WordPress

06/27/2017 By Jason Bean 2 Comments

Small Business Tips: Easy Ways to Look More Professional

As a small business, appearance is everything. Sure, customer service and the product provided is integral to succeeding, but first impressions count – as it does in life in general.

With that in mind, you should be searching for all of the ways that will make your business look as professional and smart as possible. You might already have an attractive logo and optimized social media accounts, but there is much more that can be done. Also, don’t think that looking more professional is all about aesthetics, either.

So, with all that considered, read on for some top tips to take your small business to the next level.

Use a dedicated phone and PO Box

Even though businesses are going further and further towards being based on primarily on the internet, this doesn’t mean you should dismiss the option of using a dedicated phone line. Plus, some people still like to chat the old-fashioned way, and this also means you don’t have to hand out your home phone number!

In a similar vein, looking into a PO Box is also something you should contemplate if you are expecting product returns and such.

Get your own domain and email

It might seem apparent, but a noticeable amount of small businesses simply rely on social media as their online presence. Well, that’s not exactly the ideal first port of call for those searching for your company – especially if said potential customers do not have any social media accounts for themselves.

As a result, you should definitely look towards investing in your own domain/website. This will also provide you with your own business email, which helps make you look more professional when contacting others.

Make your website look the part

15 years ago, you could have been forgiven for producing a website that was little more than a wall of text with a gradient background. These days, however, you have all the tools to craft a fancy-looking website without the need of a specialist web developer.

In terms of creating your own website, WordPress is the ideal starter kit for beginners. Not only is it easy to use; it comes along with essentially an endless amount of customizable options, and – thanks in part to it being the most popular web development tool on the market – there is also a wealth of helpful guides out there should you get stuck at any point.

Top tip: make sure to use high-quality images. Your site could have a responsive and fresh framework, but pictures will draw people in more than any efficient functionality could.

Smarten up your packaging

Although it might be overlooked as something that is not too important, the packaging for your products – should you be selling physical goods of course – leaves an impression on your customers.

Obviously, the packaging should keep all products sufficiently protected during transit, but its appearance also has plenty of scope for improvement. Address labels via a label maker is highly recommended, with LabelCity.com being one place that offers a wide range of such useful devices. Additional embellishments to your packaging include your logo via a stamp and supplying a leaflet with discount codes.

Planning for the Future

If you're a small business owner, you're probably always thinking about the future. Whether that's tomorrow, next week or 5 years down the road. Tony Robbins just released a 2020 Business Owner Mindset Report that shows most business owners believe they'll figure out what it's going to take to weather the future storms being faced, even if they don't have all the answers right now. I believe that's the key to successful business leadership. A positive mindset and understanding the need to be flexible and agile in both finding solutions and then implementing those solutions once you've identified the ones that are going to work for you and your organization.

12/02/2015 By Jason Bean Leave a Comment

Image Optimization? What Do You Mean

Image optimization seems to be one of those simple steps that's frequently just ignored or not understood fully by many individuals and businesses active online. I have a number of friends and family members that I help them with their websites, social media and online marketing efforts. After receiving a recent email distribution from my brother I thought I'd take the opportunity to share with you some of the suggestions I gave him about image optimization in his recent usage.

The first step to really optimizing an image is to resize it to the size you're going to be displaying it at on your website or in your email newsletter. Granted these days with broadband Internet pipes and fiber optic connections this isn't as noticeable as it once was. But I can still usually immediately identify a non-optimized image when I see it slowly come into view after the rest of the content has already loaded.

In the example above, the image in the email was displayed at just under 200 pixels in width. But the actual image file used remained at its larger dimensions of over 1100 pixels in width. This is also frequently seen when people take photos from their phone or digital camera and just upload them directly in the original resolution and formatting size.

Image Optimization by File Type

The second simple step to image optimization is to save them in the best format option for the type of media graphic.

Generally photographic images should always be saved as a .JPG file like the image in this post example.

This would also include any graphics that have smooth gradients or variations of colors. Like in the WordPress logo example to the right. This smooth transition from the lighter blue to the darker blue should be handled by saving as a .JPG or .PNG file.

For simple, limited color line graphics like logos and such, generally youâ€™ll prefer to use .GIF as file format as shown in the Amazon logo below. Bold blocks of solid color.

The PNG format is very popular and can be used for both graphics and photos. Quality will be good but generally the file size will be significantly higher without compression compared to the other options available.

In the example above with the photo, it was displayed in the email in the smaller dimensions of the color photo (195 x 104 pixels). With image optimization by resizing the photo first and saving it as a .JPG, the file size would have been a little over 9Kb instead of 1.34MB for the original, full-sized PNG file that wasÂ used. Thatâ€™s a 99% decrease in file size!

Even if the original photo would have been saved in the same dimensions but only as a .JPG instead of .PNG, it would have been saving almost a 3^rd of the file size: 504kb instead of 1.35MB

So, think about your images before you just pop them into your website or email. Be sure to also keep a copy of your original sized image so you can always come back to the full resolution version if necessary in the future. Perhaps in a future post I'll also talk about optimizing your image file names before you upload them as well.

07/04/2014 By Jason Bean Leave a Comment

How I Manage an Infinite Number of WordPress Installs

I love WordPress. For most of my clients my first recommendation to them is to get their website setup on a WordPress installation. This is for a variety of reasons but the core of which are the following:

provides the ability for them to manage their own content and updates as needed once launched
WordPress platform provides loads of opportunities for functionality and features through existing plugins and themes
availability of themes allow me to help clients focus on delivering great content and information about their business without them having to pay a significant amount of money for custom design work

There are some challenges with deploying WordPress on so many client websites though. Even though the client is capable of maintaining their own website and content, many frequently still don't. I understand. They're business isn't directly tied to being active and engaging online and creating content for their site. They're busy taking care of their customers and selling their products and services. (I won't take the time right now to discuss how their need for the one is much more closely tied to their need for being active and engaging online with their website and other content). So I frequently jump-in and help them update or change content. With WordPress I can jump in from anywhere I have an Internet connection or even my phone to make a quick change for them.

The other challenge that many of my clients and I'm sure yours also don't keep up with is the regular updates that are released for the plugins installed, the themes you're using and of course the core WordPress files.

I'm currently supporting, managing or hosting a couple hundred WordPress installs these days. Trying to keep track of all of them can obviously be a big challenge. The tool that I've found that really helps me accomplish this task is a little tool called InfiniteWP. What's amazing about this tool is that it's FREE! You install it on your own servers, about as easily as you install a new WordPress installation, Â and you're off and running.

What InfiniteWP allows me to do is login to a single online interface and both review and manage all the updates and interactions I need for each WordPress install all together in one place. They also have a number of premium addons that allow you to take care of a bunch of other things like scheduled backups, security checks, SEO functions, deployment tools and much much more.

I'll say about InfiniteWP what I say about many other tools and systems people use to help manage tasks or responsibilities. The tool itself doesn't really take the place of you having to really keep an eye on and take care of things, it just helps you manage the time and efficiency with which you can do it all. For me, InfiniteWP allows me to provide a valuable and great service for my clients and helps me do it as quickly as possible and all within a familiar interface that helps me complete the tasks at hand and not get in my way instead.

If you're managing numerous WordPress installs like I am and would like some help with the process, be sure and check-out InfiniteWP. If you've got your own WordPress install and you'd like some help having it managed for you, and getting monthly reports of your online activity including social media actions in Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and LinkedIn, let me know and I'll let you know about some of the services I provide to my clients.