How to Make Your Store More Appealing

Mar 17, 2020

You’d hope that if you could just pick the best items for sale, then people would come to your store. Alas, that’s not necessarily the case. While customers do, of course, want to buy the best items, they also want their visit to a store to be an overall enjoyable experience. As such, one of the best ways that store owners can help to boost their business is to work on making their shop more appealing. This will help to catch the eye of passersby, and also make things pleasant for your existing customers. We take a look at a few useful ways to achieve this goal below.

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Clean Spaces

A customer isn’t going to like being in your store if they can see that you don’t treat it with respect. If you don’t respect your store, then why would anyone else? While many store owners are adept at keeping the inside of their store clean, they’re sometimes not quite as good at keeping the outside of their store clean. Keep in mind that this is the first thing that people passing by will see of your store. Sweep and mop the floor outside of your store, and ensure that there’s no trash on the ground too.

Guiding the Way 

People can often just walk around with their head down, and as such, one of the best ways to get people to pay attention to your store is to add signs that will get their attention. Have you ever noticed a sign that’s been placed in the street? Of course you have, they’re hard to ignore. Look at adding one in front of your store, ideally with a funny slogan or listing your latest deals, and see just how many people come into your store. You’ll find that you can get a lot more visitors just by giving people a gentle nudge into your shop.

A Sophisticated Look

You can tell a lot by the look of a building. If it’s in bad shape, then you won’t hold out too much hope for the insides of the building. Even if the interior is just fine, people do make judgments, and may never make it in there. If the outside of the building looks sophisticated and attractive, however, then the situation will be much different: people’s attention will be caught for all the right reasons. One smart way to do this is to add ledgestone to the exterior of your building. It’ll help to give it a rugged and sophisticated look. 

Window Dressing

If you want to get people into your store, then look at showing them what you have to offer! A well put-together window display really can make a difference. Plus, they can be fun to design. You’ll want to focus on showcasing your best products, and also mix up the look every month or so. Get it right, and you’ll find that you have many more people stopping as they walk past to take a look at what you have. 

Doubling Up: Things You Need More Than One Copy Of

Mar 17, 2020

Imagine you have just signed a contract that puts your business in a lucrative position. You’re in a strong healthy B2B relationship and it seems like you have started a road to a long partnership. However, a couple of weeks later you begin seeing signs that the other party isn’t living up to their obligations. You’re about to say something to them but you can’t find your contract. In the commotion of a fantastic deal, the virtual copy of the contract was lost. It was mistakenly deleted or lost due to a hardware malfunction. Now you wish you had doubled up and saved the contract somewhere else, where employees and outside forces could not get to it. Doubling up sounds simple, but there is a concerted way to do it right and procedures which you should follow whenever saving and or accessing your second copy.

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A four-way approach

Whatever kind of important document you have, you should make three copies of it, not two. First, the copy which you will use day to day can be saved on your local network. This will allow employees to reference it if they need to and it will get them familiar with what they can and cannot do with regards to the contract terms and conditions. The second copy should be on your personal hardware, i.e. a hard drive which you keep at home or in your office. It’s hardly ever used but when plugged in, it gives you access to your most important documents. The third copy should be a physical hard copy, which again, you either keep at home or in your office. The final copy should be in a data backup service. You should visit quicktech.ca which provides exactly this kind of service, using off-site hosting servers.

What needs to be protected?

‘Important document’ could be anything as it’s a pretty subjective term. However, the general consensus for what constitutes an important document is quite simple. A contract of any kind automatically qualifies. Emails with threats of physical or legal action must be saved in case you need to refer back to them in the future. Annual financial reports are definitely high up on the list of important documents, as they pretty much explain the health of your business. Employee profiles need protection as they will often come with medical record history. Coercive behavior from an individual, company, regulating body or an authority figure, trying to get you involved in a scam is something you will want firm proof of before you head to the police. If you have made a large purchase, you’ll want to save your invoice just in case you want a refund or proof of purchase.

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Clipboards and ties

You will want to make multiple copies of your taxes as a business, as you cannot rely on the government to keep a hold of your taxes when filed. It’s not uncommon for tax papers to get lost and then the IRS believes you’re trying to hide something. You can always resend them as soon as possible even if one saving method is not active.

Doubling up is in your best interest as a business. For certain key documents, you need extra protection.

Keeping Organized as an Entrepreneur

Mar 16, 2020

As an Entrepreneur, it can sometimes be difficult to keep every element of it running in an organized fashion and also keep your sanity. As much as running your own business can be hugely rewarding, it also requires a lot of work, and a lot of arms to keep the ship headed in the right direction! So, here are a few tips and tricks and help you keep the ship leveled as you steer your company towards stability and then growth!

An Organised Office is an Organised Mind!

Your workspace is hugely important when it comes to working efficiently. A messy office will promote a messy mind, and a messy mind cannot run a business efficiently! Organize the office. Make it work for you. Create a workflow that really helps you work efficiently, as everyone has a different method of how they work. So, with this in mind, go into your office next time, and really explore how even just a small change, will impact how you work within it.

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Plan Social Media Campaigns in Advance

This is another tip that will really help you in the long term. If you have a lot of social media campaigns or a bug campaign, plan it in advance, schedule posts and take advantage of platforms such as Hootsuite and others to plan your campaigns. Posting at the time of release all the time is one, a headache and a lot of work for you to do. Also, second, it can look very unprofessional with many different posts posted randomly at random times when you are free. Scheduling them means you can be in a business meeting, but your social media post can go up at peak times for your audience without you needed to lift a finger. Use technology to your advantage, it is there for the taking, so if it can make your life easier, then why not use it!

Manage Your Expenses on the Go!

One huge part of the business is managing your expenses. Why is it a huge part of the business? Firstly calculating profit, being able to remove expenses from revenue and seeing what’s leftover. Also for taxes, knowing how much taxes you will need to pay, or how much tax the taxman will need to adjust based on the expenses you have provided. You can’t expect to know all the most common IRS notices but when you are constantly on the move trying to get a business up and running or keeping it going, it’s far better to have a system in place. This is one of the biggest lessons we can all learn as far as keeping organized is concerned, but this is where we should make the most of technology. There are many different apps and platforms that can help you manage and save paper receipts. So check them out!

Keep your IT in check 

In the digital world that we live in today, having a good IT Management or IT part of the business is crucial. So keep your IT updated and running enough to sustain your business.

Go Paperless!

Something that helps you and the planet it going paperless! Most business functions if not all functions have digital alternatives that you can use that will enable you to become a paperless company.

So, hopefully, some if not all of these tips will help you run your business a little more efficiently and relieves some weight off your shoulders as a business owner!

Modernize your Start-up with the Right Tools

Mar 16, 2020

As a start-up, it is a great idea to modernize and embrace new technological breakthroughs. One reason is that it drastically reduces your workload as a business owner, and also reduce your costs in the long term. Does this sound too good to be true? Well, keep reading through this quick article and hopefully, the following points will prove this point to be true!

Apps and Mobile Tech

One way you can help enhance your business is by finding the right apps and using them in the different areas of your business. Many functions of a business can be helped or assisted with an app. Invoicing clients can be assisted using an app like Square. Business and project workflow can be shown visually using an app like Trello. You can keep track of expenses and the receipts that go with those expenses using an app like Expensify. The world is your oyster when it comes to mobile apps and using them to help you manage the different factions of your business.

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Cloud Services

Something that a start-up has to manage a lot is traveling. But, as they are traveling they still have a lot of work to complete. So, when it comes to managing your work, investing time and a little money into putting your work into the cloud can really benefit you, with time and with flexibility. Having your work stored in the cloud enables you to work wherever you need to be, and also enables you to keep your data safe. 

However, even cloud data has to be secured in a world of hacking and data-stealing, so to get some help with securing your cloud business data and other IT solutions visit this website. That is the only downside to using cloud solutions as a way to store your data, as sensitive data can be susceptible to hacking from external people, so it is always wise to keep a back up somewhere of all your data, just to be sure that its contents are safe.

Make Your Business Paperless

This is not only a good idea for the planet, but it is a good idea for you too! By going paperless, you enable the business to have a lot less paperwork and to more efficiently manage the information and forms needed to run your business. You save the planet and you also save yourself a lot of time to dedicate to other more exciting and more important things within your business. However, remember that some things will need to stay on paper, like some legal documents and others, but most things in a business thanks to tech can now become paperless.

Remote Working

Last but not least, all of the above allow you to work remotely. You can work from your bed, you can work on a plane. You can work on the train going into the office. Thanks to clouds services and mobile apps and paperless solutions, you can take your business wherever you go, and never worry about leaving something in the office. Just open your computer or phone, log in, and voila, your business as your fingertips!