Small Business Solutions

Making your business as efficient as possible today inevitably involves technological innovation as well as bringing in the skilled staff that you need, when you need them. It may seem like a banal point, but finding the optimal telephone system for your business is a pivotally important consideration – you really don’t want potential customers finding themselves hitting a constantly engaged line. But there are other solutions to boost your business, too – like getting yourself an attractively designed website, and hiring skilled staff temporarily for specific projects.

Choosing a small business telephone system

A good starting point is working out how many handsets your outfit is going to need: just count up the number of staff you have who need regular or constant access to a telephone. If you employ six people and three need regular access while the other three need constant access, you’ll need a system capable of operating six phones. That way, there’ll virtually always be a couple spare for less frequent calls. You probably need to consider operating with at least two and possibly three lines to begin with – but if customers start griping that they’re having to wait a long time before their call is answered, it’s time to add another line. Also, make sure that your new system contains integrated voicemail – without it, handling remaining messages becomes a real headache.

Getting the web design right

E-commerce is taking off and if you want to benefit from the bounties it can yield, you really need to get web design right. Boring, badly designed pages, over-congested pages or pages that take an age to load are a real turn-off. Always approach a number of web design agencies to compare prices and find what promises they make (ask for evidence to back up their claims). Hunt around for testimonials and don’t be shy about asking for them if you can’t find any. You should also look at other websites the company has built before committing. A useful tip when you’re doing this is to check the source code of your prospective designer’s previous work – this is the text that search engine spiders crawl over for relevant information. Just slide your mouse over the web-page, right click and choose “view source” from the drop-down menu. There should be clear, readable sequences of text in the code and it should clearly belong to the website you’re looking at, not a completely different one! One final point – check the spelling in the webpages you’re reviewing. Nothing puts customers off more than slapdash presentation, and spelling howlers definitely fall into this category. When you’re ready to make a choice, make sure you’ve done your own homework – have plenty of good copy available for inclusion on your site, and make sure you’re clear about what your market advantage is. Customers need to know what your unique selling point is - that’s how you convert visitors into customers.

Use an umbrella solution whenever you can

You don’t have to employ permanent staff to do specific, focused pieces of work; an umbrella solution is optimal when you need a skilled IT engineer, for example, to set up a new IT system and come back every so often to maintain and service it. A good umbrella company will supply highly skilled personnel like this on a short-term contract, so you get what you need without all the overheads associated with permanent staff (sick pay, holiday pay, etc).