Category Archives: Online

6 Must-Have Pages Every Ecommerce Site Needs

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

When it comes to ecommerce, your website is your most important tool. When your site has been designed and planned well, it should provide a seamless experience for customers and site visitors all day, every day.

For every minor fault on your site, you limit its effectiveness and ability to work for you. Many ecommerce businesses make the simple mistake of not ensuring that they have the basic essentials of an ecommerce store, but this can be easily rectified.Continue reading→

7 Pieces Of Advice Small Business Owners Should Live By

Contributed article in our small business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

As a small business owner, you have a big job with a lot of responsibility and pressure riding on your shoulders. It only makes sense you’d want to take the time to review a few pieces of valuable advice that will help you get along better and succeed.

Be proud of how far you’ve come but be aware that you also have a lot of challenges ahead of you to tackle. You’re going to need to not only work hard to get ahead, but also do more of what’s going to help move the needle for you in a positive direction and commit fewer mistakes as you gain more experience.

1.   Document Specific Goals

You’re going to have a lot to keep track of, and be pulled in several different directions as a small business owner. It’s a wise idea to document specific goals for what you want to focus on and achieve early on. Continue reading→

How to Create the World’s Best Website

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

A website is something that everyone, individual and business alike, should set time aside to create. It’s no longer difficult to do, as there are many resources available that will help you learn how to put it together properly. For starters, it’s all about choosing the right hosting and server to set it up on. Next, the visual and written content ideas must start to come together if you want to leave a lasting impression with it and thus properly market yourself.

In order to learn how to create one of the best websites around, you will have to do some research. For now, your first step is to listen to the advice below.

  1. Choosing the Right Server

To set up your website, you will need a hosting provider where you can share it from. Luckily for you, there are plenty of options available for you to choose from, with one example being VPS hosting. This one is known as a virtual private server. What’s more, they are also one of the most cost-effective ways of using a server, while it still allows you to create a complex site.Continue reading→

Good Writing as an Essential Leadership Skill

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

Our writing gives us away. It is an element of great importance in our image because it says everything about a person. Talk about your education, your values, your way of seeing life, etc. Everything we put together through words is indicative of our personality.

Today, with the influence of electronic media, the impact of our spelling and writing is imminent. From sending a text message, writing an email, writing a paper in college, writing on a person’s Facebook wall to chatting, it reflects everything about us.

These have become the most common and current means of communication used by millions of people. Unfortunately, with surprise, we realize that the writing of many is deficient. In schools and universities, jobs and exhibitions are saturated with spelling errors. We have lost this habit that is essential to maintain and encourage, not only to project a good image but to be able to understand each other.Continue reading→

The Importance of IT Security for Every Business

Contributed article in our leadership series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

Not only is it reckless to build a business without security precautions, but it can also be illegal. For instance, users in the EU must now agree to the cookies and data you take from them for whatever purpose (usually to offer a seamless and customized experience). As for your company, not investing in your IT security will put you in danger of having your entire company held hostage with what is known as ransomware. There are so many reasons why IT security is important for small, medium, and large businesses alike:

1.    Your Customers Expect Secure Transactions

Mobile purchases and online shopping is more popular than ever, but that doesn’t mean that every online store gets a piece of the proverbial pie. You need to have a great looking site that functions well and looks great. You also need to offer the right levels of security and encryptions in order to protect said transactions for both party’s sakes.

2.    Malware Can Ruin Your Company

Continue reading→

3 Simple and Cost Effective Marketing Strategies for Your Small Business

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

The very success of your business relies on marketing. Without the necessary influx of clients, you are not going to be meeting the profit margins necessary for your business to survive, let alone flourish and grow. As a small business, you need to build yourself a solid reputation as a reliable company with good quality service, and that can only be achieved by a well thought out marketing plan. There are many aspects of marketing, from the promotion of your services to public relations in the local and broader community, and therefore there are many different aspects you need to consider. If you are looking for affordable and effective advertising techniques, then here are a few simple and cost-effective marketing strategies to get you started.Continue reading→

How to Create a Start-Up in Style

Contributed article in our entrepreneurial series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

Sometimes a little style, confidence and razzmatazz is just what’s needed to launch a new business into a prosperous future. It’ll show off your credentials and will cast away any lingering doubts or worries, instead investing you and your team with a confidence that may well lend itself to the first stages of opening a business up to new, competitive markets. This article takes a look at some of the best ways to start-up in style, using the invested money you’ve got to position yourself squarely in your industry without any hint of weakness or insincerity.

Launch Party

Every promising new business deserves a launch party, and yours should be no different. After all that preliminary work – most of it fairly dull paperwork – to establish your business as a trader, your launch party is a celebration of what you’ve achieved so far as well as a momentum-builder for the immediate future, filling everyone connected with the business with hope and positivity. Buy some bubbly and get some nice nibbles organized and prepare to bask, just for one evening, in the preliminary successes of your business.Continue reading→

Taking Charge of Your Company – How to Stay Ahead of Your Competition

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

Being complacent is equivalent to death in the business world. This is because trends, technologies and innovations are always changing, and while being consistent in some elements like customer service is a great thing, most of the time this lack of innovation can cause your downfall. To counter such complacency though, you need to research, you need to innovate, and you need to always strive to be better than you were yesterday:

  1. Know Your Demographic

Knowing your demographic means saving money through repeat customers. It means saving money because you won’t waste your marketing budget advertising blindly to people who don’t care or trying to acquire customers who aren’t interested. The average attention span of online users is only seconds long, and many scroll through their newsfeeds at blinding speeds. You want your advertisements to not only catch their attentions, you want to hold their attentions, and to do that you need to know your demographic. You need to know what medium they use, you need to know where they are, what language they speak, and what they value. Conducting online qualitative market research can help you be the company of the people, and be a success as a result.Continue reading→

The 5 Secrets to Developing a User-Friendly App

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

Many mobile users often take connectivity, functionality, and speed for granted, but they will certainly notice when an application isn’t working. The modern-day audience are also not shy when it comes to voicing their opinion, which can result in a decline in downloads. Read the five secrets to developing a user-friendly app.

1.  Guide Users with Icons

If you are developing an application with a minimalist design, icons can become a critical aspect of the user experience. Those handy symbols will not only add personality into your app, but they will provide a visual language to help guide users to key areas, so can support the navigation process.

  1. Review Device Compatibility

Apps can quickly lose value if a developer fails to consider software updates, which ultimately prevent application failures, crashes, and bugs. Regularly review an app’s compatibility across multiple devices to ensure you continue to present the best program to a user. Also, pay close attention to both positive and negative customer feedback to identify potential bugs, so you can make the appropriate alterations.Continue reading→

4 Ways To Keep In Touch With Your Customers

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

It is said that around 80 percent of your business will come from just 20 percent of your customers – that means it’s easier, and more cost effective to keep your current customers happy, contented, and loyal than it is to try and find more customers. Keeping in touch with your customers is a great way to ensure loyalty and good feelings, but how can a business do that successfully? Here are some ideas.

Newsletters

Having a newsletter that your customers can sign up to (or one that they are automatically signed up to) is a fantastic way to keep your company and your products and services in the mind of the people who will hopefully spend money with you. Keep them in touch with what is going on with your business, run competitions, give them discount codes for loyalty and so on. As long as you send out your newsletter regularly (perhaps once a month), then your company will easily stick in their mind.Continue reading→