Andrea

Usually there is up to €2500 available, the voucher offers 50% of the total work done. To assist businesses in their response to the COVID-19 situation, the percentage that the LEO require from the business has been reduced to 10%. This means that you can apply for up to €2500 towards a project with a value of €2750.

In addition, the rules have changed to allow a business who has already availed of the Trading Online Voucher in the past to apply for it a second time. This gives businesses the option to add to an existing online offering or to use online advertising to promote their business.

This is a very welcome relief for businesses at the minute, many of our clients have received this voucher in the past and it has been of significant benefit in their business.

If you would like to discuss your options with regard to trading online, please contact me and I will help in any way I can.

The trick is to know what you are trying to achieve BEFORE you ask for input.

If you know where you are trying to go, if you have a clear idea of what you are aiming for, then any advice you receive is filtered through that to naturally give you the input that is valuable, useful and productive. This filter automatically removes the “fluff” – well-intentioned advice that doesn’t serve you in helping to move forward.

This applies to most of the things we do but I feel like it is particularly relevant in business. I know my family weren’t 100% convinced by the idea of me setting up my own business. They are supportive and 100% behind me in what I’m doing but there was a wariness about the uncertainty of working for yourself, for various reasons. Knowing that I wanted to work for myself and knowing both that there was that uncertainty and where it came from helped me to take the advice without letting it colour things for me or discourage me from going ahead with Coppertops.

It is also something we see all the time with building websites. We work with our clients to build what they need based on a combination of their input and our expertise. We work from the bigger elements down to the finer details to fine-tune a website that will work for their needs. Then, around the time of launch, they naturally show their new site to friends and family and ask for advice. With very mixed results!

Constructive criticism is a necessary part of building anything

This advice can be priceless, and constructive, allowing us to pick up on details that were missed by us being too close to the build (we would usually pick up on most of these at the testing phase anyway, but more feedback is a good thing).

Don’t let input from others detract from what you were aiming for in the first place

It can also be destructive. For example, if there is a lack of awareness of why we have done things in a particular way, or of things that may be colouring the advice being given. This is not to question the motive of the advice, it is pretty much always given with the best of intentions, but great intentions don’t guarantee useful input.

In this case, we can end up making changes just because someone has suggested that they may be a good idea – without taking into account where they fit in with the overall plan, if at all. Worse again we can end up switching between a number of different options based on input from a series of people who naturally each have their own opinion and taste.

Chopping and changing a website at this stage can have a detrimental effect on the build, both functionally and from a design point of view.

Remember it is YOUR website!

This simply cannot be overstated. For a small business, your website is a reflection of you. People are going to decide whether they would like to do business with you based on the impression they get from your website. That impression should match the one they would get from dealing with you in person. The text on your website should have your voice, the design should be a reflection of who you are and what your business represents. Advice from family and friends definitely has a place in building this, but it cannot be assumed that they understand how to best represent your business online.

The upshot: before you ask for advice get really clear on what you want and filter any advice that is generously given to you through that before deciding which input is worth actioning and which you will just say thank you for before ignoring it!

Like most things in business, there are 2 key factors to using lead magnets.

Firstly, what’s in it for me? There’s no point in doing something that doesn’t benefit your business in some way. And secondly, what’s in it for my customers? Your customers will also only do something that benefits them, so you need to give them a reason to respond to what you are doing.

Lead magnets are no different, in fact in some ways they increase focus on these 2 factors. So let’s take a look at the why’s behind using this marketing tool.

What’s in it for me?

The aim of using a lead magnet is to increase your audience and (ideally) as a result to increase your customer base. Usually, this is done by increasing your audience, usually your mailing list, by asking your potential customers to subscribe to that mailing list in return for some form of a reward. The simplest lead magnets offer a free pdf download to anybody who subscribes to your list. You get a potential customer’s email address, which you can then use in your marketing campaigns, and they get a freebie.

What’s in it for my customers?

For a lead magnet to be effective you are asking someone to give you their email address in exchange for something of value to them. In the case of a pdf download, you are using some information that you have and which you think your potential customer may find useful to entice them to sign up. For them to sign up and give you their info and space in their inbox they need to feel that your offering is worthwhile.

GDPR

A hot topic at the minute and something that we all need to be aware of, you need to make sure that you are handling people’s data correctly and in accordance with the GDPR regulations.

The highlights are:

• Tell anyone who is signing up what they are signing up for, what information you are asking for, how you will store it and what you will use it (and not use it) for.
• Don’t use their information for anything other than what you have stated.
• Delete their information if they ask you to.
• Don’t contact them if they ask you not to.
• Be sure that you are in a position to provide them with any information you have stored on them if they request it.

Natural Filtering

One of the best parts about using a lead magnet (if done well) is that you narrow down those subscribing to your ideal clients. Your lead magnet should be something that is of most use to someone who you would like to work with, as that is the person who you want to sign up to your list and ultimately sell your products/services to.

Use your own experience

In order to best assess how your lead magnet may be received, reflect on your own experience with signing up to mailing lists.

What made you sign up? What did you find valuable? How much value did you need to see for you before you would give up your email address?

How to get started?

Before you get into the technical aspects of setting up a lead magnet, first figure out the tactics:

• What do you want to achieve?
• Who do you want to target?
• What information do you want to gather?
• What do you think will be of value to your target audience?

Then put together your freebie, if this is a document then pdf is the best format to use. You can usually print to pdf from most applications. This format is most widely used online for a reason!

If you already use a mailing list application, eg Mailchimp, then you can use this to set up your lead magnet. If not then you will need to figure out which application best suits your needs:

• What size is your audience?
• What size do you expect your audience to grow to?
• Do you want/need to segment your list?
• Do you want/need multiple lists?
• Are there any other features that you need when it comes to managing/marketing to your mailing list?
• Do you want/need your mailing list application to integrate with other apps – accounts, crm, your website (eg gathering email addresses from your contact form)?
• Do you want your lead magnet to work on your website, on social media, on a landing page, on a web form?

Once you have planned your lead magnet based on these points, you are ready to start building your lead magnet, your list and your customer base!

So often we talk to business owners who complain about difficulties they have with their website, their email system, their file storage or even their calendar system. All of these are things that should be EASY and should just WORK. We shouldn’t have to think about how email works, it should be something that sorts itself out in the background and updates us when we need to pay attention to something. Our website should be something we can update and change on a regular basis, an updated website is crucial to most business as it is most likely to find us new customers. None of this should be a headache.

Website

If you are happy to update your own website, make sure that it is built using a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress so that you have access to the back end and are able to change any of the text on your website.

Always make sure that you are given the access that you need when your site is launched and that you know where all of the content for your site is in order to update it. Some websites built using WordPress are built in a confusing way which can make it difficult to find the editor for some of the text on your site. Your developer should show you where everything is if you are going to be updating it.

The other alternative, of course, is to pay your web developer to do all of this for you. This can actually prove to be more cost-effective, as it saves you taking the time out of your business to make those changes. Most web developers will offer a package deal for carrying out changes on an ongoing basis.

Email

When we set up in business, we tried out almost every possible option for our email setup. We tried forwarding to a free Gmail account, which is so fiddly and risks sending an email with @gmail.com instead of your domain which is very unprofessional. We tried webmail on our own hosting, which was an improvement but accessing email on new devices was extremely awkward to set up. We tried a few other things I can’t even remember!

Then we tried G Suite – or Google Apps as it was! We honestly haven’t looked back, it is so simple, so easy to use and it just… works! We don’t think about it anymore, we know it is reliable and will continue to work for us. When we got new devices we simply had to log into a google account to access all of our work emails.

File Storage

I’m not sure why anyone would NOT use the cloud at this stage, I strongly believe if you try it you won’t go back.

Everything we do is stored on Google Drive. This means that we can open any of the documents we are working on anywhere – on another computer, on a tablet, on a phone – and see the most recent saved changes.

We can also both work on a spreadsheet or a document at the same time in a browser, we can see what changes we are each making in real time. Paired with video chat on Google Hangouts or similar, this has saved us hours in back and forth exchanges over preparing documents.

Google Drive also makes it easy to share files with other people, or even folders. We often share a folder with a client so we can make files available to them easily and they can easily send us information.

In summary…

As I said, your business systems shouldn’t be something that you are always thinking about or trying to figure out how to use them or if they will work at all.

They should tick away in the background, forgotten about but be doing their job so that you can do yours.

We can help!

For a simple, fast solution check out our offer for a One Page website with G Suite. If you need something more, or if you prefer to talk to us about what you need, please contact us.

There are more and more options available to those of us who need a website, the newest options promise an “easy” process with great results. But what is the truth? Should you use Wix or Squarespace instead of hiring a professional web developer?

The truth is that most businesses will end up hiring a professional at some point. This can be hard to imagine when we start out, often with low funds and a small business that we can’t imagine growing into an empire. We have seen it for ourselves, though, over and over, where people have signed up with Wix thinking it’ll “do the job” only to find their business grows and they outgrow the platform.

On the other hand, we entirely understand what it is like to be at the point where you struggle to justify the cost of a fully professionally built website just to get your name out there. We get it, honestly, we’ve been there. So we are not going to say that you shouldn’t go this route, but we are going to give you some pointers to make sure you don’t run into the issues that our clients have run into over the years.

Do you own your stuff?

This is so important and so often overlooked when people sign up for a new website with one of these providers. One of the worst experiences we had was where a client built a website with vistaprint, who then charged a significant admin fee to give them back their domain!

Check the fine print, make sure your stuff belongs to you and that there aren’t any catches.

Can you make a quick getaway?

Don’t assume that signing up for wix or square space means you will stay with them indefinitely. There’s a reason most businesses have their site built on WordPress and even within the set of people who sign up for the alternatives most migrate to WordPress at some point.

Some examples:

If you sign up with VistaPrint they will lock you in and try to keep you.

If you sign up with Wix there is no tool to migrate to any other platform.

If you sign up with Squarespace they provide a tool to migrate to WordPress when you are ready to upscale. This means you can export all of your content directly to a WordPress site, which will significantly reduce the time and financial cost of the move.

Does it make your site slow and clunky?

Some methods of building a website are better than others. Your customers will thank you for a fast site, Google will reward you for a site that loads fast. So a light and speedy site is a must. Some website building tools add lots of unnecessary “bloat” to your site, making it heavy and slow. With WordPress this can be avoided easily, assuming you know what you are doing!

Are there hidden costs?

WordPress costs as much as a domain and some hosting, the actual platform is open source and free. Most functionality can be added for free. We would, naturally, recommend hiring an expert to help with your build but it is possible to build a reasonably good website with WordPress as a complete amateur.

With most of the website building tools out there, they offer “free” or cheap until you need extra functionality. For example, most charge extra to have your website load at your own domain, which is essential for a business site.

Check out ALL the costs before committing to a platform, don’t be caught out by unexpected costs.

Can you get help when you need it?

Because WordPress is open source, free, and used by the vast majority of websites in the world there is almost too much information, resource and support available on using it.

The WordPress forums themselves are a great source of information, but there are also lots of other people online happy to share their expertise and often for free.

With some of the other options, you will be limited to the proprietary support. Web developers will be unlikely to have used Wix very much so you will be restricted to the help available from Wix. Which means that if you are unable to resolve an issue yourself you may find yourself “stuck”. On the other hand, if you use WordPress to build a site and run into problems you will be able to quite easily find a developer who can help you fix them.

So what do we recommend?

We are asking you to think carefully about your decision when building your first website, bear in mind the points above and choose wisely.

Our recommendation would be WordPress, if you can stretch to paying for hosting. If you are not at that point just yet we would suggest you check out Squarespace as it provides assistance for the natural evolution to WordPress in the future.

But first, contact us and see if a Coppertops website is as expensive as you think. We make sure our websites are optimised to promote and sell your business, so we provide more than simply the technical knowledge involved in web development. And handing this task over to us will mean you can focus on building your business and creating that empire.

In September, Google is making a significant change to how it notifies users about the security of the sites they are visiting in its Chrome browser.

So what’s the current situation?

• Sites which are correctly using an SSL cert (these sites are displayed using HTTPS rather than HTTP) get a green lock and a “Secure” notice in the address bar
• Sites which are not set up with an SSL cert do not have any notice in this space
• Sites which have an SSL cert which is incorrectly configured will be displayed with a warning

Next month, Google will flip all of this on its head (as they like to do!). Once their change is in place, users are going to potentially become more aware of whether your site is seen as secure by Google or not.

• Sites which are still using http, or sites using https which is not correctly set up, will display a red warning with an exclamation mark
• Sites which are securely set up with https will initially display a grey lock icon and eventually no icon at all

What is the reason for the change?

Google claims that users should be able to assume that the web is safe, by default, and that their attention should be drawn to sites where there is a doubt about how secure it is.

The reaction to the change has been mixed, with many feeling that a green icon showing when a site is secure is a nice reassurance for users, but Google seems set on making the change to its browser so users will have little choice but to adjust to the new setup.

What does this mean for my website?

Well, the obvious thing is that you must make sure that your website has an SSL cert, is set to load as https by default and is correctly set up so the browser is showing no errors in terms of security.

Coppertops managed sites are set up with an SSL cert on https by default and have been checked to ensure that there will be no errors displayed in the browser.