15 Reasons Why Your Business Needs A Website Today

By website, I mean a well-designed website with quality contents. It is a website that customers would want to visit over and over again, which is what makes it possible for you to have a good return for your money. Let me show you few things that make your website outstandingly great:

Hosting Web Server:  Your web server can contribute to whether your site will load fast or load slowly. Web servers that are connected to high speed Internet bandwidth will enable your site to load very fast. On the contrary servers that are domiciled on low bandwidth Internet connectivity will load slowly. And nothing is as frustrating as a visitor, who is a prospective customer spending a lot of time before loading. Be sure such visitors might never come again, and you stand to lose big. Wisely choose your web designer as well as your host; ignore all these free website builders, if you’re serious you’re your business. 

Images and Background Pictures: These go a long way in elucidating your points on a website, as pictures have capturing impacts on people. However, pictures can render your website inaccessible by making it load forever. A 1000- word page may be 20 KB . But one “raw” image can easily be up to 2MB, depending on its size and rawness. Ordinarily, the larger the image, the bigger its size in KB. That is why you should resize you images and crop out unnecessary parts when using them on a website. Meanwhile, there is a special software that will drastically reduce the KB size of your images without affecting the picture quality. This software enables you to have good size images on your website while still loading very fast. On the other hand, while good looking background is a powerful addition, if it makes your content texts unreadable, it becomes useless. 

Visitors Contact Information: A website that has no system of collecting visitors contact information will not achieve much. This is because not many visitors will be ready to purchase on their first visit to your website. But when you collect their contact information through a web form, subscribing to your free newsletter, tell a friend form or any other means, you can contact them again and again till they are ready to buy from you. 

Quality Content: It is what you write as the content of your website that makes the sales for you. If you do not tell the visitor what he stands to benefit from your product or service, and that, in a very convincing, professional manner, he may not be interested in it. Most amateur web designers harp on the features of the product or service without dwelling on the benefits to the user. If you cannot tell the website visitor within a short time, what’s in it for him, you will probably lose him. Having got the killer website you need, you stand to benefit in the following ways:

 1. A Website Makes Your Business Visible: Ordinarily, when dealing with offline business, it is only those that come physically to your business location that can know about your business. But if you have a website, anybody who has your website address can log in to your website and know what you do, read about your various products and services, read about how to use them, and might end up making a decision to order your product.

2. A Website Increases Your Market Reach: If you do not have a website, you can only have a limited market within that limited geographical setting where your business is located. And in today’s business world, where there are a lot of competitions for customers, it would be a minus to your business to be confined to such limited setting. But, with a website, you’ve got the entire globe as your market, making it possible to sell your products and services globally.

3. A Website Makes Your Business to be Open 24 Hours a Day and 7 Days in a Week: Your brick-and-mortar business can open by 8.00 a.m. and close by 6.00 p.m. Anybody that comes to your business location outside these hours will not be able to do business with you. Even if you create a platform to get a market reach beyond the national boundary of your business location, the differences in time zones around the world makes it impossible to be there for every one at all times, as when you might wish to make contact, would be the exact time your customers would be deep in sleep. But website is open 24 hours in a day, seven days a week and 365 days in a year, which enables people visit your website at their convenient time, learn about your business and make orders for your products and services, no matter the time of the day. Even while you are sleeping, people could be making orders on your website. This will greatly increase your turnover and grow your business.

4. A Website Offers Cheaper Means of Advertising Your Products and Services: Ordinarily, if you want to advertise your products or services, you either buy a space on a newspaper to do it or you advertise on radio, television, magazines, etc. To buy a small space or slot in any of these media is very expensive and you end up not telling your prospective customers all that you want to tell them because of the high cost of space. However, on your own website, you have ample space to tell your customers whatever you want to tell them about your products or services. You can even include pictures, video and audio clips. You can also include the directions of use and whatever information you want to relate to them. The most interesting aspect of it is that while a newspaper, radio or television advertisement will only publish/show your advert for just one or few days, coming to your own website, your advert can stay as long as you want it to last without attracting any extra charges on you.

5. A Website Offers a Cheap Source of Market Research: Market research enables you to understand what your customers like and what they don’t like. By doing more of what your customers like and minimizing or eliminating what your customers don’t like, you can grow your business very rapidly. Some tools on your website like; visitors polls, online surveys, website statistics and guest books enable you to carry out market research to improve and grow your business.

6. A Website Improves Your Company’s Credibility: People usually regard companies that have websites as credible companies. When you want to do business with foreign partners, the first thing that would convince them of your genuine disposition and seriousness is your website. Even while in their country, they can learn everything that they want to learn about your company through your website and find out how credible you are, which would then guide them make an informed decision on whether to do business with you or not.

7. Helps You Maintain Your Customers in Cases of Relocation: Most businesses that relocate their brick and mortar addresses usually witness a temporary crash in their revenue because their current customers may not find the new location convenient for them. This may last until they make more customers in their new location to replace the ones that left. However, if you have a website, you simply make it known to all your customers and those who find your new location inconvenient, can order through the website. This will greatly reduce the drop in revenue that occurs with loss of customers due to relocation.

8. A Website Offers Two-Way Communication Marketing: One good thing about a well designed website is that there is room for two-way communication using a contact form. Visitors simply fill in their names, email addresses and their requests and click the ‘Submit’ button to send across their message in form of request, question etc. Often times, while the visitor is sending message across, the admin may be online at the same time to grant an instant reply, which gets to the visitor immediately, without him the owner of the website going through the rigours exercise of opening his email box in order to reply the message. This two-way communication helps the prospective buyer to clear any doubts he may have about the product or service before buying.

9. A Website Helps You to Showcase Your Expertise and Get More Customers: People like doing business with those that are experts in their own fields. A website gives you a platform to showcase your expertise in writing quality contents in your area of business and publish them on your own website. When your prospective clients see these useful and quality articles, they would acknowledge that you are a master in that field and would want to do business with you. Other websites can also link to your articles thereby bringing more customers to your website and making your business to grow rapidly.

10. A Website is Very Convenient for Your Customers: In these days of traffic hold up, busy schedules, etc., it is more convenient for people, even those living within the same geographical location with your business office location, to order from your website instead of driving to your physical store. Moreover, many customers feel that when they go to a shop, they may be pressured to buy things that they don’t need by smart salesmen. They therefore prefer to buy from a website where they take their purchase decisions by themselves and not to be influenced these salesmen. When you have a website and make it known to your customers, you will find out that many of your customers will be ordering through your website.

11. A Well Designed Website Delivers Superb Sales Messages to Every Prospect: When you send out salesmen to the field, definitely all you have would be a mixture of good and bad salesmen. The bad ones among them may be both unconvincing and irritating in their delivery of sales messages to potential buyers. The daunting consequence of that would be a huge decrease in turnover and customer base building. However, when you have a well designed website with excellent sales messages, every prospect gets the same superb sales message thereby converting many prospects to real time customers.

12. A Website Helps You to Build a Contact List of Prospects and Customers: It is common knowledge that some prospects do not buy in their first contact with your product or service. You need to contact them a couple of times for them to be ready and comfortable with buying your product or service. A well-designed website enables you to build a contact list for your prospects and customers. This will enable them to buy from you when they are ready. Also it helps to keep your business fresh in the minds of your previous customers so that they can make repeated purchases from your business.

13. A Website Helps You to Beat Your Competitors: When you have a website and your competitor does not have, it enables you to beat him to it in obtaining new customers. Even when your competitor has a website and yours have a richer content and more powerful sales message, you tend to attract more customers and beat him on the game.

14. Appear Bigger than You Really Are: Do you know that even as a small scale business owner, you can use a website to make your business appear bigger than it is in real term. When you have a well designed website, foreign partners will imagine that you are very big and want to get affiliated with your business.

15. A Website Creates a Huge Return Value for Your Business: With a well-designed business website, being hosted by a trusted name in the game, you’ve got to have a good return on investment. In fact, from every side of the argument, you earn more when your business is online than in the offline situation. Do you notice for example, how an e-book of few pages might be sold for say, $20 (about N4600), and people are willing to buy it because of its quality content. But the same book, when sold offline as a hard copy, might not attract sales if the price goes beyond $4 (N920 equivalent). That is an instance to show you the return potential in getting your business online, by creating a quality website. Others are already making it; you too will make it online. Happy reading…

10 Temperamental Questions To Ask Before Fixing Your Team

In every organisation, one of the great challenges facing the average manager is the ability and intuition required to harness the various potentials of the individual employees of the company to achieve the ultimate organisational goals and objectives. This has become one of the hardest nuts to crack for many corporate managers.  Managing individual skills in an organisation is akin to the work of a football coach, who only succeeds with the individual talents of the players at his disposal, when he can tactically and technically fix his team in such a way that those individual skills would complement one another in a proper game selection to achieve team success. Individual skills never win a championship; it is team work that does it.

And one of the things that would help the organisational manager to understand his team members very well, so as to rightly fix them to achieve desired result, is to identify their basic temperaments, especially as it relates to the vital areas of the organisation. We have the four basic temperaments in Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic and Phlegmatic.  Let me show you what to expect from each of these temperaments, and then the choice would be yours to make in fixing them

1.     Learning under a tutor: You can decide to organise a seminar or workshop for your newly-employed and watch how each learn under a tutor. The Sanguine is the talkative type, who would want to laugh, talk and discuss with the next fellow what the speaker has just said, that he would not catch the next sentence. Be sure his note would not be complete. The Choleric is the troublesome type, not taking note, but busy quarrelling with the Sanguine of disturbing everybody with his crackling laugh. He may also accuse the Melancholy of claiming to know more than every other. The Melancholic is the thoughtful type; he is the one that pays more attention, writes in details, and would be ready to repeat all that the speaker has said after all; he has got a retentive memory and attentive spirit. The Phlegmatic is so timid he never asks questions, as he is not also interested.

2.     Obeying instructions: Be sure that each of these temperaments can flout your instruction as a boss; but understanding why each of them fails to keep to the exact instruction would help you identify your men. When the sanguine fails to keep to instruction, it’s because of indiscipline- he simply forgot it while he was busy talking and jesting. The choleric fails to keep to instruction out of incorrigibility- he is naturally stubborn and insubordinate, and would always want to do things his way. The melancholic fails in this area out of ingenuity. When he feels there’s a better way to do it, he might shelve the exact instruction given by the boss; to do what he feels is the right and best thing to do at the moment. The phlegmatic fails here out of indolence. He is such a lazy bunch, that he cannot stress himself to keep what he perceives as a hard line.

3.     Sales Rep/Customer Care Service: In this area, the sanguine is the sociable type-the best hand in this area, of course the reason why many of your customers and clients keep calling. The choleric is the strict type-so strict that no customer wants to meet him the second time. The melancholic is the serious type- he loves the people and would be ready to show interest, but too preoccupied with the business at hand, that he would never go the sanguine extent. The phlegmatic is the sluggish type. Employing him in this area is to do the work yourself.

4.     Training others:  What would you expect if you’re to appoint one of them as a team captain to train others? The sanguine is inconsistent- he would never follow through because of his personal life of indiscipline; he would be the first to break the rule. The choleric is intolerant-he might crush others while doing this as he has no room for tolerating others’ inadequacies. The melancholic, being ‘Mr Perfect’, is impatient with slow learners. His assessment level of others, as well as himself is so high. The phlegmatic is indifferent-it is none of his business whether the people learn or not.

5.     Keeping to organisational standards and principles: The sanguine is compromising-he hardly keeps to standards and principles; better count him out here. The choleric, the moment he believes in it, courageously move on with it, irrespective of whatever opposition that might come from colleagues or external forces. The melancholic is careful in this regard- he doesn’t want to fail at any end-he would not want to destroy the age-long standard of the organisation; at the same time, he would not want to sacrifice the innovative potentials on the altar of tradition. This makes him indecisive at times. The phlegmatic here is conventional-to him, let the status quo remain; he keeps to it.

6.     Team membership drive: You need a team and not individual experts! However, there are factors that drive each of these basic temperaments to flow as a committed team member. For the sanguine, it ego- he only enjoy to be in a team where he finds it easy to show his ego; he loves the ‘fun way’. The choleric can only be a committed team member if only he is in the executive class; he loves things being done ‘my way’. The melancholy loves ethics, and where ethics is thrown into the bin, he ceases to be a committed team member, and then resort to criticism and withdrawal; he loves the ‘right way’. The phlegmatic is the easy going member of a team, and would remain committed to the team, as long as there is no pressure on him to step it up. He loves the ‘easy way’.

7.     Self-life interest: Every man has got a self-life interest that drives him. For the sanguine, it is self-exaltation-he loves to talk about his achievements and greatness. The choleric has got a self-sufficient interest-this makes him to be proud and self-independent; he doesn’t feel he needs others to make it in life. The melancholic is self-sacrificing-sometimes to the detriment of his own life and family. The greatest humanitarian services the world over are undertaken by melancholic. The phlegmatic is self-starving-in spite of his financial position, he might still make do with an old Peugeot 404 and a two-room apartment; and it doesn’t move him.

8.     Power of control: If you give each of them power, how do you expect them to get others to subordinate to them? The sanguine employs his natural power of influence to carry others along; and they gladly follow him. The choleric employs the power of intimidation-to him, if you handle them with a kid’s glove, you’ve lost your authority as a leader; and the people fearfully follow him. The melancholic employs the power of involvement to carry his people along-he never asks them to go the way, without first going it; and with that, they respectfully follow him. The phlegmatic employ the power of indifference-he allows every one to do as he pleases, at least to allow him enjoy his peace- with this attitude; he has more sycophant followers than others, as they sarcastically follow him.

9.     Leadership trait: The sanguine as leader cooperates freely with his people- to him; he doesn’t lose anything for coming so low. The choleric controls from top- no rival, no objection; his instructions are law. The melancholic consecrates to the core. He pays higher price in leadership than others combined. He labours more than the people he is leading; and he finds joy doing just that. The phlegmatic condescends authority to those under him; that is why it is very easy for cabals to take over the government of a phlegmatic in a very subtle way; after all, he is not too interested in power and position.

10.                        Ultimate goal: Each of your man in the team has an ultimate goal; get it. For the sanguine, it is popularity; give it to him, and he is satisfied. For the choleric, it is power; until he gets it, he is not satisfied. For the melancholic, it is perfection; without this, he is happy, he is not satisfied. For the phlegmatic, it is peace; anything that guarantees peace appeals to him, even in compromise. 

8 Reasons Why Blogger Is A Better Platform For A Newbie

There are many free blogging platforms today, which every newbie can take advantage of, and then move on the higher lane. However, there are special qualities and features that make the Google Blogger the best option for every newbie blogger. Here we go:

1.      Easy to set up: Setting up a Blogger account is very easy and less time consuming. In fact, with a personal Gmail Account already, you would not spend up to 10 minutes to set up your Blogger account. Remember, Blogger is owned by Google.

2.      Easy to Use and Maintain: Blogger is so user-friendly that the moment you are done with setting up your account, you wouldn’t need an expert to teach you how to post and publish your blog, as you can start posting immediately. Moreover, you can add new pages and post. Besides, it is very easy to switch to different designs using any of the given templates and layouts.

3.      Quality Feature Support System: You don’t need a technical background to run your blogger account, as Blogger supports almost all features that a simple blog should have. If you have an account with Blogger, then you do not need to crack your brain to maintain a quality feature setup, as Blogger supports many templates, and you can use different layouts to customize these templates. Think of some great and wonderful gadgets like news, weather reports, currency converter, videos, slideshow, search box etc, which are free features Blogger adds to your account. You can place these gadgets wherever you want them in your blog by changing their positions, by customizing layouts. If you smartly arrange these gadgets, you will succeed in creating a good blog without much stress.

4.      Choice for a Personalized Domain Name: Usually, the default domain name with Blogger account is like this, “yourblogname.blogspot.com”. However, Blogger gives you the choice to have your own domain name for just $10 per year, and connect your blogger account with your personalized domain. The biggest advantage of this is that you do not need to bother about hosting cost.

5.      Easier making money with Google AdSense: For the fact that Blogger and AdSense are owned by the same company- Google, it becomes a lot easier to integrate Google AdSense in your blogger account. So to earn as a blogger with AdSense, Blogger is always the best option as it gives you, by default, option of AdSense directly from your blog and after activation of AdSense, you can show ads and make money even  as a newbie blogger.

6.      Making money through other platforms: Having set up your blogger account, you’ve got an opportunity to earn through other platforms, aside Google AdSense. You can earn by promoting Affiliate products in your blog posts. Think of some quality Affiliate programs such as Amazon Affiliate, Clickbank, Commission Junction, just to mention but a few.

7.      Search Engine Presence: Come to think of it- Google, the number one Search Engine platform doubling as your host on Blogger. It makes it easy for every blog post on Blogger to command a preferential presence on Google and other Search Engine platforms, provided you tag your blog posts with relevant and quality keywords.

8.      Uploading Videos from Your Computer: As against WordPress, which is another wonderful blogging platform, it is only Blogger that makes it easier for a user to upload videos from his/ her computer, something very many other platforms find difficult to do.

You can launch into the blogging world today. Just go to blogger.com and sign up.