business. The team over at Wix.com have put together a great article that outlines the main considerations and goals for online branding. The main
Website Annoyances Solved with the Right Booking Engine. Keeping visitors on your hotel website can be challenging, but it is an important part of your business. The more difficult it is to navigate your website, the less likely potential guests are to complete their bookings. – Jeff Hamilton from RoomKeyPMS RoomKeyPMS is cloud-powered software that
Attractive Web Design Tips. A Digital Influence Index report from 2012 revealed that 89% of customers searched online ahead of making a purchasing decision (Digital Influence Index 2012). Fast-forward 5 years and you can expect that percentage to be even higher. How does your website stack up in the beauty stakes? Often your website is
Motel and B&B Website Must Haves. Accommodation providers need an effective customer-facing site. The overall look of the site needs to be professional and inviting by using modern fonts and top-quality images to encourage site visitors to stay on your page and make a reservation. While it’s tempting to start a blog, it is time-consuming for you and
Wherefore art thou Romeo? If Shakespeare had a website and wanted people to find his works he, like all of us online business-people would have to understand Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). At the heart of being found online is ‘Keyword research’ which is a catchall term for the activities you undertake to create a good
It’s no surprise that video content is continuing to grow in popularity. The YouTube video platform is the second most used search engine after Google. Creating video content and publishing it on YouTube will assist your website to gain traction with your target audience. Here are two ways to integrate video on your site so let’s
Should every website have a blog? Well maybe not if the time, effort and expense put into it fails to result in meeting your website goals. The chances that your blog will stand out from the rest is unlikely but that alone doesn’t mean you should decide against blogging. Personal blogs are one thing but
Finding it hard to track your leads? Here’s 5 reasons to use a CRM system. It’s a place to store all of your clients’ contact information in one place. Keeping track of customer and lead information is essential to growing your business and maintaining a healthy client base. Customer relationship management solutions, or CRM, are more than
The festive season is now upon us and for some businesses that may mean a need to employ additional staff. The team at business.gov.au have released some great information and advice if it’s the first time you’ve employed short term staff, or if you haven’t had to hire staff since the last holiday period. Do an internal
Let’s limit the frustration from client no-shows. Okay so you have spent time, money and energy into achieving a client scheduling an appointment. You don’t want to risk losing the booking but the reality is that people have to make changes to accommodate work, family or leisure activities which may mean they need to re-schedule their
Ever thought about setting up a collaboration with another business? In a recent post written by Peta Di Palma for FlyingSolo.com.au this opportunity can “determine the business opportunities you receive, the contracts you win, new clients you get and word-of-mouth referrals you generate”. Peta is a master connector and strategic collaborator. Based in Sydney her
Will online booking lead to less time talking with clients and less sales as a result? Offering online booking does not have to replace phone call appointment setting. Fitness business websites can offer clients the choice of scheduling via the phone or online. Some clients are going to prefer the phone and others to schedule
Most Photoshop users only use a fraction of the features available. Don’t let the apparent complexity of the tool put you off giving it try. Everyone with a website or needing to use visuals for social media could benefit from some basic technical knowledge of how to use the great Adobe tool that now reached
Don’t just trust your gut when hiring. If you are like most managers you probably just trust your gut-feeling when interviewing candidates for positions with your company. The quality of your customer service team is key to retaining clients, up-selling and managing your reputation so you really need to hire the best people. If you
Avoid Unwanted Debt – understand tax basics All business operators need to understand how the tax system applies to their business in order to avoid financial ‘surprises/shocks’ down the track. Unknown debt is unwanted debt so it’s key to make sure you have all the information you need. The Australian Tax Office ATO will be running
You don’t have to produce all your own content. Having recently completed a project for a group of Driving Schools in Melbourne it was clear that the majority of business owners struggled to find quality content for inclusion on their websites. Despite the best intentions of engaging their potential customers, attempts at written and visual content falls short
Research indicates online scheduling aids business growth. Acuity Scheduling has helped millions of clients book appointments with tens of thousands of companies. In July 2014 they surveyed roughly 19,000 users to learn how they use online appointment scheduling. They also analysed the times of appointments and when they were booked of a subset of around
More and more online companies are offering online bookings. Freeing up time to do more business is something all business owners want right? One way many savvy small business owners are turning to is offering their customers the opportunity of booking appointments, services and facilities online and in their own time – 24/7. Swimming Lessons
The results are in following the review of 61 Melbourne Driving School Websites. As reference points, the site visitor avatar was a learner driver (or their parent) and the site conversion goal was to achieve a booking. The analysis was limited to the websites of the 61 driving schools and their Facebook pages if applicable. The findings
How to have your Biz Open 24 Hours 7 Days a Week. For businesses that have an established website, offering online booking should boost appointments up to 25%. There’s no comprehensive and independent study on the impact of integrating online scheduling but there are case-studies that point to evidence of benefits. According to research 35% of people prefer to book
Need help maximising your productive time? Sometimes earning more income is less important than reducing your cost overheads. One of the major time-sucks in business is in getting clients in the front door. There are plenty of them phoning you, sending you emails and filling in web enquiry forms which is great for business but
Come on people – pay your bills promptly Large companies that treat small suppliers “with contempt” by delaying payment times are under the spotlight, with Small Business Ombudsman Kate Carnell saying the problem has become so critical that her office is seriously considering an inquiry. Carnell says any inquiry would target the huge lags in payment times from some
Business is a competition so why don’t more of them try to stand out from their competitors? Running a business of any size places a range of demands on everyone from the CEO down to the employees managing customer delivery every day. It’s crucial that systems and processes are in place and working efficiently to ensure
People are busy – they want online scheduling for all sorts of things. Medical professionals have been offering clients the facility to make online reservations for some time. The cost for the integration is now so affordable there’s nothing stopping any business from getting in on the act. Studies have shown that 90% of customers
Love or hate social media a lot of time is used browsing various social media channels. Overall we spend more than 4 hours a day online and about 3 hours is spent browsing social media. Traditional entertainment like TV gets only 2 hours of our attention today. So if you are running a small business and social
Interesting development in Online Scheduling Visibility Since the middle of 2015 Google have been testing Knowledge Panel feature and Place Actions Forms to allow scheduling via Intuit’s Demand Force with appointment based businesses. This sees Google integrating online “Make an appointment” software into local businesses’ knowledge graphs more often than it used to. The logical conclusion
Can your business afford to NOT join the trend towards online scheduling? Scheduling online. Nearly all small business operators concede their customers are asking to be able to make online bookings. However, there is still a low percentage take-up. What is holding them back? The cost to have online scheduling integrated into an existing site
Social media has the potential to help build brand recognition. It also amplifies word-of-mouth advertising for your business. Both important pieces that can help sales, especially in a local environment. Sue Cockburn wrote recently about this on SocialMediaToday.com “Reaching your target audience requires more than setting up your business profile on a few choice social networks.
With more than 1.2 billion digital buyers worldwide in 2015, online shopping is a growing trend no business should ignore. Matt Duo has written a comprehensive article on codeable.io that outlines a range on considerations, options and advice about what you need to consider before deciding to jump into e-commerce on your site. A summary
Ensure Your Images Suit your Purpose The use or imagery adds information along with interest and should convey to the site visitor an overall feeling that they are in the right place for what they are seeking to achieve. You have no doubt spent a considerable amount of effort, time and perhaps money to attract
The Internet is abuzz with facts and figures purporting that the world is moving inexorably towards mobility. So what is the real story? Well if you believe Google’s mobile path to purchase report which surveyed 950 consumers in the USA across 9 different verticals then the statement is true. The study included Apparel & Beauty, Restaurants, Food &
A call to action (CTA) on a webpage is intended to coax a click. Common examples of CTA are: buttons banners text Once clicked, the code behind the element starts moving the clicker down a (hopefully) carefully constructed conversion funnel so that it results in the completion of the intended action. The premise of
Are elements on the page distracting from your conversion goal? 8 things that distract site visitors Auto-playing videos or audio. Don’t make your site visitor’s first action to mute or worse still hit the back arrow. Let them be in control of what plays and when. Pop-ups done wrong – timing is everything so don’t
Question – Am I asking my site visitors to churn through too much text? There are two key considerations that need to be balanced when finalising the textual content on your webpage. The first is to provide appropriate information for your site visitor and the second is to ensure that the search engines are kept
Have you thought about how to use colour on your site? Before you decide on the visual style for your website take some time to review how some of the most popular sites are currently using imagery and the other key visual element of colour. Big companies spend a load of cash on market research
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