Increase your converstion rate by qualifying your customers

It is common for businesses to field a host of questions from our prospects who might be:

  • evaluating whether we are the best person for the job
  • looking for an inappropriate solution to their problem
  • doing background research with no intention to purchase

These enquiries are not genuine propects: enquiries such as these which do not lead to sales take time away from your engagement with customers who want to pay you.

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Hosting your website

There are a multitude of very similar sounding plans available online, so once you’ve found a few hosts which meet your basic requirements, the choice comes down to reliability and expense.  Here as elsewhere it is very true that ‘you get what you pay for’.  That is to say that if you are creating a mission critical website which absolutely must be available without fail, you should handball this whole process to your IT department / webdesigner / pet geek.  If you want to get the ball rolling without the associated (significant) expense, read on. Read More »

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Overview of building a website

What do I need to get my own website?

Essentially, you’ll need:

  • A domain name – this is the equivalent of your business name online.  It is the link that users type in to their browser to visit your site, also called a URL (Universal Resource Locator)
  • A web host – To make your website available 24 hours a day, it needs to be hosted on a commercial server with a reliable connection to the net.  You might think of it as the stable which houses your thoroughbred website!

These two items are ongoing expenses which are required to make your site available to your customers.  Once you’ve got these covered, you’ll also need… Read More »

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Microfinance – another way of spreading the love

Kiva Logo

Kiva is a non-profit organisation which facilitate micro loans to entrepreneurs all over the world. It inspires me each time I revisit the site and its reports. I was moved again today to support an internet cafe in Peru.. my US$25 contribution contributes the mere $625 Mr Yuri requires to get his business off the ground. Read More »

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Custom Admin Branding: code update

I love the WordPress plugin Custom Admin Branding by Josh Byers..  who doesn’t love seeing their shiny, official name at the top of their admin panel?

I noticed, though, that when when I updated the plugin to 1.3.5, my custom files were overwritten.. Doh!  It defeats the purpose of auto-update if we have to resurrect our settings afterwards, clearly, but every journey progresses one step at a time, and I’ve been rapt to have such a great plugin, complete with annotated photoshop templates. Read More »

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