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.

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.

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.

Hiring Professional Copywriters for Smarter Solutions

Whether it is about using magnetic headlines, strong calls to action, fascinating bullet points or the beneficial techniques used by professional copywriters; hiring the experience and expertise of graphic designers and copywriters goes a long way in improving bottom line figures and the overall success rate of your firm.

Though it makes a lot of business sense to do this yourself, it sometimes becomes important to hire the services of reputed agencies providing the best graphic design Cairns. So, what are the various situations in which need to hire a pro?

When you are just not good at it

Though talent constitutes 80 percent of the function of getting work done, you simply cannot put in your efforts into something about which you have no clue. You may also find yourself hard pressed for time and find it inconvenient to do the task on your own. Under the circumstances, you have no other option than to find a partner with better writing skills or hire a professional copywriter to give that particular area of your business the attention it needs.

You need to communicate the strengths and positive attributes of your products and services to your perspective and existing clients—and this requires the talents of a professional, well versed in strong writing techniques.

You Lack the Bandwidth

Even if you have a flair for writing, you will find it difficult to match the requirements of words on each page/screen on an everyday basis. After all, there is a limit to how much you can write. Though marathon sessions of writing seem to work for certain people, they can also lead to a complete loss of productivity and burnout over a long period of time. Professional copywriting service providers are well versed with the fact that the more a business writes about itself, the more it sells. This is all the more true in the world of content marketing, where stronger customer connections are the result of content written with authority and expertise.

Well, you should not strive to add on the expenses of a writer only to increase the volume of content generation. You should have a well planned strategy in regards to your business purpose and make realistic plans to achieve success through your published materials.

You want Specialized Expertise

You may be well versed in the art of writing blogs to make fans but are you equally confident of writing a persuasion letter to convert these very fans into clients? For this you require a specialist. You will also require the services of a subject matter expert to write your white papers or an SEO expert to help your business rank well on search engines and generate higher volumes of traffic. You will certainly have to pay more to get these specialized services—but then it is worth the cause.

Hiring of professional graphic designers and writers reaps rich dividends and make your business sound far from ordinary. Just go for it!

The Futuristic Platform of Websites for Mobile Devices

The amount of time and money people are now spending on mobile devices is on the rise and yet many businesses skipped the reation of a mobile friendly website. The mobile devices are an important and growing channel for all future businesses and to adapt to this world, redesigning is the buzzword!

Let’s discuss the key steps for redesigning websites for mobile devices:

Modify the existing site

Businesses cannot afford to ignore the fact that more than a billion populace primarily access the web from handheld devices. It is the worst business strategy to ignore your mobile audience altogether.

If you are not prepared to reconstruct your site immediately, the least you can do is edit the design in websites for mobile devices.

— Editing site design.

First of all, pull up your website on a smart phone and view it on Google and you will probably feel the need for design changes. The key aspects of a mobile friendly website lies in making simpler page styles, layout, large font sizes, minimal use of heavy images, clear name and contact details and full-sized touch keys that are finger-proof. These small steps go a long way in conveying key information and making the data effortlessly accessible on any device.

— Mobile version of the site.

As an alternative to editing your site, create a similar version. However, if your mobile site has a secondary URL, search engines may perhaps not find the site as most search engines promote one-URL approach for searching and SEO. The other better option is to create a mobile site that links to your main site and users have a choice to get redirected to the mobile site.

Redesigning the site

Start the planning for the rebuilding process, by firstly deciding whether your website necessitates being adaptive or responsive in design. There are two basic strategies for building websites compatible to mobile devices:

— Adaptive website design is a high end, expensive design option used by big corporate houses that invest profoundly to reach the largest possible online audience. This design senses and categorises the user's device and then spawns a webpage matched to the device’s capabilities.

— Responsive website design is an affordable solution, which uses the technology of Cascading Style Sheets, to generate a single version of website that automatically fine-tunes to exhibit properly on all devices. This design permits you to reach the majority of active net audiences

The road ahead

Along with all other major investment decisions for your company, make the website redesigning high on priority, as you need to steer your reach to customers in all possible ways including all hand held devices, computers and latest televisions. A professional designer can create a good customised website with the right technology to suit your business needs. Create your website with a futuristic outlook to give your surfers quick and easy access, give them links to maps and directions, and then insert video or other delights to keep them hooked on to your site.

Outsourcing Effectively with a Virtual Personal Assistant

The simple expression of a virtual administrative assistant can make a business owner either delighted or apathetic, depending on one’s exposure with this increasingly popular administrative help. By means of well-done research and a detailed working guideline, one can definitely make a smart choice of opting for an administrative help for a small business.

Small businesses categorically require a virtual personal assistant, if they are encompassing any of these situations:

The loss of a new or an old business client, because of not adhering to project deadlines.

Business development work has taken a back seat, devoid of an updated prospective database.

Receipt of new profitable projects for business stalled, owing to routine business work.

Staying busy working on the weekends and on night shifts to keep up with routine administrative job.

Engagement in work schedules, which can be delegated and in its place, more creative and important tasks can be handled.

Once you ascertain the need of a virtual assistant, let’s simplify the arduous task of outsourcing with these steps: 

Setting the Model

Firstly, decide on the work and tasks, which you would delegate to a virtual personal assistant.

List down the potential places to acquire a virtual assistant for your small business.

Start the search process from your own network of people, for recommended agencies or assistants through mailers or telecom.

Meticulously screen the recommended list and add your own online searched virtual assistant list, to suit your business requirements.

Start interacting with the assistants, review their websites, and conduct telephonic interviews to decide on the right agency or candidate.

Set up the communication model to manage your online project.

Decide as to how and when you expect to be notified. This is necessary, and makes it easier for you and everyone on your team to know what’s happening at any given time.

The Project delegation

Start with a small trial project as a way to test the communication and workflow channels with the virtual assistant.

Create a business overview document and share the same with him/her.

Create process documents and checklists for your virtual assistant and ask to update the work and tasks on the same document.

The more your virtual assistant comprehends your business model, stakeholders, and your business vision, it is easier for that person to facilitate and achieve your business goals.

Set away some time in a day or in a week specifically, for reviewing the outsourced work.

It’s your own business after all, and to facilitate virtual administrative assistant to give his/her best for you, collaborate and spend time in training the individual rather than being simply a task master. It’s well worth the effort, as work will be done more efficiently and you will have additional time and energy to assign to the growth of your business!

Finding Success with your Very own Virtual Secretary

While it is given that only the best virtual receptionist or assistant can contribute to the success of your business; many a times if your executives are not able to optimize these services for their benefit, success becomes a distant dream.

Even the best virtual secretary will not be able to contribute to his or her best capacity if you are not able to leverage this arrangement in the correct way. Here are some crucial points that you need to keep in mind while dealing with your online assistant-

1. Developing a Good and Effective Working Relationship

Considering the fact that your home-based assistant works from a distant location, opening doors to a transparent and straightforward communication strategy is important. It is also important that you are able to trust your virtual receptionist. Having faith in the work patterns of your assistant and how they implement the tasks you assign them is crucial to how healthy your relationship will be.

Remember that a good working rapport is directly related to how successful your company can be.

 2. Studying the Tasks that you Outsource

While hiring a virtual receptionist may give you back a lot of your time that went in organizing your schedule, it is still important that you are always aware of the responsibilities you assign to your assistant. Whether it is making your appointments, organizing your virtual folders, managing your email, your website or your accounting work, it is always good to be consistently aware of what your assistant is working on at any given point of times.

3. Managing your Assistant’s Learning Curve

While many appointments and business matters can be planned in advance, it is not practical to take this for granted. A number of matters tend to crop up last minute, and it is thus all the more important for your online assistant to come with a learning curve that allows him or her to manage these responsibilities from a distance. Organizing this may take a few weeks, but once you are able to set effective systems, control will come more easily and comfortably. 

4. How are you communicating?

One cannot overstake how important it is for an executive and his or her virtual assistant to develop a foolproof communication pattern. One of the many factors that influence productivity is how well you are connected with your assistant. Before you hire your assistant, make sure all parties involved are clear about the mode of communication that will be used. Make sure you agree on an effective solution when it comes to regular reporting and internal communications.

Ask your solution provider if they offer any standard options that are tested and tried among other clients which they cater to. Many virtual assistant solution providers offer interfaces with easy to use email and instant messaging services. You can also leverage video calling options to make sure your communication strategy is comprehensive and effective.

The better you are able to leverage the services of your online assistant, the higher will be the chance of you and your virtual team driving your business to success!

Finding the Perfect Virtual Assistant

With a number of virtual personal assistant service providers as well as individuals offering these services cropping up in the marketplace, it is important for you as an executive or a business owner to find ways to become more vigilant about investing in the correct services. 

While hiring a virtual administrative assistant for yourselves or for the top management, here are a few considerations that you must make.

1. Understanding what your Personal Needs are

It is a common misunderstanding that your virtual personal assistant is only good for helping you coordinate your schedule and your data well. If you are able to truly identify you needs, you will soon realize that hiring a virtual assistant has a wider scope than traditionally imagined. You need to have a basic outline of what kind of projects you intend to assign to your assistant. Depending on the size of your firm and your requirements you can find an assistant who is proficient in managing content for your business website, someone who is able to manage your investment portfolio from home, and even pursue some accounting activities from home. The scope is truly unlimited.

2. From where do you intend to Employ your Assistant?

The World Wide Web is obviously a very useful resource when it comes to finding competent virtual assistants or companies that offer these services. Look up business directories, message boards, job boards and social networking websites for relevant recommendations.

If you prefer to hire someone more local, get in touch with a local staffing agency or put up ads in local newspapers for relevant response from interested applicants. Also speak to business associates and friends who employ these services for recommendations of solution providers that are reliable.

3. Venture beyond the Employer – Employee Relationship

Even if you are technically hiring a virtual online assistant, it will do you and your business good to not consider him or her as an employee. Look at this arrangement as a partnership or a business relationship where the assistant is offering to you his or her services. Taking this into consideration, make sure that the virtual assistant solution provider that you interact with comes with an impressive portfolio, a professional looking site and elaborate information on their VA services.

4. Put it on Paper

Whether you are hiring an independent assistant or using the services of a VA company, make sure your negotiations and your final arrangement are all on paper. The contract that you sign with the other party must contain information regarding job responsibilities, payment terms, hours of operations and also come with relevant clauses that allow your business to protect your intellectual property.

Also, make it a point to highlight that your contract needs to be strictly confidential. Depending on your personal requirements, you can choose to hire just one VA or employ a team of assistants for your top management. By hiring the correct assistant, you will be able to save thousands of dollars, optimize your time and enhance productivity levels at your workplace.

The Most Helpful Virtual Assistant Services your Business must Consider

The onset of the internet age has transformed the ways in which the world conducts business. With distance and time turning into a redundant consideration, businesses are able to make the most of the online world to acquire a myriad of innovative services to make business and living easier.

One of the major revolutions that hit the business world in the recent past is the virtual assistant services through which companies around the world are now able to acquire expert offerings from people residing in all corners of the world without having to spend tons of money on travel or office space.

If you are considering hiring an online assistant for your management or yourself, remember that hiring a VA is more than getting yourself a personal secretary. As a matter of fact, there are a number of areas within your business that can be managed by these assistants online.

1. Web Designing Services

There is no arguing about how important it is for your business to be visible on the online world. Since owning a website is so important, businesses with limited budgets can consider hiring a virtual web designer or administrator who will allow your business to get a completely functional website and also manage its content in the long run. Hire an online assistant who is proficient in designing and see how he or she is able to transform your business through achieving online success.

2. Graphic Designing

Hiring a virtual assistant with basic skills in graphic designing and media management is a great way to manage your sales pitches. Whether you are looking for assistance in creative PowerPoint Presentations or need someone to consistently contribute to your sales and marketing initiatives, a chance to work with a creatively inclined online assistant can do wonders for your business. You can easily get flyers, brochures, banners, business cards and all your other advertising material designed from your assistant.

3. Bookkeeping and Accounting

The internet has made data sharing so simple that it is now also possible for virtual assistants to pursue activities such as small business bookkeeping. Hire a finance, accounts or bookkeeping graduate and assign relevant tasks that simply financial compliance and taxation process for your business. Small business bookkeeping is especially a practical option since new or small ventures tend to have little work load in regards to accounting. This way you are able to hire a well qualified professional without having to spend a lot of extra money.

4. Writing Services

Effective writing is an important business quality. Hire a professional copywriter on a virtual arrangement through whom you are able to get all your newsletters, press releases, proposals and other important industrial announcements.

You may also hire a virtual assistant with experience or qualifications in writing. Effective writing skills can also help you in personal interaction and making sure all tasks assigned are not misunderstood.

There are a number of other areas in your business that can be explored by your virtual assistant. Depending on the nature of your business, your VA can also manage your travel desk, online purchases, etc.

Working Well With your Online Personal Assistant

Since the advent of the internet and the prevalence of e-commerce as an integral part of business, there has been an evident surge in virtual jobs. A growing number of executives are opting to hire virtual assistants who are capable of doing the job well through virtual interaction from comforts of their homes.

Hiring an Online Personal Assistant

While hiring a virtual assistant is a cost-effective and convenient decision, many a times, executives find it hard to optimize their services. Professionals end up constantly bombarding their assistants with emails with instructions that are consistently misunderstood, resulting in wastage of valuable resources and not to mention a stressful relationship with your personal assistant.

Before you go through the ordeal of firing your virtual assistant and looking for a new one again, reconsider your working methods and see if you make any improvements on your current arrangement.

Here are a few interesting points you can consider to make sure you are working well with your online personal assistant –

1. Establishing a Discipline with Working Hours

Just because your virtual assistant works from home, it does not mean his or her life will not be as busy as yours. Have a face to face meeting or a telephone conversation with your assistant to understand each other’s daily schedule and find a way to come on a common group with respect to defining standard working hours. This way you can set realistic expectations for your assignments and plan your daily communication a lot better. Also keep you assistant informed about the times of the day it is best to get in touch with you.

2. Identify a Method of Communication

Discuss with your assistant, what according to the two of you will be the most effective way to talk on a routine basis. Do you think your communication is easier on the phone or on email? On the phone you can make sure that there are minimal misunderstandings, while your email can be a record of all the tasks that have been assigned to your personal assistant. You may also arrive at a mutual combination of both modes of communication, depending on the nature of your work.

3. How are you Writing your Emails?

Trying to discuss everything in a single email can get confusing for you as well as your assistant. Try to limit only one agenda for every email that you send out or receive. This will make it a lot easier for you and your virtual assistant to organize your projects and enhance productivity.

4. Scheduling your Communications

Make sure that you make it a habit to organize a weekly de-briefing session over the phone to discuss certain matters, and keep a check on the status of various projects your assistant is handling at that point. With these weekly telephone talks, you can make sure you are bridging the gap that comes with sending out emails and you can also maintain a certain level of mutual understanding.

In addition to this, remember to set monthly goals for your assistant. This way you can make sure your business is on track and that you and your virtual assistant are working on the same page.

The Key Elements in Web Design for a Small Business

A small business’s website is a crucial aspect of its marketing and branding endeavours, as it’s all about attracting eyeballs to the business website. Potential customers visit a site explicitly for its content and navigation, which are critical for the success of a business webpage.

Let’s check on the essentials of web design for small business:

Target Market and Objective

It’s vital to first delve into the research pattern of your target audience and the objective of your webpage before getting the webpage designed. The content and design of your website is based on your target market and your business model. Clarity on these two parameters signifies added readers, subscribers, trades or leads depending on the objective of your webpage.

Design

The web surfers have very less concentration span. They quickly scan through a webpage to check the content before engaging themselves. If they believe they are on the correct page, they slow down to read the full storyline. To augment the user's exposure to the small business web design, simplify the homepage with basic colours, designs and organise the content for more eyeball scans. A flashy design, with dancing images on the page just does not add any value to the website and are difficult for downloading on smart phones and tablets.

Navigation

Many websites fall short to be able to be navigated properly and inadvertently create an exasperating experience for potential visitors. The small business web design needs to have seamless navigation structure to keep visitors hooked on to its site. The website navigation should be effortless and natural for the user; so it's imperative to make the pages and sections easy and logical with the use of icons, logical groups and location information.

Content

The user on the net are looking for something specific, the web design for small business should ensure to impress them with well written, valuable and green content. The website should be most up-to-date with information about the company and products or services for customers to perceive and gauge the magnitude of your business. Fresh and green content is also a hit for SEO, you can refrain from getting your content stale by integrating a frequently updated blog or linking it to your social media tweets.

Many small business entrepreneurs tend to cram their homepage with extraneous items resulting in an unprofessional, cluttered, overwhelming and unreadable page. If a user cannot follow the content, it leads to low traffic, a high rebound rate and a poor page rank leading the small business back to the drawing board to start afresh!

Dispelling Some Myths Associated with Hiring a Virtual Secretary

Many business owners nowadays are opting to delegate their secretarial work to a virtual receptionist, rather than appointing an internal full time secretary. Appointing a virtual employee is one of the finest business decisions that a small business setup can take to keep their overheads low without compromising the quality of work.

In spite of the advantages the model brings to the table, it has strong reservations amongst some owners of small businesses. Let’s discuss about the common misperceptions prevalent regarding outsourcing of work to a virtual assistant and ways to overcome the same.

Not sure of the model: Any professional is certainly accustomed to deal with employees in person. However, gradually it is seen that the interactions and communications with staff are taking place most of the times online or virtual with the use of phones, Skype, e-mail, video conferences. This model is no different from that, in fact you eradicate the necessity of physical proximity and can source first-rate talent from anywhere in the world.

Not confident of what work they do: The thumb rule is that they can do similar capacity of work or more like your in-house virtual secretary. Stimulate your thought process to understand the advantages of virtual delegation; it can be an element of leadership effectiveness that can translate into further growth of your business. Stay focused on what you do best for your business - thinking, writing, and consulting and offload the rest of the work to a virtual assistant.

Disconnected from daily business issues: This holds true for all organisations, when the field staff and interstate branch offices are all located and working remotely, disconnected from the daily routine business concerns. Like them, you need to connect with your virtual assistant through weekly conference calls, skype or social media.

Working hours of virtual assistant: Get clarity on the work by enlisting the priorities, estimate the time for each task and then offload the same with proper deadlines.

Monitoring and evaluating performance: Well, this is an ongoing challenge for any employee concerned and the evaluation process is simply based on the performance or output given to business.

Trial and testing: The virtual assistant agencies do not assign a virtual receptionist randomly they find. They understand your specific needs and then follow a rigorous selection process.

Share your virtual employees: This depends on the scale of your work; and your capacity to outlay – for it can be easily customised by the agency to suit your needs.

Misuse of important information: You can tackle this problem by appointing a virtual secretary from a reputed agency with proper reference and background checks of the assistants done and applying appropriate policies in place with agencies, for protection of personal and critical business information.

Be open and stop perceiving the model as an added expense. With time, this can augment your business or your career to the next level. It is definitely less pricey, less risky and an ideal investment decision, and a good alternative to hiring a full-time employee.

Big ! is Not the best for Mobile application Logo Design Cairns

Logo design needs to begin with a great idea or concept, sketched with some visuals to fetch life into it. Graphic design Cairns firms say that the toughest challenge is in the application logo to be conspicuous amongst thousands of other designs.

As individuals, we are accustomed to perceive that big sizes at all times are better. The element of size for us authenticates boldness, and an intrinsic value stating bigger objects pack more punch! However, in the domain of logo design specific to mobile applications, being big is a crime! It is regarding communicating the power of your brand in a small icon.

Let us discuss the parameters for designing the world of small logos, intended for mobile applications.

Striking

The logo design Cairns companies strive to create logos for various application platforms in small-sized icons, yet striking on their own right.

Space constraint

It is implicitly difficult to express your ideas in such a small space. The mobile application images can vary depending on the medium; however, a standard specification of 16 by 16 pixels is what is followed.

Clarity

The other challenge is to keep the same clarity of image in the minimised or small canvas. The icon may look grand on its own, but when scaled down to actual size it may be difficult to distinguish the intrinsic details. So it is imperative to create a simplified, brighter and bold logo that can draw the same idea but with better clarity.

Color Palett

The latest technology in mobile screens has far superior color profundity and smoothness, but they differ widely with the diverse mobile models. In consequence, Graphic design Cairns companies make it necessary for their designers to work within the original 16-color palette to maintain consistent high-class color shades across all mobile devices.

Visual legibility

The logo design should at least match tangentially to the full-sized logos from the parent brand of the product to give a seamless brand identity of the product across various mediums.

Simplicity Ideate more but keep the visual simple, as elaborate icons in a competitive market place does not come out well on small screen devices.

Adaptive

The last leg of challenge in creation for logo design cairns firms lies is tuning them to be adaptive to gear up for functioning, in all standard or landscaped orientation. It is a real balancing act of optimising and creating a logo for desktops, tablets and mobile devices with diverse screen sizes and interfaces, without affecting or slowing down the applications or devices.

It is all about the perception in designing, as many graphic designers consider it an art, but considering mobile application logo designing, it’s definitely real science. The processes of designing are well laid out - you need to blend them with your ideas to make a winning edge in this fiercely competitive world of logo designing!

Benefits of Hiring an Online Personal Assistant for a Startup’s Processes

It’s always a hard-hitting task for a green field venture to decide on whether to hire a virtual assistant, or to handle everything on its own. In addition, for a home start up, it also becomes difficult to accommodate the assistant’s workplace. However, with all that a startup business demands, it’s convenient to outsource some of the business tasks to an online personal assistant.

Let’s discuss why a virtual assistant works in favour of a start up.

Time and Value

Outsourcing your jobs to an online assistant will dramatically shrink your secretarial tasks and add to your time to commit for the growth of your business. If you look into the value proposition of the model, the per hour outlay on a virtual assistant is much less in comparison to the real value you create for your business.

Cost

To hire a full time in-house personal assistant would be an additional outlay of a fixed salary, benefits, entitlements and training for a person. This generally is simply unaffordable and an avoidable outflow for start-ups.As an alternative, a monthly flexible fee paid for the services rendered by online assistants is lucrative for start-ups.

Outlining Business Processes

The start up company requires outlining the workflow processes for marketing, sales, and administrative tasks, ahead of hiring the personnel for respective functions. A virtual personal assistant can do an incredible job in putting the written process documents for a start up, saving time for the founders.

Business Communications

A start up requires being very active on networking and social media along with general communications on emails. An online assistant can come to aid in handling company emails, sales queries, live chat windows and getting the onerous task of month-end reports on time. A virtual personal assistant can competently manage all these jobs at a negligible cost to the start up.

Reaching the Market

In a start up, when you launch your product, all the back end processes need to be streamlined, along with collection of post launch queries and feedback from the market. An online assistant works proficiently to take care of all the pre and post launch activities so that you can focus on the product launch.

Iteration and relaunch

The initial product launch is never streamlined and do encompass teething issues. Quite a few times, there might be requirements to iterate and relaunch the product quickly. An online assistant collects and focuses on customer’s feedback for businesses to act upon and make modifications or additions on their product.

Most entrepreneurs need a paradigm shift of their thought process to outsource some business work to an online personal assistant to ease the company’s overheads, and at the same time, not bring in any compromise on business processes.

Benefits of Designing a Website with a Freelance Web Designer

Every business, whether it’s a non-profit organisation or a business oriented one needs a website. The web is now the centre of our universe and hence the content, interface, appearance, visibility, and target audience of the webpage are deemed as the most vital facets while designing the site.

A web designer has a critical role to play. In fact, the hiring of a web designer is one of the most crucial factors in deciding the success of your website. There are myriad of companies, agencies and freelancers rendering their services in the market and as a small business owner, you need to make the right preference for your business.

Let’s discuss how a freelance web designer can meet the challenges of web designing for small business houses.

Why go for experienced designers?

All agencies categorise the assignments to fit the budgets or project cost of the clients. Quite often, junior designers are allotted to work on projects of small business houses. Although a junior web designer not essentially signifies a bad designer, but it is advisable to appoint an experienced designer, who could be a freelancer, in order to work on designing the website of a small business house.

• Expertise

An experienced web designer, who may be a freelancer, possesses awareness and understanding of SEO, content management and other site development technologies, which are quite important while designing any website.

• Cost Advantage

The website design cairns freelancers provide innovative and interactive deals than any other designing agencies at competitive prices. Generally, any agency gets the work outsourced for completing the task. Technically, a freelance workforce does the web designing process. It’s always advisable to go directly to a freelance designer in the first place as this could turn out to be a cost effective decision. The competitive edge of the freelancers is in their amazingly low overheads. In comparison, the overheads of an agency are high. The rate per hour of a freelancer is very low.

• Focus

Web designing agencies are involved in large projects as they are scalable and a small project works out unprofitable for them. In contrast, a freelance designer is prepared to take on all size and capacity of projects and usually focus on giving customised solutions to the small businesses.

• Flexibility

In distinction to various web design companies, website design cairns freelancers proffer their clients with the biggest asset ‘flexibility in operations’ that perfectly suits small business needs. Flexibility is the most important freelancer’s asset. They also think out of the box and work on a project in different innovative ways and in order to hasten work, may also rework on their earlier schedules.

The freelance web designers are self-employed individuals. They are seen to be mostly passionate and accountable to deliver the job before the stated deadline. A sincere freelancer would proactively attend to your calls and resolve all your queries with interest to create a positive impression, to be recommended and referred by you to newer leads.

Benefits of a Professional Copywriter and Bookkeeping Tools for Small Businesses

There are many errands associated with running your own company, and in the midst of your juggling act, some small, but imperative tasks can get overlooked.

Let’s explore how professional tools in small business bookkeeping and a professional copywriter can help save precious time and energy for small business owners.

Bookkeeping tools

Smart, insightful bookkeeping tools assist and provide solutions, that signal when customer bills and invoices are due and send real-time reports too that help you to gauge financial state of affairs.

i) Cloud computing

There is a shift from PC based small business bookkeeping to the cloud which provides a plethora of bookkeeping and accounting applications that are advantageous for small business owners. They enable users to work remotely from any computer or hand held device with an internet connection. The applications automatically create back up data as well as grant access to information for other business stakeholders.

ii) Automate to stop human error or duplication of work

The use of automated system dramatically saves your time and increase the accuracy of data transferred and accounted in the financial statements. With this fresh breed of online bookkeeping tools, there is reduction in the chances of all bookkeeping errors in business.

Professional copywriter

 

Although it seems simple and easy to do copy writing, sometimes it’s a good initiative to call for a professional copywriter to write the content of your business. Let’s discuss why it’s imperative to have copywriters for your business.

i) The bandwidth and focus 

In the world of content and copy writing, fresh and premium content will always influence and build customer connection. A professional copywriter is trained to understand the strategy behind the content and creates effective articles customised for your business’s growth. He or she is a perfectionist in regards to language, tone, meaning, structure, and the finer points of grammar and its usage that often get neglected by untrained writers.

ii) Professional Content 

Along with the creation of daily content for your business, you entail a specialist to handle your social media space and write e mailers, subscription letters, messages, and tweets to convert fans into customers. A business may also require a specialist on a particular subject to write an article or a SEO based content that doles out business along with good ranking in search engines. These professionals are also well aware of the recent trends, flaws, rages in the content writing world.

iii) Expert Opinion and Guidance 

The winning edge of any professional copywriter is in its proficiency to strategise all customer feedback, survey responses, and social media interactions with customers. Their direct access to customer data, changes the perspective of your content directed to customers.

However, although a talented, well-trained copywriter can help you find your strongest possible marketing message, but as the business owner, you are the one who is ultimately responsible for your story!