Hitsteps – Page 13

A Guide: Cutting Your Small Business Costs

Turning over a profit is not the only all-important task you face as a business owner. As well as making money, you also have to become adept at saving it. If you don’t manage to cut your costs or tighten your purse strings, you’ll never consolidate the profit that you make. As a result, you’ll never be able to invest in your organization or take it to the next level.

To find out what you can do to cut your small business costs, make sure to read on.

Rent your equipment

Should your business be in the habit of taking on jobs on a short-term basis, then you should seriously consider renting your equipment rather than buying it outright. By going down the rental route, you will be able to get the most out of your tools before sending them back to their owner. Importantly, this will allow circumventing having to pay ongoing fees for equipment that you make no use of going forward.

It is always tempting to hit the stores and invest in a shiny piece of brand new tech — what with all the technology available today, nobody could ever blame you for that. If you’re a relatively new business owner and still keen on solidifying your reputation, then you’ll probably want nothing more than to have your ownequipment. If you’re smart, however, you’ll fight this urge and turn to a company such as Smart. Primarily dealing with computer repair Gloucester, this company also offers a top-tech rental service. Whether it’s aniMac that you wish to lease or a projector that you want to hire, the short-term tools that you need will always be available by Smart.

Ditch your landline

A landline is no longer the be-all-and-end-all of communication in the world of business. Today, there are a host of different tools and pieces of tech that you can turn to when you’re looking to increase your business’s communication flow — from cell phones to VoIP to virtual phone lines, the choice that you have is staggering. If you’re a smart business owner, you’ll ditch your landline and the costly annual sum that it brings with it, and turn your attention to these latest additions in the field of communication.

Go paperless

The environment isn’t the only thing that will be saved if you go paperless. By ditching the paper that you use and waste within your office, you will stand to save a heap of cash, too.

First and foremost, going paperless will mean that you won’t have to spend your money on printer accessories — no longer will you have to put money aside each month for things like ink and toner, as you won’t be using your printer at all. How can you go paperless when there are always documents to draw up and contracts to sign, though? Quite simply, you go digital.

If you’re serious about cutting your small business costs, then you seriously need to consider putting the above advice into practice. If you do, you’ll find yourself consolidating the profit that you make in no time.

How to Make Your Computer Last Longer

It is likely you spent a considerable amount of money on your computer. Yet, small and large mistakes could be damaging the technology each day and shortening its lifespan.

If you want to ensure your device works like a well-oiled machine throughout the years, you must aim to preserve its health, which can prevent you from replacing the technology in the near future. Read these top tips on how to make your computer last longer.

Keep Your PC Clean

Dust and dirt can take its toll on your computer, as they can clog up its gears and limit the technology’s functioning. It is, therefore, important to regularly clean dust and debris from your computer to prevent it from reaching its inner components.

For example, you can use canned air to eradicate dirt from the fans, which can otherwise cause the device to overheat. You also must clean the monitor with a screen cleaner and ensure you never eat food or consume drinks over the PC.

Avoid Regularly Switching Your PC On and Off

While it is essential to turn your computer off when not in use to save on utility costs, you must avoid regularly switching the technology on and off. While it is fine to turn the PC off once per day, you must avoid turning it on and off multiple times throughout the day.

If you do so, you could place great stress on the internal components that are attempting to regulate the system’s temperature. Ultimately, it can cause your PC’s hardware to both contract and expand. So, don’t switch off your PC when taking a lunch break or heading into a meeting. If you are conscious of rising energy bills, browse the market for cheap business gas suppliers.

Buy a Surge Protector

Voltage spikes can lead to the frying of your hard drive and can often occur during storms. To prevent your computer from frying unnecessarily, you should invest in a surge protector. You also will need to replace the surge protector following a direct lightning strike, which will have caused your home or business’s power to go off during a storm.

Don’t Move Your PC Too Much

Regardless of whether you have a desktop computer or a laptop, you must avoid moving it more than necessary. Always aim to be gentle when moving the technology from one location to another; otherwise, you could damage or cause a shift in the internal components. Also, if you need to pick up a laptop, ensure you hold it by the base and not the screen.

Invest in RAM and Hard Drive Space

If you paid a small sum for your PC or laptop, it’s likely it came with limited memory and hard drive space. To ensure your computer runs faster and, in turn, lasts longer, you must invest in a computer that offers an exceptional RAM (random access memory) and hard drive, which can take some of the stress and pressure off your computer.

How to Run a Profitable Business Blog

When you consider just how popular blogging has become in the business climate of today, you’ll find it no surprise that so many entrepreneurs are currently clambering to start their own business blogs. You should know, however, that starting this kind of venture is all good and well, but actually running with it is another thing entirely. It takes time, effort, and even upfront capital to be able to run a blog that turns over a profit in the long term. Before you embark on this kind of money-making scheme, then, it is important to note that you’re not going to be a success over night.

Has the prospect of a little hard graft put you off running your own business blog? If not, then be sure to check out the advice below to see how you can make your venture a profitable one.

Hone in on your niche

Without a specific niche, your business blog will just be plain and generic — if there’s one thing customers aren’t drawn to, it’s plain and generic! You need to showcase why you are so different from the rest of the blogs in your market, which is why you need to hone in on your niche right from the off. No matter what your niche is, whether it’s IT or manufacturing, getting to grips with it right away will ensure that you are only ever uploading content that attracts the audience base you are seeking to attract.

If you struggle to come up with a profitable niche idea, be sure to check out this helpful article on the matter.

Manage your blog every day

If you want your business blog to be truly profitable, you need to manage it every single day. Treating it like the ‘proper job’ that is in this instance will see you create engaging and institutive content regularly, which will then stop your blog from entering into the dreaded realm of being a ‘ghost town.’

Fear not, as managing your blog at all times doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be at your computer screen 24 hours a day. There are plenty of systems and servers out there that will ensure that your site remains up, live, and active 24/7. For example, Krystal, a reseller hosting UK service provider, guarantee 99.99% uptime at all times. This means that, should you turn to them when you come to choosing a website host, you wouldn’t have to worry about your blog going down and, subsequently, sending potential customers away to other websites.

Starting a blog could be the next big business venture you take. If you do decide to embark down this digital money-making route, however, just be sure to remember the advice laid out above. You need to hone in on your niche right away, as this will help you to attract the audience base you want and need to help grow your blog. You also need to resolve to manage your blog every single day, as that kind of dedication will see your site remain engaging and, more importantly, active at all times.

Helping Your Online Business to Succeed in 2019

If you’ve decided to ditch your 9-to-5 and take control of your future by starting an online business, first and foremost, congratulations! It takes bravery to take such a big step into the unknown, so kudos for taking it.

You should know, however, that the hard work starts now. If you want to see your online business grow, flourish, and be as successful as you know it can be, you’re going to have to devote a lot of your time an effort to the venture.

To find out what you can do specifically to help your online business succeed in 2019, make sure to read on.

Read up on the latest self-help books

When it comes to the subject of online entrepreneurship, there’s a never-ending body of self-help literature for you to read up on. Some of the best books in this body of work include:• Crushing It: How Great Entrepreneurs Build their Business and Influence — and How You Can, Too• The Conversion Code: Capture Internet Leads, Create Quality Appointments, Close More Sales• Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content• Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR Marketing, and Advertising • Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability & Science of Customer Centricity

Make use of the latest cloud-based tech

Being an online business, the nature of your company dictates the fact that you won’t have a fixed location to work from. Wherever you can get an Internet connection, you will be expected to log on and check up on your business. For this reason, you need to be embracing technology that will allow you to tap into your all-important documents on the go. Cloud-based tech fits the bill in this instance.

By making use of the cloud-based HR systems offered by XCD, for example, you will be able to keep a tighter grip on your human resources department no matter where you are in the world. Thanks to the increased automation that this kind of software will provide you, you will also be able to enjoy easier reporting and far more accurate data when you implement it into your online business.

Keep growing your online expertise

The Internet is in a constant state of flux, which means that changes are always afoot upon it. One day you may think that you know everything there is possibly to know about the online market, only for a new trend to rear its head and throw you right off course. For this reason, you have to keep your finger on the pulse of all the web’s latest changes and trends, and you have to resolve to keep growing your online expertise.

Some of the main areas you should remain abreast of in this instance include:

• Content Marketing
• Email marketing
• Copywriting
• SEM
• SEO
• Bookkeeping
• Blogging
• Webinar hosting
• Social media
• Networking

Your online business isn’t going to grow and improve itself, you know. It’s down to you to take the above advice and really take your venture from strength to strength.

Common Challenges That Online Businesses Face and Their Solutions

No businesses are without challenges, and online companies still face obstacles even without having to manage a storefront. The digital age has brought new problems that small businesses must tackle that they may not have considered before, and it is of vital importance that you know how to face these when they appear so that they can be resolved quickly.

Security

Although the internet often makes conducting business easier for small firms, it can also leave companies vulnerable to cybersecurity threats and crime such as theft, fraud, and hacking. The damages online businesses face after these crimes can be extensive, leading to monetary loss and a lack of productivity. However, there are a few simple ways that you can upgrade the security of your business, such as through installing firewalls and threat detection software, maintaining password protection, using laptop security settings, knowing how to detect threats, and by updating your software and applications regularly. For those looking forexpert security solutions that will be able to keep your business safe, Watchguardonline.co.uk can provide you with the highest performing firewalls and multi-factor authentication.

Website Traffic

Having constant traffic to your website can be difficult to achieve, especially when you are first starting your business. However, this is important as getting traffic to your site will increase your sales and brand visibility. To ensure that you are able to get constant traffic to your website, there are a number of things that you can do, such as improving your SEO to make sure that you are on the first page of search results, increasing your marketing efforts and expanding onto different platforms such as social media for increased visibility. Additionally, you can write guest posts, and get sponsored and pay for adverts to ensure that you can be found through different platforms. Not only this, but you should also make sure that your website has quick loading times and easy navigation to increase the sales conversion rates.

IT and Server Issues

If the IT on your end of the business fails, this can lead to you being unable to take payments, stop people from accessing your website, leave you unable to update your business, and stop you from running the business efficiently. To solve the issues that IT problems can cause, you should consider employing an IT technician or installing specialist software which can help to boost your IT systems if there is a problem, ensuring that this is resolved as quickly as possible.

Creating and Updating Your Website

Creating a website and keeping it updated can be extremely difficult. However, you can make simple professional websites for free on website builders such as WordPress and Blogspot, where you can use templates to create smart websites which you can then customize to suit your needs. You should also consider starting a blog in order to keep your website updated, as well as ensuring that your site has a fast loading time by keeping graphics simple and making it mobile-friendly.

What Does it Take to Make Your E-commerce Business a Success?

Whether you’ve already launched an e-commerce business in the past or you’re still thinking about getting started, now is a better time than ever to get into this lucrative industry. The online retail market is booming and many entrepreneurs have found great success using the power of the internet to establish and grow their business.

Depending on your approach, running an online store can get complicated very quickly, especially if you’re dealing with more than one product line. But with a unique idea, a bit of research and determination, you can reach your goals and run a successful e-commerce store. Here’s what it takes.

Knowing What Not to do

There are many common reasons why around 80% of e-commerce businesses fail. Knowing what to avoid goes a long way in ensuring that you’re taking the right steps from the get-go. For example, the substantial convenience of online shopping has increased customer expectations when it comes to how quickly and easily they can buy your products.

If your website is slow, navigation isn’t clear, shipping takes too long or is expensive, it can deter a lot of customers. Take these baling wire suppliers. Their customers need to receive orders quickly as many of them are business owners, so they offer quick and simple navigation and the fastest possible shipping with order and delivery tracking.

Taking Your Time

Until you have something tangible to present to a large enough audience, take your time to ensure you’ve laid the proper groundwork before launching. Run through what you’ve already done and determine what still needs to be sorted out, such as SEO, marketing, social media, etc. You only get one shot, so messing up is not an option.

Nailing That SEO

If your business is based solely on the internet, your SEO should naturally be rock-solid. This applies to everything from your landing page to your blog posts to the code that powers your website. Having a bunch of keywords stuffed into every page is no way to go in this era of SEO. Quality is key and offering value to your customers is the only way forward.

Having a Strong Social Media Presence

It’s no secret that social media is an incredibly powerful tool for marketing a business. Ensure that you have a strong presence on all major social media hubs that are relevant to your business. This will open up a plethora of opportunities, from being able to see what your competitors are doing to keeping your audience engaged while also growing it.

You should also establish your business on review websites such as Yelp and Google My Business. This will allow you to obtain valuable feedback from your customers and learn what people don’t like about your product or website, which is just as valuable as receiving praise.

Conclusion

There’s no exact playbook when it comes to running a successful e-commerce business but following these established steps will go a long way in leading you towards the right direction. That said, don’t be afraid to experiment and explore where nobody else does. It’s the only way to truly stand out among the sea of online competition.

2 Steps to Better Website Performance

In a world where updates are instant, delivery takes place on the same day, and customer service is only ever a few clicks away, visitors to your website will not stand for it being slow. If your pages take more than a few seconds to load or if your media takes too long to buffer, they’ll leave your site without a second thought.

If your site’s visitors are looking for a service specifically in your market, when they leave your website, they’ll head straight to your competitors. Not only could you miss out on clicks in this instance, but you could also miss out on potential customers.

To ensure that your business’s days of missing out are behind it, you have to resolve to better your website performance. To see how this can be achieved, read on.

Train your employees

The internet moves forward at a frantic pace, and if your employees can’t keep up with it, neither can your company website. It’s essential then that you invest in staff training regularly. By doing so, tech fluency around your office will become the norm, the day’s top trends will continuously be adhered to, and most importantly, your website’s performance will remain optimized no matter who is tasked with working on it and fixing its faults.

One specific type of training that you should certainly consider investing in is a graduate scheme. By offering internships to the tech workers of tomorrow, you’ll ready your business’s website for the future in the best way possible. This is because this type of employee will have grown up with internet technology at the forefront of everything they’ve been exposed to. This kind of knowledge will prove unrivaled as you seek to better your website performance going forward.

Align yourself with external experts

In addition to ensuring your internal team has the tools they need to better your website performance, you’re going to need a number of external experts by your side as well. Without this kind of assistance, you’ll find it hard to devote the necessary time, effort, and resources to your website optimization, especially when you have so many other areas of your business to be focusing on.

In this instance, there are two experts in particular that you should consider turning to:1. A website auditing service, such as DMG—by having an audit conducted for your website, you will be able to see where it’s failing, why it’s so unpopular, and why it’s languishing so far down in Google’s search rankings2. A website monitoring service, such as Pingmeter—this kind of service will keep a constant eye on your website to ensure that it remains live at all times, notifying you instantly should it deem something to have gone wrong with your site’s performance

If you want to better your website performance, then your employees need to become well-versed in fixing faults as and when they happen, and you need strong external forces backing you up. Taking the above advice and putting it into practice, then, is essential.

Two Ways You Can Make Your Online Business More Efficient

Ecommerce is booming. As the fastest growing global retail channel, no business should be without online selling options. If you want to increase your sales and create a larger and more loyal audience, then your website, social pages, and back-office operations all need to be focused on e-selling and digital customer service. Whether you’ve been running a business for a while and are looking for areas to improve on, or you’re a new startup that wants to hit the ground running, here are the two most effective methods to ensure maximum efficiency for your growing online business. Failing to optimize for efficiency means that you will be losing out on both opportunities and profits.

1: Website Development

It’s no longer enough to simply have a website, although there are still too many businesses that are missing this fundamental requirement. Your website isn’t just there to let people know that you exist: it should exist as a one-stop location for a consumer to find out answers and, ultimately, spend their money. If your website is not able to be a complete journey for a customer, then it needs to be given a shake-up. Focus on developing a stronger SEO foundation for your website, and that means everything from your content to your sitemap.

2: Promote Communication

All business is about communication. It’s more than simply communicating your prices and your products. You need to communicate with your customers, those interested in your sector, your team, and your suppliers. Each of these can be improved through digital means, and for ecommerce success, they need to be prioritized.

● Customers: Consider email marketing, social media promotions, and livestreams. The more that you understand your audience, the more likely that you will be able able to communicate with them effectively.

● Sector Interest: One of the best ways to build a more secure business is to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field. Networking in the digital age has never been easier, and can vastly improve both your sector standing and your customer loyalty.

● Team: Your employees have to be able to touch base with you as and when they need it. The more open your communication channels in-house, the easier it will be to encourage valuable idea gathering and more productive collaboration.

● Suppliers: The best way to ensure that you have a reliable communication channel with your vital suppliers is to make use of supplier portals. Look at the options from omniaecommerce.com and you will benefit from improved efficiency, more accurate planning, and a closer relationship with those that your business relies on.

Communication is one of the biggest positives to the digital world, and any business that mismanages its communications is going to encounter issues when it comes to growth.

Business efficiency is not rocket science. Often, it’s simply a matter of being made aware of the best modern practices and where to adopt them. Not every new trend, innovation, or technology is going to be beneficial for every business model, but the more that you understand which ones will affect your company, the more likely that you will achieve greater efficiency.

7 Reasons To Start Your Own E-commerce Business

Starting a business is something that more and more people are excited about doing, and there is a lot of choices out there when it comes to exactly what you are going to sell and, perhaps more importantly, how you are going to sell it.

E–commerce is a great choice. You can sell almost anything in this way, and because all you really need is a great website, it is a simple thing to set up. Here are some more reasons why e–commerce is the way to go when you are starting a new business.

It’s Simple To Do

Starting up an e–commerce business is relatively simple to do. You need a website, and that website needs to be absolutely perfect – this is where a lot of your startupfunds will need to go because, by the very nature of this industry, the website is your business. Get that right, and you will make sales; get it wrong, and you’ll miss out.

As well as a great website, you may need stock, although this will depend on whether you’re selling a physical product or you’re drop shipping or selling a service. If you need some money to get started, a loan from Bonsai Finance will help, and you can begin your new business very quickly indeed.

It’s The Future

E–commerce is certainly the future (and even the present) of shopping. There will always be people who prefer to visit stores and malls, but for most people who have little time to spare to actually go shopping, it’s far more convenient for them to simply click a few links and order something online to be delivered directly to them.

As long as you make your website easy to use, easy to find, and you price your products fairly, you should be able to sell quite easily online. Even if you like the idea of a physical store, having an e–commerce store to back it up will be useful, and you may find that you make more money online than you do from walk-ins.

An Insight Into Business

Setting up a small online store is a great way to learn about business as a whole without having to leave too much to chance. One of the best things about a good e–commerce business is that it can really just run in the background as long as you are marketing it when you can; this means you can stay working at your day job and simply have some extra money coming in through your store.

If you want to go further and set up a larger business or try your hand at becoming completely self-employed, you can learn almost everything you need to know through your e–commerce site, giving you more confidence and much more chance of success if and when you want to take things further.

Make Money

When people set up their own online business, there will be a number of reasons for it. They might want to:

• Spend more time with their family

• Ease the pressure of a full–time job

• Do something to make themselves happy and proud

• Build something for the future

However, whatever the reason, there is something that will underpin everything else; they will want to make money. Making money is one of the very top reasons for starting your own business. If you don’t make money, even if you’re having fun, sooner or later you’ll have to stop.

An online store is a good way to make money, and because you can choose how much you want to make (a little as a ‘side hustle,’ or a lot as your main business), you can be in complete control of every single process.

Reach More People

Having a physical store means that people who live locally will visit. You might have a good reputation that means people from farther afield come too, but unless you are so highly regarded that people from all over the world specifically make it their duty to come to you, you’ll never get as much reach as you can online.

When you have an e–commerce business, you will be able to have customers from all around the world, and you won’t have to open up additional stores (which will cost more and could be a risk) to do it. Just the one website can serve everyone, and as long as you keep it up to date and ensure it is user-friendly (and mobile friendly too) the risk is extremely small, but the rewards can be enormous.

Be Independent

If you like the idea of working for yourself and choosing your own hours, then an online store might be exactly the way to do it. It will be hard work to set it up properly, but in many cases, it can be left running in the background while you do other things, and you can check it once a day to respond to queries and organize parcels to be sent out if need be.

This is the way that you can build a truly wonderful work–life balance. However, don’t quit your day job immediately; you need to know that the online business you are creating can sustain you first. Otherwise, you could find yourself in financial trouble. However, if the idea of eventually not having a boss to answer to is exciting, this could be a great idea for you to try out.

Easy To Market

Marketing for an online store is something that is relatively easy to do – you are already online, speaking to the right audience, so that initial part of the marketing process has already been dealt with.

Using digital advertising to ensure that those who are most likely to use your store and buy your products is a good move to make. You can focus on exactly the right people and create advertising that is going to appeal. This focused approach is how you can make your marketing budget go a lot further, and even though you may well need to spend money in this regard, the better your digital marketing is, the less you will need to spend to get people to visit your website.

How To Take Your Website To The Next Level

Every business needs a great website if they are to attract and retain customers. The company website is how you present your brand to the world, so it needs to paint your organization in a positive light, provide detailed information and make it easy for your target customer to make a purchase from you.

If you feel that your website is currently not up to the required standard and preventing your business from succeeding, then you need to know a few ways to improve your site and take it to the next level. Read on for a few highly effective improvements to consider:• Switch Host

It is vital that you are using a reliable and experienced web hosting company. This ensures that you have a fast, secure and reliable web site with many hosts making it quick and easy to design an attractive site. Hosts like onyx.io have a range of hosting plans available and a type to suit every need.• Improve The Navigation

The navigation is one of the most overlooked areas of web design. No visitor will stay on a site which is hard to use with poor navigation so you could look to make improvements here if you are struggling with keeping visitors on the site. You need to break the site down into different sections and then to make sure that each section can be visited from each page.• Re-Write The Content

The content is how you speak to your target audience, so every sentence needs to be engaging and valuable. You can improve the content on the website by:- Using calls to action- Using emotive language- Asking questions- Only including relevant information- Avoiding large blocks of text• Make A Visual Impact

Well-crafted text is important, but no one will stay on a text-heavy website. You need to make sure that you make an immediate visual impact so consider replacing any images you have with interesting, high-quality and relevant photos or video. You can also make a visual impact by adopting an interesting color scheme. Although you will want to make an impact, keep in mind that minimal is better when it comes to web design as otherwise, it creates a cluttered and chaotic feel.• Create A Blog

A blog is a highly effective tool to take your website to the next level. Creating regular, relevant and interesting content will help your website and business to succeed in a few different ways:- Brings people back to your website to learn more- Increases your brand authority and reputation- Can be used to optimize your website and improve visibility- Encourages engagement with your target customer• Add Personality

One of the biggest mistakes that businesses make when designing a website is creating something with no personality which can feel corporate and soulless. You need to add personality through your website which can be done by:- Including brand history- Using images of the team- Including profiles of key figures- Using terms like “I” and “we”

This post should help you to make big improvements to your website which can, in turn, help your company to find greater success and reach the next level.