Category: business coach

Modern Ways Of Pleasing Today’s Customer

Scott AsaiLeave a comment

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

Pleasing a modern target audience can be tough for any business. The market is always changing, and your company needs to work hard to stay on top of its game. You need to keep rethinking your business strategies to make sure that you’re appealing to the modern consumer. If you’re struggling on that mission then here are some modern ways of pleasing today’s customer.

Rewarding people.

If you start rewarding your customers then you’ll probably notice more repeat purchases. Discounts, vouchers, and even giveaways are a great way to get people buying from your business in the first place, but such rewards can also keep customers returning to your business. If customers see they’ll get 50% off their second or third purchase, for example, then they’ll be more likely to buy from you again. You really have to appreciate the power of word of mouth marketing, too. Happy customers will tell their friends and family about you. In fact, you could even use rewards as an incentive to get people talking about your brand. If you offer discounts to customers who refer your company to their friends then you’ll probably notice a bigger influx of new clients. Rewards are definitely a good way to build a long-term bond with your client base.

Creating an enticing online presence.

Another great way to satisfy the modern-day customer is to create an enticing online presence. Most people search the internet for the things they want to buy. If your digital marketing game isn’t up to scratch then you’re missing out on potential sales. You might want to read about conversion rate optimization because the goal of digital marketing is to gain paying customers. Boosting traffic on your website is a good start, but your company isn’t going to improve if none of those visitors actually buy anything from you. You need to find ways to improve your website’s design and content to impress people who visit your homepage. With an enticing site, your business could see a much better conversion of traffic to sales.

Listening to them.

Finally, the best way to please today’s customer is to simply listen to them. This has always been the case, but it’s something that many modern businesses neglect to do. Giving the consumers what you want to give them isn’t going to get you the sales you want. Like it or not, the customer is always right. If you want your business to do well then you need to meet the needs of the market. Do your research to find out what your target audience wants. You could run polls on Twitter or invite people to leave feedback online.

Find out what clients like and dislike about your business, and ask them for their opinions on rival companies in your industry. That’s the best way to gauge the current consumer mentality in your marketplace. Once you start listening to customers, you’ll have a better understanding of what they want. And, in turn, you’ll be able to deliver a service that pleases today’s customer. You might even be able to find gaps in the market that your competitors have missed. It could be a chance for your brand to really stand out in its industry.

Spend Money to Make Money: Three Areas to Invest When You’re Launching a Business

Scott Asai2 Comments

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

As the old saying goes – you have to spend money to make money in business. And it’s true, if you’re establishing a company from scratch there are lots of overhead costs that you’ll need to cover just to get to the stage where you can open your doors or begin trading online. You have an app and a website to invest in, premises to hire, insurances to cover and stock or materials to buy amongst other things. As a new company who are yet to make any profit, chances are this will be funded using savings or commercial loans, so it’s tempting to want to cut costs and make savings in as many places as possible. However, there are some areas that you simply need to spend the money in – since cutting corners would jeopardize your venture. Here are some examples.

Recruitment

Finding the right staff for your business is absolutely key. These are the people that will keep things running, it’s their day to day tasks that keep your business moving forward and turning a profit. You need the right people for the job, employees who care about the company’s success and are good at their job. You can hire based on experience, or you could hire on potential if you’re happy to train them yourself. But either way, a strong workforce is key to your success and so you need to recruit carefully. Don’t just accept the first applicant that comes your way- don’t be afraid to create aptitude tests or request second or even third interviews. You want employees that are going to stick with you and be productive in their roles.

Software

In modern business, much of the work is done online. The right softwares can make tedious tasks much quicker and easier (meaning you can use your staff to their best potential instead of them being stuck on jobs that a computer could do instead). It also means you can hire less staff in many cases, software can often completely automate some areas of business which will save you money. Using software to do certain tasks means you eliminate human error and stay as productive as possible. While there are all kinds of business softwares out there you can utilize, your best bet is to contact a company offering software development consulting services and have your own custom designed. That way it’s bespoke, it works exactly to your company instead of you having to make workarounds.

Marketing

Chances are you’ve put a lot of effort and research in before starting your business. By the time you launch, you know that you’re offering something that people actually want – and at the right price. However, this simply isn’t enough. You need marketing to get your name out there, competition in business is fierce and you need to be discoverable amongst your more established competitors. Don’t let marketing costs catch you out, they can be expensive but they’re essential.

Unexpected Things That Can Derail Business Success

Scott AsaiLeave a comment

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

You’d hope that if you just have a good idea, work hard, and have a pinch of luck, then your business triumph is assured. Alas, this is not the case. While these things will guide you towards success, there’s no guarantee that you’ll experience long-term success. This is because there are many things that can derail your path towards glory. Some of them are within your control, while some are beyond your control. Below, we take a look at a number of somewhat unexpected aspects that can derail your company’s upward trajectory, as well as offer some advice on how you can prevent them from happening and handle them if they do.

Personal Issues

They say you should keep your personal life and professional life separate, but it can’t always happen this way. It can be relatively straightforward to leave your working side at the office, but keeping home problems from interfering with your work? That’s easier said than done. If you’re going through a rough emotional time, then you won’t be able to push through and work extra hard; it’ll be a case of taking care of what needs to be done, and waiting for your energy to return before taking on more tasks. If you have a personal crisis, such as being arrested for a DUI or something, then there’s no way that won’t impact your business in one way or another. The trick is just to limit the damage it can do.

A New Competitor

Everything might be going swimmingly. Business is growing, demand is high, and things are all-around looking rosy. But there’ll soon be a problem if a competitor moves in on your turf. Your profits will take a hit, there’s no doubt about it; but will it be a significant dip, or a manageable one? When a competitor moves in, it’s important to carry on doing what you’ve always done. If people loved you before, they’ll be happy to carry on supporting you even though there’s another option for them. If it’s a giant corporation who has opened up nearby, play up your small local business credentials. People are more likely to support an independent business rather than a big business than they were in the past!

Hiring the Wrong Person

Your staff is the bedrock of your success. You’re an important figure, for sure, but you’re only one person: your staff is a team, and when they all work together well, your business runs smoothly. When they don’t, the good times can be hard to find. While it shouldn’t necessarily be this way, one bad employee can have a hugely detrimental effect on the team’s success. Morale can drop. Communication can break down. As such, it’s important that you’re hiring the right person always. Easier said than done? Maybe, but you can increase your chances of success by developing a robust hiring policy. If you follow the guidelines that you yourself have established, you’ll be less likely to end up with a dud of an employee who brings everyone down.

Staff Leaving Abruptly

Hiring the wrong person can be damaging; losing your best employees can be even worse. You’ll have created a system that depends on your employees delivering their best work. If one or more of them suddenly leave, then it’s going to be difficult to get back up to the standards you were operating at before. There are a few things you can do to reduce the chances of this happening, however. For starters, you can treat your employees well; that means offering them a platform to grow professionally, and paying them well. You can also ask them to give you plenty of notice if they want to leave, so you have time to find a suitable replacement.

The Elements

It’s not just what happens inside your business premises that affects your success; what takes place outside has an impact too. Take the elements. After a heavy rainstorm, you could arrive at work only to discover that the place is flooded. On that day, you won’t be able to work, and you may have lost important documents and infrastructure that were critical to your success. Now, you can’t control the weather, but you can control how you prepare for severe weather. Start by working with waterproofing specialists so that your offices are unaffected by heavy rainfall. You can also keep any important documents and electrical equipment stored away in a waterproof container, especially when you know that there’s a lot of rain on the way.

Suppliers In Difficult

You’re not trying to succeed in business all on your own. You’ll be working with other businesses as you try to build your empire. If one of these companies falls into difficulties and has to stop trading, you could find yourself without the goods and services you need to operate.

Changing Moods

The world is ever in flux. What is current and relevant today could be obsolete in years to come. There really are no guarantees! Your business may be popular now, but what is the world moves on? If some of the world’s biggest corporations can be left behind, then so can your small business. The best way to prepare is to keep an eye on trends, and to not take anything for granted. If it seems like the tide is beginning to turn, then refocus your energies. For this reason, it’s always a good idea to have an open mindset about where you’ll be taking your business, rather than having a clear, unalterable vision.

Final Thoughts

Life is full of surprises; that’s what makes it so exciting. Alas, not all of these surprises can be good. Sometimes, you’ll be hit by something that causes your operations to stutter, or perhaps pause altogether. If you’re unprepared for them and they occur, then don’t panic. It might not be an ideal situation, but keep the bigger picture in mind: this is just a blip on what will hopefully be a long and prosperous journey with your venture.

Protecting Your Staff

Scott Asai2 Comments

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

When you start your own small business, there is a lot that you need to think about. You’ll be worried about boosting sales, defining your marketing strategy, finding your audience, scouting out the competition and recruiting and training staff. One thing that many small business owners neglect, is looking after those staff once they’ve been hired.

This is a mistake. Failing to look after your staff can mean that turnover is high, they’re not motivated to work to their best, that they don’t enjoy their jobs and it can even mean that you are open to lawsuits.

There are many ways to look after your team. You need to offer them flexible working and comfortable working conditions. You need to look after their emotional needs and make sure that they are treated fairly and with consideration. You have to protect them from any bias and workplace discrimination, and you need to protect them from injury and illness. It’s a lot to take on but offering your staff the correct protection can mean that they can do their jobs better, they are happier, they take less time off sick, and they work for you for a lot longer, allowing them to build their skills and become better at their jobs. It’s good for them, and it’s good for you.

Train Them

The first thing that you can do to protect your staff is offering them the training that they need to do their job safely, without endangering themselves and others. Don’t just give them a quick walkthrough and then throw them in. Spend time on a thorough training program, and buddy them up with a more experienced member of staff for a while before letting them work unsupervised. Then, offer extra training to anyone that needs it, and when anything changes.

The training program that you offer depends on the nature and specifics of your business. But, it should be in-depth, covering every area and not just the tasks they’ll be responsible for day to day.

Perform Risk Assessments

A crucial part of protecting your staff is knowing what it is they need protecting from. Performing regular, and adequate risk assessments gives you a chance to assess the environment of your workplace. To spot things that could be a risk to the health and safety of your staff, and to find ways to minimize that risk with training, avoidance, equipment, and precaution.

Make sure you do different risk assessments for groups like pregnant women, disabled staff and anyone else who might be at a higher risk, as your work environment may pose them different threats. Once completed, keep a record of these risk assessments, the findings and any changes that you have made to reduce risks, should you need them in the future.

Provide them with the Tools they Need

Training is the first tool that your employees need to keep themselves safe. Risk assessments are a tool for you to keep them safe. Then, there’s the industrial safety gear that your staff needs to do their jobs to the best of their ability without injury or accident. Don’t scrimp on this. Pay what you need to get it right, to keep your staff from getting hurt while they do their jobs.

Then, regularly take the time to check this gear, to make sure it’s still in good condition and working well. Replace it when it needs it, checking the market for updates and improvements before making your purchase.

Look After Machinery

Safety gear isn’t the only thing that you need to keep your team safe. You also need to make sure that any machinery and equipment that they use is safe, effective and free from danger. Check the basics yourself every day, install a cleaning and maintenance checklist to keep everything working well and have machines and equipment serviced regularly and repaired and replaced as needed.

Keep an Open Door

A crucial element of health and safety is communication. Your staff needs to be able to come to you if they have a problem, if they are ill or hurt, or if they are worried about their safety. They need to feel comfortable coming to you if they need to take time off, or if they are concerned about how the workplace is affecting your health. You also need them to come to you if they notice a problem with machinery, equipment or other staff, that needs addressing. So, make sure your workplace has an open-door policy. Encourage open communication and honest on the shop floor, and you’ll always know what’s going on.

The Power Of A Business Blog

Scott AsaiLeave a comment

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

As a business, you need to have a voice out in the world. With around seven million new pages added to the internet every day, it stands to reason that the biggest challenges that any new entrepreneur will come across is how to get their voice out there. A business blog is going to be the best way that you can extend your reach and make connections. Publishing a blog can show off what you do for your business, and it can also give you the chance to show your customers and clients a little bit about your personality as a business. Your blog is the space that you can have a personal voice, rather than just a professional one, and it’s going to be the way that you interact with people, get them to notice you and generally share your industry and company specific news.

The problem? Finding the time for a blog is hard. It’s a powerful tool to use to connect with others and step out of the professional box that you put yourself in, but you should consider outsourcing your content elsewhere if you don’t have the time to manage it yourself. You need a blog that will run effectively, with a WordLead WordPress Management Service that can ensure that your blog goes out on time every time and keeps it from developing glitches. You probably have spent a lot of money on developing your business, but if your blog wasn’t a part of that, you need to have a rethink. The feedback that you get from your blog can tell you if you are on the right track, so you should fund it correctly.

Your blog should be front and centre on your social media and your website, as this can allow for you to partner up with others in the industry. It’s a great way to get a conversation started with others and it’s a very effective way to grow your contacts list. It can be more efficient than events networking. On the flipside of this, while you can find new clients and partners this way, any potential employees interested in applying to your company can also learn about you and what you do. People work for those that they respect, and you will be far more respected if you take the chance to put yourself out there to attract the best talent.

If you need a vehicle to meet investors, your blog could be it. Competitors won’t be able to resist commenting on your blog to ask questions and once you make yourself an expert in your field and prove it on your blog, investors will have you at the very top of the list for funding. Your startup isn’t yet a recognized brand, which means that you need to do everything that you can to get noticed. A blog is a very powerful tool for a new business, and you can avoid being in the 70% of businesses that fail in the first year by running a proper blog.

Sell More Stuff! The Ultimate Guide To Increasing Revenue

Scott Asai1 Comment

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

The income or revenue that your business takes is crucial to its success. It’s not that you are only concerned with money, but without it would be no business at all! Of course, if you are looking to increase revenue the first port of call is to encourage more sales. A topic you can get some more detail on in the post below.

Learn to upsell

First of all, if you want to increase the income your business brings in, you will need to learn to upsell. Upselling is when you convince your customers to either buy the original product they were interested in, as well as additional items or accessories or when you get them to go for a more expensive option entirely.  

An excellent working example of a master of the upsell is Apple, as they always offer a basic model product at an attractive price point, but then persuade customers to add additional accessories like the iPen along with the iPad, or even to go for a pro version at a higher price.

Of course, to do this, you will need to think carefully about the basic product units that you offer, as well as anything that you could sell alongside these to convince the customer to make a higher value purchase at the same time. Something that if successful, will help you maximize the type of revenue that you bring in as a business.

Use affiliate marketing

Next, if you are looking to raise revenue by increasing sales, you may wish to consider putting affiliate marketing to good use. Affiliate marketing is when you use bloggers and other websites to link directly to your sales pages.

Usually, these links are embedded in reviews that review the types of product you are selling. Something that makes it much more likely that a potential customer will end up on your site when they choose to buy.

Of course, such a service doesn’t come for free, and you will need to pay a small percentage to the affiliate marketer. Although, as most contracts work on sales rather than leads, it is often a financially viable way of working.

Volume discounts

Also, if you are looking to create more income through sales, remember that it’s much easier to sell a large volume in one go at a discount than it is to work your socks off for each and every single sale of individual units.

To that end, finding customers that can buy in bulk at a discount both benefits them and convinces them to buy a large amount of your product. Something which can not only help you bring in more money now but also establish your product as their go-to purchase, making it much more likely that they will buy from you again in the future.

Be need focused

Lastly, if you need to increase revenue through sales, it is wise to include a little psychology in your practice. What this means is that you need to first identify what your customers need are then go out of your way to fulfill this.

This will then ensure that you make as many sales as possible, should help to boost your revenue, and ensure that your business remains viable for the foreseeable future.

How To End A High Employee Turnover

Scott Asai2 Comments

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

Are you constantly hiring new employees only for them to leave after a couple months? A high employee turnover can be very stressful to manage as an employee and it could be starting to damage your business in terms of reputation and productivity. Fortunately, there is a way to restore loyalty and get employees staying. Here are just a few ways to stop employees leaving.

Make your hiring process more thorough

You may find that you’re already dedicating huge amounts of time to recruitment, however it’s possibly that you may still not be doing a thorough enough job. Part of the reason that new employees keep leaving is simply because you’re hiring the wrong people. You could be rushing the process and hiring the first person that you think fits the bill. Instead, you should be trying to find as many good employee matches and then interviewing them all in order to narrow down your choice. You could also consider casting your net wider in order to get more applications – instead of just posting an advert on a job board, consider using social media and pinning up flyers and even hiring the help of a recruitment agency.

Get organized

Next, you need to confront the reason as to why employees are leaving. One big motive could be that employees find your company disorganized to work for. By bringing order to your business, you could give employees a greater sense of security. Start using software to help with building rotas and paying staff – this could help you avoid business errors that anger staff such as scheduling conflicts or accidentally underpaying staff (or worse still, forgetting to pay them). Try to give people clear roles and find an organized way of distributing tasks and overseeing them. You don’t need structure everything, but you should try to have some of the basics organized.

Offer more employee incentives

Employee incentives are things that motivate people to stay at your company. There are so many ways to add incentives. You could aim to improve people’s quality of life by giving them employee discounts to certain services, a generous wage, the ability to work from home or even a company car. Alternatively, you could add little luxuries within the workplace to make it a happier place such as paying for employees’ meals, investing in a good quality coffee machine, buying comfortable furniture or simply letting employees joke around and have fun. Make sure that employees also feel their work is rewarding – make your employees feel that their work is making a difference to people’s lives and don’t just focus on the financial gain.

Create harmony between old staff and new staff

It’s important that your older employees and newer employees have a mutual respect for one another. Make an effort of introducing new staff members to the team and dedicate some time to training them so that they feel welcome – even if they have experience in the role, they may be unfamiliar with the way in which your company runs things. When it comes to older staff, try not to burden them with training the newbie, especially if they’ve already got a lot of work on their plate. By doing this, you could make older employees resent the responsibility of newer employees. You can use your employees to help with some training, but don’t over-rely on them. You want harmony in the workplace – not everyone has to be best buddies, but there shouldn’t be camps. If your workforce is divided into small groups you may find that when one person goes from that group, others follow, because that person no longer has anyone that they feel they can associate with.

Reward your employees’ efforts

One of the most basic things you can do to prevent employees leaving is to make them feel as if their work is appreciated. These could be big rewards for meeting big goals such as a monetary bonus or a gift. Alternatively, you may be able to simply thank people and show your appreciation through words when it comes to the small things. On top of rewarding objectives that you set, try to reward intuition and creativity – if somebody thinks outside of the box and their inventiveness pays off, show them that you appreciate this.

Rev Up Your Revenues

Scott Asai1 Comment

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

All businesses will go through short periods of a decline in their sales. This can be down to a multitude of reasons. For instance, a lot of companies slow down over the Christmas period as many people take time off during the holidays and their services or products might not be in such huge demand. Thankfully, though, these periods of slow sales don’t last too long and, before you know it, you should notice that your sales and revenues start to increase again.

However, if your revenues slump for quite a while and you can’t seem to revive them, you might benefit from using some of the following tips to rev up your revenues!

Branch Out Into New Geographical Markets

Your sales and revenues might be suffering because your home market is pretty saturated with other businesses like yours. The competition could be too strong, which could be affecting your sales. If you think this is the cause of your woes, then it’s worth branching out to a new geographical market. Moving into an international market or sector isn’t as hard as you might think, especially since English is the universal language of business.

Take Advice From The Experts

If you can’t figure out what is up with your sales and revenues, it could be worth chatting to some sales consultancy experts. There are lots of sales professionals out there who could take a look at your business for you and offer you some tailor-made advice. They will also be able to give you some really useful general tips about generating more sales and, in the process, boosting your revenues.

Raise Your Prices

If you can’t seem to generate any extra sales there is always one other strategy that can help you increase your revenues – you just need to increase your prices. Many entrepreneurs worry about doing so because they think that it will turn customers away but, in actual fact, that is very rarely the case. Even just a very slight increase can help better your revenues and put you back on track for a yearly profit.

Offer Products Together As A Bundle

If you bundle some of your products together, you could sell them all for a price that is slightly lower than when bought individually. In this case, the customer might think they are getting a really good deal. However, you will be selling some items in a way that actually increases their profit margins. So, as you can tell, bundling products is something very worth thinking about!

Accept New Forms Of Payment

Maybe your current forms of payment are putting people off? For instance, not all businesses accept credit card payments. If you do, then lots of people who have a credit card might be tempted to start using your company. Ideally, you should be open to accepting all kinds of bank cards as well as online transaction platforms, such as PayPal and Stripe.

Good luck with maximizing your revenues – these tips will definitely make a big difference!

Time, Treats and Talking: How to Invest More into Your Employees

Scott AsaiLeave a comment

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

You admit that running your business wouldn’t be possible without your amazing employees; they make your workload feel like a piece of cake, so you always want to give them the best. Becoming an entrepreneur at such a young age makes you feel very lucky, but it also puts a lot of pressure onto you straight away. Making your business more friendly and up to date, is what you are striving to achieve at the moment, whether you’re investing in mobile marketing or updating your scheduling tools. Treating your employees with respect and honesty is what every business should be aiming to achieve nowadays, so now it’s your turn to tick a few boxes. You need to make sure that you are running a well-oiled machine, as well as keeping your hard-working team happy. There are many ways in which you can approach this, but investing more into your employees will serve your business well for sure. You always want to make sure your employees feel valued and motivated, but how do you make a start? The following ideas that are going to be discussed will not only set your business off on the right foot, but it will also make your staff members appreciate the company they are working for. Whether you need to up your game with scheduling techniques or improve your communication overall with your members of staff, you can start to recognise and appreciate the hard work of your employees right now and forever more.

Savvy Scheduling

When you are looking to invest more into your employees you need to think carefully about their work schedule. As a business owner you are probably in charge of every single person’s rota and working pattern, which can be a hugely time consuming job. You might want to use a professional online scheduling system, or simply log the rosters into an excel spreadsheet. Choose the method that is going to be most convenient for your employees and yourself. For more information on the features your work schedule should include, check out some online guides. As long as you find a way to streamline the process and make the most of your employee’s time at work you will have mastered the art. Think carefully about their turnaround times in between shifts especially if they are working an overnight pattern. Consult the working time directive for more legal information about this; you will find it a very useful tool when building a rota from scratch.

Time in Lieu and Leave

When your employees join your workforce they will be entitled to a proportionate amount of leave depending on their contracted hours and length of time with you. For full time members of staff you should usually allow around two hundred hours of annual leave per year, which equates to approximately four weeks off work. Every single business will find their own way of approving and logging leave, but you might find some of these ideas useful. Create a leave request form that your employees can access anytime; leave could be granted on a first come first served basis but you should treat peak times such as summer holidays and Christmas as separate entities. Make sure everybody has their fair share of time off and allow them to choose the dates that suit their own lifestyle. For example, an employee with a young family will probably want to maximize their time off work during school holidays. Other members of staff might not prioritize this, so you will be able to find a balance. Another thing to note is the idea of time in lieu, which occurs when someone works over their contracted hours. Your employees could earn back a day of leave if they work extra shifts or stay late to complete deadlines. Find your own way of logging this and make sure people aren’t over exerting themselves too much!

An Open Door Policy

You want your employees to feel completely comfortable in their working environment. In order to create a soothing and reassuring atmosphere for them, you should always have an open door policy. Make sure everybody knows that they are welcome to come and talk to you at anytime, no matter what their issue is. They might be struggling with a domestic problem or maybe they are finding their shift pattern difficult. Always listen to their qualms and try to come up with workable solutions that will make them feel more comfortable. Maintain and positive and approachable attitude at all times so that they feel comfortable talking to you about anything.

Rewards and Respect

Every hard worker wants to gain some sort of recognition for their efforts, even if it is a small and simple gesture. You should never overlook the hard working nature of your employees, especially when they do so much for your company. Have some rewards in mind for those who consistently go above and beyond for your team. It might be an extra day off for the year or a new opportunity in a different area. As long as you are showing everybody a solid level of respect they will continue to work hard for you every single day.

Perfect Prospects

There is nothing more debilitating than heading into work everyday, knowing that you have no prospects. Being stuck in a dead end job is extremely demotivating for anyone and it’s certainly something you don’t want your employees to be going through. Hold regular catch ups with each member of your team and assess their goals as often as you can. The more you can track their progress the more motivated they will feel about climbing the ladder in the near future.

Innovative Meetings

Nobody likes an early morning Monday meeting; it’s so depressing and demotivating. Why not change things up a little bit? Hold more informal meetings over lunch or meet for a morning coffee before work. You will find that these types of meetings are much more productive because your workers feel more at ease with the setting.

Equality is Everything

Make sure you treat every single one of your employees with complete equality. Written into your work’s mission statement should be how you strive to be equal across your entire workforce. Never discriminate against anybody’s ethnicity, gender or religion, especially when it comes to hiring new members of staff. Opening up your door to everyone will bring a rainbow of amazing people into your workforce so embrace every single one of them.

Not every business has mastered the art of looking after their hard working members of staff. If you can take on board all of the following ideas and make your workplace a happy and enjoyable environment for your excelling employees, you will have a much more successful business. Take note of all of these ideas expressed above and never leave any stone unturned. When it comes to your workers’ happiness, you need to put this at the very top of your priority list. You simply can’t have a successful business without enthusiastic employees, so make their working life enjoyable. Look back to when you were an employee for a company; how well did your boss treat you? If you can go one step further and make them really appreciate their job, you are more likely to retain them as a member of staff. Hold onto those hard workers as they truly are an asset to your company. Make everybody who walks through the office doors feel like they truly have a special place in their workplace.

Things To Test When Building a Website

Scott Asai1 Comment

Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

Website design is much more than arranging the visual elements on a page so that they look pretty, or are structured in a coherent way that leads to people being able to find what they are looking for.

There’s lots of aspects that are behind the scenes that must be tested when building a website, before making it live.  To some people, this might sound boring and perhaps even unnecessary, but if you want your website to perform well then it’s good to look into the concept of automated web testing in order to ensure your website performs at the required standard.

For non-techy people, this might seem a little overwhelming, however, so let’s break down some of the things you need to test when building a website.

  1. LOAD SPEED

The speed at which your website loads is of critical importance to success, as if it loads any slower than three seconds, it’s likely that many users will click off the page before they’ve even had chance to look at the content on your site.  It’s sad but true, and whilst we like to think our content is so valuable that people will stick around and wait for it to be unveiled – the truth is, people are impatient, particularly online, and they’ll simply click off and probably not come back.

Load speed really does matter, and there are tools such as Pingdom that can help you test your load speed and diagnose what’s causing the site to perform slower than you would like it to.

  1.  DOES IT WORK ON ALL BROWSERS?

It’s important you test your site on all browsers, rather than just the one that you tend to use – people use a variety of browsers including Google Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer and Firefox.  There are many others, but as these are the main ones, it’s especially important to ensure your website loads as it should on these four.

  1. SCREEN SIZES

A lot of people are going to access your website on their mobile device, so it’s important you make sure your website looks good on different screen sizes.  In an ideal world, you want to check what it looks like on a huge screen such as an Apple TV, along with a variety of laptops, desktops (bearing in mind some are square and some are widescreen), tablets and phones.  

The point being that not everyone is going to see exactly what you see on your screen, when designing your website, so you need to ensure it looks good on all devices and screen sizes.  The paradigm today is that we should be designing for “mobile first” meaning, design for mobile users first and desktop users second, in part due to the massive risk in mobile marketing and usage of such devices.

  1.  EASE OF USE

The importance of user testing cannot be overstated.  You want to see how people interact with your website, in terms of the clicks they make and the paths they take to reach a particular end goal.  In doing this, you can assess whether your intuitive design is indeed intuitive or whether it confuses people which leads to them clicking off your site.