Monday 26 August 2013

Real Situations that Demand a Professional Copywriter

Sometimes you are better off doing things on your own –and sometimes it well advised to call in the experience and expertise of professionals in the field.

Read on for some scenarios which make it essential to bring a pro to facilitate your copywriting/graphic design needs.

Accept! You are no Good at it

Powerful impacts can be created only with strong writing skills. So, if you feel that you are finding it difficult to play around with words and are failing miserably in your attempts at writing, then just let go!

Putting in your valuable energy and resources in a task which demands professional expertise can lead to sheer waste of time and money. So, if you hate to press down on keys and your speech recognition software just refuses to generate 100 percent accuracy, then hire a partner or professional to communicate your messages.

You do not Possess the Bandwidth

Okay--even if you like writing, there is a limit to the number of words which you can type or get onto the screen across the day. Marathon writing sessions lead to burnouts and lower productivity in the long run. So, analyse your writing skills and take help if you have more work than you can handle. It fetches you good money and also keeps carpal tunnel syndrome at bay.

The Manta of the contemporary content market—the better you tell: the more you sell, can be best achieved by crafting high quality content which requires authority, customer connects and the right strategies in place. Firms offering professional copywriters and graphic design cairns go a long way in helping you address this cause.

You need a Specialist

Converting fans into loyal customers requires persuasion and specialized writing skills.

For example, you may need access to experts for writing white papers, organizing professional web content or creating a web presence which ranks higher on search engine tools. The benefits of hiring experienced people in the field are plenty and prove to be more cost-effective and profitable in the long run.

You Lack Objectivity

Being too close to the topic on hand can cause a microscopic analysis of the writing requirements. It is indeed difficult to be objective /neutral about your own business requirements. A customer does not need to know everything on your radar and needs a more carefully researched insight into your products, efforts and services.

Real customer feedbacks, survey responses, interview results and other ways of tracking client requirements can provide a copywriter with real feelings of your customers—leading to more specific information and content related to your web presence.

As a last word, having professional copywriters in place is important, but as a business owner—you are ultimately responsible for your own story.

Mobile Friendly Websites Need Future-Proofing

Future –proofing your website to take care of the rising demands of users is not as difficult as you think. With businesses adapting their online presence to cater to consumers with all sizes of screens—ranging from tiny mobile handsets to large living room TV screens; responsive sites are certainly an order of the day and easy to replicate on your own.

Read on for some vital steps which make the process of building websites for mobile devices affordable and more convenient than before.

Bring About Adjustments in your Existing Website

With more than a billion people accessing their business requirements, needs and purchases from mobile devices, the contemporary ways in which you should showcase your products and services have certainly gone through a paradigm shift.

So, take a pause to pull up your existing website on your smartphone or GoogleGoMeter. You would instantly know where and why you need to change. Larger font sizes, simpler page designs, placing critical information “above the folds” and including large touchable buttons are the simplest ways of optimizing your site for mobile display.

The trick is to include all the relevant information at places which are easy to find and desist from placing content/graphics/audio/video which take a long time to load or do not add further value to the page.

Create Parallel Versions of your website

Instead of making edits to your existing website, you can plan a mobile friendly website on a parallel scale. Smart and user-friendly mobile-site-design services come to your rescue and help you add functionalities and features which make your website accessible on portable devices.

A link from the main website to the parallel one is a cost effective alternative for bringing mobile device users into the loop and making sure that they also benefit by your presence.

Rebuilding your Website

Websites for mobile devices can be crafted by using high ended adaptive website designs which require large investments and provide you the maximum reach and audience. They are capable of detecting and identifying the device of the user and generating web pages which match the display capacities of the same.

On the other hand responsive website designs are more affordable in nature and use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) which auto adjusts to display web pages on the screen of mobile phones and other smart-devices. These pages allow you to reach the most active online audience and provide easy readability and interaction facilities.

Making your Mobile Friendly Website Future-Proof

As you go about transforming your website to make it more mobile friendly, remember to include designs which are capable of working on a wide variety of screens. DIY platforms such as GoDaddy and WordPress make your website more responsive and future-proof by including smart plug-ins, extendible themes and innovative designs.

Invest in technology and make your clients save time and connect with your advantages.

Sunday 25 August 2013

Make your Online Impact Felt -The Right Way

It’s a point that needs no further mention—every business requires a customized and business specific web presence in today’s world.

This is one of the most critical assumptions which guides the hiring of a freelance web designer and makes a marked difference in the way the world looks at your products/services. Here are certain inputs which help you understand the reasons behind investing in a more power packed website.

What does your Competitor’s Website look like?

Take a closer look at your competitors and analyze the ways in which they make their presence felt. In order to stand above the herd, you need to make your website more engaging, visually appealing and unique.

A freelancer experienced in small business web design will go through all the “bells and whistles” which can make your site look different and include the ones which add value –in a convenient and cost effective manner. They create a look which is far removed than those of your competitors and make sure that their designs attract, influence and retain customers. So, steer clear of website templates and amateurish looking portal designs and make your online presence all the more exclusive and worthwhile—with properly strategized themes, plug-ins and applications in place.

Identify the Benchmarked Industry Standards

After getting an insight into the websites published by your competitors, you need to get a feel of all the current and prevailing industry standards linked with professional website designs.

Note the presence of interactive add-ons, pop ups, flash elements, integration of themes and designs, usage of plug ins and content management systems. For example, if you see info graphics and billboards dominating your screen space instead of subtle links in the side panels, then you must prepare yourself to integrate these features which dominate most websites in your industry.

Customized web sites designed by an expert freelance web designer can add extensive upgrades and various add-on features to make your site more featured, functional and powerful. Go in for one!

small business web design – Budget and Time Constraints

When it comes to choosing the ideal website design solution for your business, you must be careful in choosing designs which sync with your time and budget constraints. Making a careful assessment of the time required for creating an impactful web presence is as important as deciding upon the affordability of the design which you have in mind.

Experienced professionals are adept in streamlining your requirements with your budgeted means. They take pride in serving the best results for your website and helping you increase the overall traffic, productivity and applicability of your website.

So, are you ready to trigger off your web-designing process; the right way?

Hiring the Best Small Business Bookkeeping Services

Are you interested in hiring the best small business bookkeeping services to end your financial woes and address your accounting issues? Third party business accounting firms come with their own set of advantages and disadvantages. It is therefore important to do a proper research and select the very best services or your needs.

How do you zero in on the right firm?

Key Features Required for your Business Accounting Needs

  • A firm of accountants and administrative assistants who are well versed in planning taxation schedules and proper handling of accounting processes.
  • Proper business and accounting ethics to make sure that the accounts are prepared in a foolproof manner and do not attract any legal hassles in future.
  • Timely preparation and submission of tax returns and related accounting documents.

  •  Are Smaller Bookkeeping Firms Better than Larger Accounting Organizations?

    Larger and well established accounting firms come equipped with sophisticated infrastructural facilities, higher levels of software support and a range of accounting services. However, as a small business owner, you should look towards accounting services which do not create a dent in your pocket. Larger firms may help you take care of your day-to-day accounting needs, but they are costly and can put you on their list of “expendable” clients—due to your smaller volumes of profits and transactions.
    Smaller accounting firms are more responsive to your business needs and prove to be cost-effective in the long run too.

    Are Small Business Bookkeeping Services Accurate?

    In spite of being small in size, reputed bookkeeping service providers guarantee high levels of accuracy—which may not equate to money back transactions. They understand the financial consequences of your tax returns getting rejected due to improper filing of accounts and other accounting information. However, to be on the safer side, you should research on their past history of timely as well as accurate submissions of financial reports, the nature of services provided by the firm, dependability of online support systems and the facilitation processes provided by qualified auditors/accountants connected with the firm.

    If all these services seem to be in place, then you can go ahead and sign the bottom line with the small bookkeeping firm selected by you.

    Presence of Ongoing Support is a Must

    Though most business undergo the stressful season for return filing and taxation just once/twice a year, consistent online support is important to procure accurate and well organized financial statements and accounts when required. Proper pre planning goes a long way in alleviating the efforts required in the timely preparation of tax returns.

    Adequate consideration of these essential factors helps you complete the process of hiring the best bookkeeping services for your accounting needs.

    Tuesday 23 July 2013

    Why should you hire the Services of a Virtual Secretary?

    Once you have your smart small business web design in place, you would obviously look around for a virtual secretary to help you manage your business affairs and online transactions. Hiring the services of a virtual assistant can help you remove plenty of hours from your workweek and provides you higher degrees of efficiency and productivity. However, you should know which task to outsource to your virtual secretary—who in all probability is a freelancer or contract worker.

    Most virtual assistants work from the comfort of their homes and take care of administrative and secretarial jobs; which could have been done by full time in-house workers. With an increase in the number of virtual assistants ready to take up the challenges of maintaining your books of accounts, handling your ticketing and schedules, addressing customer service calls or simply posting out “thank you “ cards to loyal clients; finding the right one for your business is not a difficult affair.

    Some tasks which can be safely delegated to these virtual contract workers are:

    Bookkeeping: They go a long way in helping you keep a tab on your bills, maintain your accounting entries and make sure that your basic finance issues are in place. Many small business owners are now sharing their confidential bookkeeping information with virtual agents who are ready to follow up on tasks like pending bills, bills receivable and payable and outstanding invoices. They maintain the books of accounts in order and make sure that all accounting details and documents are in place at the time of filing your yearly tax returns.

    Online Research: Time consuming tasks connected with online research can be outsourced to virtual assistants. Paid websites and specialty search tools may require pre defined user names and passwords, so remember to send all details to facilitate proper research and save time and other valuable resources. Once the research is over, virtual helpers send in their feedback and formatted reports to you—to help you take the more strategic decisions for the your business growth.

    Data presentations: If you have good virtual help to help you make your PowerPoint presentations from raw data or summarize data from well researched word documents just before your meetings, then you are certainly a winner. Apart from saving your valuable time, hiring a virtual assistant helps you get access to higher levels of expertise and experience in these fields.

    Scheduling: Easy availability of scheduling tools and software are making it easy for virtual helpers to manage the calendars of their clients. Along with streamlining their travel needs and ticketing to making sure that all appointments and meetings are held on time, your secretary also helps you plan your events and other marketing schedules. You simply need to be comfortable and let go of your schedules into the hands of a remote worker!

    Valuable Tips for Bringing About Improvements in your Website Design

    The colors, designs, graphics and fonts used in your website design can make a world of difference between success and failure. Whereas a carefully planned website design Cairns can attract high conversion and low exit and bounce rates, a badly designed web presence can mean low sales and high rates of abandonment.

    So, how do you make sure that visitors do not exit your site as soon as they land there? Valuable tips offered by professionals linked with website design cairns make sure that they linger on your portal and click to buy stuff.

    Logo: You need to have a carefully chosen logo in place and make sure that you highlight the same on a very prominent place on your homepage and other embedded links. The logo on other pages should be effectively linked back to the home page—to enable easy navigation within the website.

    Intuitive navigation: You must remember to have your primary navigation links on the menu bar which is placed alongside the top portion of your site; and on a horizontal bar. The secondary links and navigation options can be placed beneath the primary bar or on a vertical space on the left hand portion of the page called the sidebar. Intuitive navigation plays an important role in helping surfers find their way around your website--rather than quitting after getting confused.

    Remove all clutter: Don’t give your visitor too many options. Keeping the web design simple helps you avoid all clutter. Overloading customers with too much information or making the page heavy with visual graphics, info graphics, animated gifs and videos can backfire in a big way. They divert the attention away from important textual content and make your site less effective than what it really is.

    Keep Textual content short: Another vital tip for streamlining pages is linked with keeping the textual matter specific and short. Ideally, a single page should contain at least 250 words of text and short paragraphs of maximum 5-6 lines. So keep it short and precise and you have a winning website on hand.

    Provide room to breathe: Having enough breathing space around paragraphs and images allow your guests to absorb all the essential features and relax as they go through your website. Effective web design techniques encourage the presence of white space on the landing pagers and other linked addresses. Increasing breathing space enhances visitor experience and helps a business garner greater profits and returns. Visual competition on mobiles and the internet have set the grounds for the new designing mantra—where less is more. So stick to the essentials and remember to cut out on the flab.

    With these tips and tricks in place, you can look forward to great business opportunities and dividends—and in more ways than one.

    Tips for Making Your Website Attract More traffic

    Of the various tools in your marketing arsenal, your web design for small business is certainly the most powerful. A well designed and laid out website can fetch you the competitive edge and add that little extra to your online presence. If you have a smart website in place, then you can make your customers stay, browse and purchase your products—instead of moving on to the websites of your competitors. This in turn means more sales revenues and higher profits for your business.

    Whether it is about availing the services of small business bookkeeping agents or finding experienced professionals to help you with an innovative web design for small business houses, you can now implement your vision and set yourself on the path of success by achieving your purpose—quickly and in an easy way.
    Given below are some valuable tips to keep in mind before investing in a user-friendly and eye catching website for your business.

    Branding: A professional looking website requires a strong brand identity to instill higher levels of confidence in clients and perspective buyers. Fortunately, you can achieve your target of looking bigger than what you actually are by placing your logo in a prominent position and making using of some smart branding techniques to boost your overall sales. Your other marketing materials should also have the same logo—to make your brand all the more familiar and consistent.

    Simplicity: Keep it simple. Too much of information and clutter makes customers wary and weary of clicking around for information. Clear site designs and well organized links allow clients to relax and make them enjoy their visits to your website.

    Fonts: Readability should be the guiding force behind your choice of font style and size. You website may be accessed by people having different levels of vision and so it is important to make the sites as inclusive as possible—rather than focus solely on design and attractive fonts.

    Graphics: Pictures always speak louder than words and more so when they highlight your products or business services. They are both eye catching and attractive and enhance the areas which demand greater attention from your clients. The relevancy of your site and search engine ratings is connected with the correct mix of text and graphics—making it important to resist the temptation to put in a lot of clipart and pictures. Too many visual images can also make your website slow.

    Text: At least 250 words of text should go on each page of your website. Bullet points, formatting and numbered lists allow you to lay more emphasis on the important parts of your textual content—and should be used wherever possible.

    Along with a high degree of transparency and navigability, your website should also be readily accessible on search engines and easily understood by your customers.