Best Practice for Website Design

Best Practice for Website Design

The importance of a website for a business doesn’t need too much reinforcing. The best ones can be a digital equivalent of an introduction, business card and referral all in one. But what are the practical, tangible things that you can do as a business owner to make your website the best it can be?

We’ve got those tips and strategies right here. Let us dive in.

Simple Plus Useful Wins

This might sound like a cliché, but simple is always better when it comes to websites. When we say ‘simple’ here we don’t mean having just two colours or very little text (though you can absolutely use those techniques).

Simple here refers to the answer to the question: ‘how easy is it for a user of your website to find what they are looking for?’ So, for a restaurant, a person might be most interested in seeing the menu, followed by how to make a reservation, followed by the opening hours.

For a local healthcare provider, a person might be most interested in the staff at the clinic, what their experience is, and maybe even whether they look friendly!

Answering the question ‘what are people most likely to be looking for’ and then answering it is the best way to improve your website.

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Five Ways to Boost Your Self-Confidence After Workplace Bullying

Issues like workplace bullying and discrimination can severely impact your self-confidence and, if not treated, lead to a range of mental illnesses and disorders. Unfortunately, it’s a problem that plagues thousands of Australians, but that doesn’t mean that it’s right.

If you feel like you’re a victim of bullying in the workplace, it’s important to deal with it as soon as you can. Begin by approaching the bully or harasser and talking with them. If they don’t respond, take your concerns to your employer or HR manager. Failing intervention from them, you will need to seek legal aid.

However, your self-confidence can still suffer, even if you get on top of the problems quickly. Because of this, we’ve put together the following list of five ways to boost your self-confidence following workplace bullying.

  1. Seek Emotional Support

Bullying of any type can wreak havoc with your emotions, and it’s important to have support during the difficult times. If you’re a victim of bullying, seeking emotional support can help you overcome problems without sacrificing your long-term health.

For starters, look for people who are being treated similarly in your workplace. By connecting with them, you will find a ready-built support network that you can lean on. Similarly, find a friend or close family member who you can talk through things with. The simple fact of verbalising your concerns can make a huge difference.

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How To Select The Correct Commercial Lawyer For Your Business

How To Select The Correct Commercial Lawyer For Your Business

Regardless of the size of your business, there are going to be a number of elements within it that require you needing legal guidance to ensure that you are operating within the law. This will obviously involve you seeking out the services of an experienced commercial lawyer.

This is something you may have already done, but if you haven’t, given the importance of your commercial lawyer to your business’s welfare, it is crucial that you select the correct one. To help you achieve this here are a few basic guidance as to how you should proceed in order to choose the correct commercial lawyer for your business.

#1 Assess Your Needs

Every business is going to be different in terms of its size, the business sector it is in, and also how likely it might be that it will face any legal challenges. These will need to be considered when choosing a lawyer for your business.

The second thing to consider with regards to your needs is whether you wish to have a general commercial lawyer who is retained on a permanent and ongoing basis, or whether you plan to hire a specialist for each specific legal area. For example, will you need a trademark specialist and a lawyer whose specialisation is contract law, or are you going to pass all your legal work to a single lawyer?

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What Makes a Brand Memorable Ways to Increase Your Brand Power

What Makes a Brand Memorable? Ways to Increase Your Brand Power

If you want to attract new customers, and retain existing ones, a clear way to do it is to have a memorable brand. That applies to almost any industry from professional services to household trades. This can be illustrated in a simple way: a ‘generic’ company that does not have a memorable brand will be known as ‘the accountant’ or ‘that lawyer we used that time.’

In contrast, a company that has a memorable brand will be referred to by its specific name or using a more familiar term showing trust and partnership like ‘my landscaping guy’ or ‘our marketing agency’.

So how do you go from generic to memorable? Here are some of the best ways to do it.

Go Online Where Your Customers Are

Not all social media is created equal. Too many general articles on the internet or from ‘social media consultants’ will basically tell you to get on every single platform from Twitter and LinkedIn to TikTok and Instagram and to publish on all of them regularly.

That is not realistic. Not only are there over half a dozen ‘major’ platforms now, but they are also not all suited to the same goals. Rather than a ‘spray and pray’ approach, it pays to tailor your approach.

Spend some time on each platform to understand what would work best for your business. Builders and renovators are well suited to Instagram with clear visual content such and ‘before and after’ posts. On the other hand, if you’re in professional services then LinkedIn and Facebook are probably better suited to written blog posts explaining ideas or changes that affect your target customer.

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Why You Need To Measure The Value of Social Media

Why You Need To Measure The Value of Social Media

There is debate on whether businesses can measure the value of social media. On one side are those who argue that social media is an intangible and while it brings benefits to business, there is just no way to measure them.

I sit firmly on the opposite side of that debate – having worked in online marketing for most of the last 15 years, measuring the results of activity is expected and an inherent part of all marketing activities online. For me, it is natural to look for a way to measure the effectiveness of any activity and to be skeptical about anything that isn’t measured.

It is in this vein that I’ve spoken about the need to measure the value and effectiveness of social media and looked for methods to inform any social media strategies or plans.

A recent presentation at Social Media Women in Sydney outlines these views on Measuring the Value of Social Media in further detail.

As with any online marketing activity, the business objectives should drive the activity and define the goals and measures of effectiveness. Define what success looks like and measure whether social media is contributing to achieving it.

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How Successful Australian Brands Use Facebook

How Successful Australian Brands Use Facebook

In a recent report – How The Largest Australian Organisation Use Social Media – we studied 500 of Australia’s largest organisations. One of our key findings was that Facebook is by far the most popular social media platform when measured by number of followers. The organisations we studied had a total of 4.4 million followers, more than three times the following of Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube combined.

When we looked further into the details of the large following on Facebook we discovered that a very small number of companies account for almost half of these followers, in fact 2% of the companies studied account for 49% of the following.

Our analysis found a number of similarities in the companies with the largest numbers of followers, some specific uses of Facebook were found to be the biggest difference between the companies with the largest following and the remaining organisations. These methods can be used by any business that wants to use Facebook effectively.

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Christmas Email Campaign Tips

Christmas Email Campaign Tips

With Christmas fast approaching, if you haven’t finished planning your upcoming Christmas campaigns, here are some pointers for getting the most out of the next few weeks.

Think about the customer’s context:

While in many circumstances, past behaviour is a good predictor of future behaviour, when it comes to Christmas shopping, consumer behaviour can be less easy to plan for. As email recipients are likely to be looking for gifts, their buying patterns and what is likely to trigger them to react, is likely to be different to what would motivate them to purchase goods for themselves.

In this example, Just Jeans has provided a quick route for shoppers to find gifts based on age, gender and price range, in addition to the usual navigation bar that appears at the top of all their regular emails.

If you have behavioural data from last Christmas season, use this to inform the personalisation if at all possible. In absence of this data, it is a great time to test what will work for your list recipients at this time of year.

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