Category: SEO

Setting up your own business is a great way to take control of your career and independence and get out of the rat race than can bring you down. When you’re your own boss, you make all of the decisions, which is great in many ways but it means that the buck stops with you if something goes wrong. To set up your own business, you’ll need to make sure it’s 100% the right decision for you, so consider the following to help you work out if setting up your own business is the right move for you.

Is your business your passion project?

Setting up a business is no easy feat, and if things start to go wrong, or you start running into difficulties, will you be able to retain the enthusiasm to keep you going? Most people who set up their own businesses do so because they’re passionate about what they do, but if your heart is only half in it, or you’re simply bored and looking for a change in direction, you could find your business failing because you don’t have the drive to see it through.

How will you get started?

Do you have any ideas for how you’re going to get your business off the ground? How can you begin and how will you gather the funds to get it started. Do you have savings or someone willing to invest? Have you explored all avenues such as http://www.sage.co.uk/business-advice for advice on launching your startup? There’s a lot of research to be undertaken before you get started, so you must be prepared to put in a lot of hard work before you even get started on planning.

How will you manage money?

How will you manage money coming in and going out of your business? Could you survive if someone doesn’t pay an invoice on time? Getting a tight grip on your business’ finances is important from the outset, and you may wish to try spot cash loans or factoring as explained here: http://www.interstatecapital.com/spot-cash-loans-vs-factoring/, to help you manage your business’ cash flow. You’ll need to make sure that you have contingencies in place as well as some savings in case you are faced with unexpected business costs.

Will you need additional staff?

Can your business operate with just you or will you need additional staff? Can you afford to pay salaries when you first set up your business? It may be that you can’t afford to hire more people at the beginning and could look at hiring freelancers instead to do work as an when is needed (more info available here: http://www.business-opportunities.biz/2014/02/17/freelance-vs-in-house-which-should-you-hire/). When you start a business, and other people are involved, you need to be sensitive to the fact that they have homes, families, etc. to pay for and support and you’ll need to make sure that you can pay them before you start your business.

Once you get your business started, make sure you tell people about it. Social media packages from marketing professionals can take care of the hard work of running your social media accounts to help raise awareness of your business and its services. This leaves you to focus on running your business and making it a success.

If you run a business, there’s no doubt about it – you need a website Not only that, but your website needs to be fast.

Internet connections are faster than ever before, and this means that users will not be happy to wait around for a website to load due to failures at your end. Slow websites will also be penalized by Google making it harder for customers to find your site in the first place. So, yes, speed really does matter, and it should be a priority for you if you’re serious about marketing and selling online.

To help you speed up your website, here are some tips:

Hire the Right Staff

The best thing you can do to ensure that your website stays up and running and up to speed is to hire a good network support services team, who have their eye on the ball and know exactly what is required to make your website and your network fast, simple and convenient to use. If you outsource, this should not set you back too much, and it will be worth every penny to have a reliable site up and running.

Size Images

Images take up a lot of space, and they can take a lot of time to load if they’re too big, which is why you should be using a content management system for uploading content to your website, and why you should be using it to adjust the sizes of your images, so that they don’t slow your website down.

Ditch Unneeded Plugins

There are so many free plugins that promise to make your website bigger and better, that it’s easy to get tempted into using them all, but the more plugins you have, the more sluggish your website will be. So, stick to the essentials if you want to see your speed increase.

Update Your Scripts

Many scripts that are commonly used by businesses need to be regularly updated. Sadly, many business owners are not aware of this, and they don’t make the necessary changes. This causes their websites to slow down, and they lose a not insignificant amount of business as a result. If you don’t want this to happen to you, check and update your scripts as soon as a new version becomes available.

Use Content Delivery Networks

Content Delivery Networks are huge networks of servers that are located all over the world. If you use them, your website’s visitors do not have to rely on coming through your web host’s central server, which will be a lot slower than CDN’s and which are much less likely to crash at an inopportune moment, because they enable visitors to access cached versions of the site from their closest web host.

Have CSS Files at the Top and Javascript at the Bottom of Pages

If you do this your website’s code will be a lot neater and this will ensure that pages load more quickly, crash less often and always look as intended. This is perhaps the best thing you can do to give your visitors a pleasant and efficient experience when visiting your site.

If you’re starting up a business, in order for it to not fail you need to make sure that you’re correctly prepared! There’s no point starting up a business without having the correct preparation and tools at your disposal, else your company will collapse and waste your hard earned cash and time! Everyone wants to avoid this, so here are 4 things that you can do to help minimise the risk of your startup business going bust!

Hire The Right Team

An integral part of any business is the team that you have to run it. Running a business requires many different skills, you need HR managers, logistical experts, marketing experts, the list goes on! You need to make sure that you can really nail this from the start so your company hits the ground running. You can hire the right people from websites such as Upwork, they allow you to browse a range of freelance workers with varying degrees of skill and how much they are asking to be paid. This lets you choose the perfect person to work with you, giving your startup business the best possible chance to succeed. The reason why it’s so important to get this perfect at the start is that most startup companies fall at this first hurdle. Having the incorrect team could spell disaster for your business in a matter of weeks if your team isn’t up to scratch, so make sure that it is!

Use IT Support Companies

Almost all modern business use IT to make their lives easier. This refers to anything to do with computers, whether it be using a server to store data,  or a computer to talk to customers via social media, it’s a very good idea to get an IT support package. Companies such as Netstar offer a wide range of IT support packages, they differ from just having backup copies of all your files in case your servers run into catastrophic problems, to having a fully supported software package complete with data protection, custom softwares and employee management systems. Depending on what your business is aimed at dealing with, it is heavily recommended to get some form of IT support for two things; firstly, it keeps all of your much-needed data stored and safe, and secondly it takes away the hassle of trying to keep on top of the IT side of running a business yourself. Managing all your IT services can be like a second job and adds a huge amount of unwanted complexity to your already stressful enough running of a startup company, so removing this factor and leaving it in the hands of a capable company is always a plus!

Get The Right Office Space

Not all startup businesses require offices, it depends on what your business’s function is however the majority of startup businesses will need office space. This can be a very tricky thing to get sorted purely because everyone’s needs are different. If you will only have a small workforce, then you need to find an office that is small enough to house all of your employees in, if it’s too big you will end up overspending on renting out office space that you just don’t need! If you need a large workforce, you need to make sure that your office space is large enough to accommodate everyone, otherwise you will run into issues and either have to make redundancies or rent out a new property. This is why it’s good to go to websites like Instaoffices  that allow you to search all of the registered office spaces available, with their listed prices, so you can browse and pick the perfect one for you.

Have The Right Funding And Clearcut Budget

Money makes a business successful, and the lack of it makes it unsuccessful. Startup businesses tend to lose money for the first few years of their existence, simply because they need the time to start paying for themselves. Start up costs can be very high, so it’s important to have a good source of reliable money for this. Often, full-time jobs do not cover the amount of money needed to get a business off the ground. This is why it’s often beneficial to get business loans from banking societies such as santander to help you with the money. Having a very clear budget goes hand in hand with this. If your budget is not clear and you do not stick to it, you’ll very quickly find yourself wasting a lot of money on things you don’t need. It’s imperative that you keep money waste to an absolute minimum because in the early days you need as much money as you can get!

Social Media Marketing

One of the ways to really make your company stand out in this modern age is to have a page or account on social media’s such as Facebook. Social media is an incredibly popular way to appeal to the younger generation, they use it quite often and will much prefer to message your company’s page than to ring you up! It’s important to have a razor sharp response team for this, first impressions are everything and if you reply with a fast, informative answer the potential customer will be much more tempted to use your services! If you’re looking for some more social media related tips for your business, read this article to satisfy your needs!

As you can see, all of these individual recommendations are very effective at maximising the chances of success for you startup business, but they all work so much better in unison! A good budget and a healthy amount of money, combined with the right team and the right office space with a lightning fast social media team will ensure that your startup company has the best start that it can, nursing it into hopefully becoming one of the big hitters of your chosen industry! If you look after your business properly, who knows what you can achieve with it?