How To Manage Your Business’s Inventory In Rented Storage

How To Manage Your Business’s Inventory In Rented Storage

Successful inventory management is vital for every business to avoid waste and losses, and one option available to assist with those aims is to rent secure Perth storage units from a commercial storage facility. By getting a proper inventory management system in place with the help of secure storage units, you will avoid unnecessary purchase orders, expired excess stock, and wasted working hours trying to deal with all those issues.

In this blog post, we will take a more detailed look at why effective stock management is vital and, specifically, how to use a secure storage facility as an integral part of what will make implementing your stock management easier for you.

First Steps

The first step is to select a storage facility with the space available and the additional services you need that will suit the needs of your business. Look at factors such as the size of the storage unit you require, the security on-site, flexibility such as opening times, and availability of climate-controlled units if they will be required. Also, ask other business owners if they can recommend any storage facilities they may have used.

Take An Accurate Inventory Count

Before transferring your existing inventory to your storage unit, accurately count what you currently have. This will not apply if you have no inventory or are a new business and will send your first inventory purchase to your storage unit. An accurate count of what you have provides the basis to check your inventory levels more easily and get an ongoing accurate inventory count once your stock is stored in your storage unit.

The Pros And Cons Of Leasing Office Furniture Versus Buying Office Furniture

When acquiring commercial furniture for a business, education center, health facility, or any other organization type, you have no shortage of choices. These choices include the style, the quantity, the specific furniture items, the colors, and the amount you will spend on it all. The last of those, spending, will be influenced by many factors, especially another choice you must make…Do you lease or buy commercial office furniture?

It is a choice that will influence many things, not least what you must pay upfront for your office furniture, any ongoing payments, and the total amount you will spend. It may also make a difference to the quantity, type, and quality of the office furniture you can acquire. Investing in premium quality furniture from trusted brands including Atama, would have more benefits than buying cheap furniture from Kmart or IKEA.

Ultimately, whether you buy or lease, office furniture will come down to which options you believe is the most advantageous. Determining that will require you to look at the pros and the cons of each option. If you are wondering what these pros and cons are, wonder no more, as we have laid them all out below.

How To Recognise The Warning Signs That An Employee Has A Drug Addiction

One of the comments that can be heard when someone enters drug rehab is from someone with them, be that a loved one, a friend, or their employer, which is, “I had no idea”. Granted, if someone has a drug addiction, it is more than likely that those in their family or their circle of friends would know; however, when it comes to their employer, it is undoubtedly the case that they are often the last to know.

We say that not to suggest that employers do not care about employees who are facing up to drug problems and getting help for it. Admittedly, some do not, but thankfully, many do. Still, notwithstanding the enlightened status on helping employees, it does not necessarily mean that they are going to be able to spot that one of their employees is regularly taking drugs and may even be addicted to them.

It is only after supporting that employee by enrolling them in drug rehab that an employer might discuss this with the drug rehab staff. The reason to do so is that they do not want to be in the same situation in the future where an employee who needs help does not receive it as soon as possible because the warning signs were not picked up.

What the drug rehab facilities professionals from Sivana Rehab can outline is what to look for when determining if someone is using drugs and what warning signs are most obvious. Here are what warning signs they are likely to highlight, especially within a workplace environment.

10 Quick Tips For Employers To Promote A Supportive Approach Towards Employees With Drug Problems

If we were to examine the two extremes of employers’ views on employees who have drug problems, we would have those who would dismiss them without so much as a goodbye and those who would fully support their recovery and possibly even fund them entering drug rehabs in Perth. Thankfully, far more employers tend towards the latter attitude than the former.

We have to caveat that last statement by saying that we are not advocating that employers should let employees openly use drugs and turn a blind eye to it. Quite the reverse. Drug use serves no one other than criminal drug dealers, and so we most certainly agree the workplace is no place for drug taking.

However, it is also the case that, in our view, drug addiction should be viewed as an illness, and just as you would want someone with a heart or stomach disorder to receive the necessary treatment, then that likewise should apply to someone who is addicted to drugs.

As for how this plays out in the workplace and what the employer’s role should be, much of it will be dictated by what type of business it is and its drug policy, assuming it has one. Some businesses, due to the nature of what they do and the work done by their employees, have no option but to take a zero tolerance to drug use based on health and safety considerations and, in some cases, the law.

5 Signals Indicating Your Office Couches Need Professional Cleaning

Clear, clean windows are crucial for shops displaying goods and attracting customers. Regular window cleaning is a worthwhile investment, enticing window shoppers to enter and buy. Similarly, a stained or smelly couch for client meetings can instantly deter potential new clients.

However, if you do not have a regular couch cleaning agreement with professional upholstery cleaners, then it begs the question, at which point do you determine that your office furniture does need attention? If you do it randomly, the risk is that one or more chairs and couches get stained without you knowing about it, and horror of horrors, a client sees that stain and immediately forms a negative opinion of your business.

Far better than this scenario is to have a checklist that assists you in determining what triggers the need for you to call professional couch cleaners to take care of your upholstered furniture. As for what you have on that checklist, the best option is signs or signals, and when they occur, that tells you it is time to make that call. Here are what we consider the top five of those signals.

The Skills Required To Follow A Career In Actuarial Services

The Skills Required To Follow A Career In Actuarial Services

Have you ever considered a career in actuarial services? If instead of a “Yes” or “No” answer, your response was “What are actuarial services?” then we are sure you are not the only one. Whilst careers such as teacher, lawyer, and accountant are all well known, and the path to becoming one fairly clear, the path to becoming an Actuary is less so.

That is why we are going to go through, first, what an actuary is and the important work they do, and then we will outline the skills you need to become an actuary and to follow a successful career in actuarial services.

What Does An Actuary Do?

It stands to reason that if you are going to consider a career as an actuary, it will help to know what they do. Actuaries work within the finance sector advising upon products such as investments, insurance and pensions. Their clients can include both businesses and private individuals.

Their primary role involves the assessment of risks, and they do this by using tools such as mathematical models, statistical models, historical data, and the analysis of trends, to name but a few. By bringing these skills to the fore, an actuary can advise their clients as to the level of risks involved in a given scenario, and that allows those clients to make better informed financial decisions.

Ranking Your Home Page

5 Fundamentals Of Web Design For Small And Local Business Websites

Websites are by web designers created for businesses of all types and of all sizes. From the global giants that are household names across the world to the local dog groomer who makes the dogs in a small town of fewer than five thousand inhabitants look their best, there is a web design that suits them all.

Websites for large corporations often have no other purpose than to provide company information and to promote brand awareness of the business. Websites of smaller businesses will also include information, but many are also designed to either generate local sales or leads that the business can follow up with.

These points signify that there are specific web design features that are more suitable to some websites than others based upon the size and the needs of the business. Given that the majority of people reading this are more likely to own or manage a small or local business than they are to be a CEO of a multinational giant, we thought it best if we focus on websites for small, local businesses.

There will be many ways in which a local businesses website can be enhanced, however, there are five fundamental criteria that they must follow. This is because the visitors to their website will have different objectives than if those same visitors were to visit the website of a global company like Dell or Audi. Read on, and we will outline what those five fundamental criteria are.

5 Unusual But Effective Team Building Activities

5 Unusual But Effective Team-Building Activities

When it comes to team building activities there are many tried and trusted ones that invariably help team leaders achieve the desired results. However, if you are one of those team leaders, managers, or coaches looking for something that differs from the norm, you will be pleased to know that there are numerous unusual team-building activities.

One of the reasons that these unusual team-building activities are so popular is that, just as with activities that you might undertake with your family or friends, the more remarkable and out of the ordinary they are, the more they are enjoyed. For a team leader looking to provide activities to help build their team, if the members of that team are actually enjoying those activities, the more they will benefit from them.

The question that might be on your mind now might be ‘Exactly what are these unusual team-building activities?’. Well, for a start we going to outline 5 of them, but beyond that, a simple search online using the search term ‘team building activities’ preceded with any of ‘unusual’, ‘bizarre’, ‘unique’, ‘extraordinary’, or ‘unconventional’ is bound to provide you with loads of excellent ideas.

One thing that these activities must be to qualify as being unusual is that they must be as far removed from the normal activities that your team would normally participate in. In other words, if they are a sales team, do not use sales-related acuities or if they are a team of dancers, by all means, have physical activity, but not one which requires them to dance. Here are those 5 activities…

Axe Throwing

The bowling alley is old news so why not go to an axe-throwing centre, with lanes where your team can try to hit targets with an axe? It can be made more competitive by splitting the groups into teams, and afterwards, you can all sit and have something to eat or drink whilst discussing hits and near misses.

7 Questions To Ask Yourself To Determine If Your Landscaping Offers Are Irresistible

7 Questions To Ask Yourself To Determine If Your Landscaping Offers Are Irresistible

One of the greatest lines in, what many consider one of the greatest ever movies, is “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse”, which was spoken by Marlon Brando in The Godfather, at which point you might now be asking “What has Don Corleone this got to do with landscapers?”. Well, making offers people cannot refuse works for landscaping businesses just as well as it did for mafia mobsters, except your offers will not come with threats attached.

Instead, your offers will help make it easier for you to gain new customers to create a win-win situation where your profits increase, and you have a delighted customer who is now more than willing to write positive reviews about your landscaping business.

Now, a problem exists in that some landscapers are unsure how to create these amazing offers we refer to. So, to help them, and you if you need help too, here are seven questions to which the answers will help you create outstanding offers to attract landscaping clients.

What Do My Prospects Need?

Your offers should invariably match the needs, wants, goals, and pain points of your target audience. Research what prospective landscaping customers in your area are looking for from landscapers like from spacedesigns.com.au and for their gardens, then create your offers around those.

5 Reasons To Relocate Your Dental Practice To New Premises

5 Reasons To Relocate Your Dental Practice To New Premises

For those dentists who own the dental practice you work in, one of the main decisions that you would have to make at some point was which premises you were going to set up that business in. In the time since, your business may have changed in several ways, and that can then lead to another question as to whether your current premises are congruent with where your business is at.

We appreciate that moving premises is a significant step, and will undoubtedly cause some level of upheaval. However, for all the short-term downsides of moving, multiple positives can be realised, some quickly, and some in time. Below we have outlined five positive reasons for moving your dental practice to new premises.

It Can Reduce Outgoings And Thus Increase Profits

It is not the case that to increase profits you must always increase revenue. Profits can also be increased by reducing costs, and often one of the ways to do so is moving to a new location. Dentists can find themselves in premises where the rent and ancillary costs are extremely higher and continue to increase. If a landlord is not willing to reduce rent then it can often be the most sensible step to move to other premises where rent and cost are much lower.

5 Signs That Your Business’s Commercial Lift Needs Refurbishing Or Replaced

5 Signs That Your Business’s Commercial Lift Needs Refurbishing Or Replaced

When you are ultimately responsible for the welfare and safety of everyone who enters your business premises, it certainly pays for you to be vigilant. That should also include you encouraging your staff and anyone who enters your building to report anything which they feel is unsafe or in need of attention.

One part of your building where what we have just outlined will be most crucial is your commercial lift or lifts if you have more than one. Whilst commercial lifts are by design extremely safe, that safety is compromised if regular maintenance is not undertaken, or repairs and refurbishments do not take place when the condition of your lift warrants them.

The significance of that last paragraph should not be underestimated, and we are sure most business owners do not shirk their responsibilities concerning safety. However, where the intentions may be good, there could be a lack of knowledge regarding knowing what signs to look for that would suggest your commercial lift requires refurbishment, or in extreme cases, needs some or all of it to be replaced altogether. Here are 5 of those signals.

5 Steps To Ensure You Choose The Right Investment Or Financial Planner

5 Steps To Ensure You Choose The Right Investment Or Financial Planner

As you have built and continue to run your business, we are sure you have sought advice and guidance from many professionals relating to your business and its finances such as your accountant or commercial lawyer. That same principle applies when it is your personal finances that are being considered and this is where you may wish to meet with investors or financial planners.

To clarify the difference is not easy as the two roles often overlap and you will even find two people advising on the same financial matters, with the first company designating them as a financial planner, and the second company calling theirs an investment planner.

In most cases, an investment planner is someone who, unsurprisingly, is an expert on investments, and a financial planner is an expert in several areas of personal finance, including investment planning. However, regardless of their job title, when choosing a financial or investment planner process of making the correct choice is identical in each case. For brevity and clarity, we will use the term ‘financial planner’ to represent both.

5 Essential Functions A Dentist’s Website Must Perform To Enhance Their Business

5 Essential Functions A Dentist’s Website Must Perform To Enhance Their Business

In an age where the vast majority of people use the internet to search for products and services, all dentists must have a website. Anyone searching for a dentist in their local area, Bassendean dentist for example, will doubtless see most of them have a website of some kind, but the more pertinent question should be whether any of those websites benefit the dental practice it represents.

This follows from the fact that merely having a website online is pointless if it achieves nothing. We guarantee that you could check over 100 dental practice websites and it would be a good day if any more than 20% of them tick every box in the list of functions a website should have.

Note that whilst a website looking great is an advantage, too many of them focus on its appearance, rather than it doing anything to promote the dental business including encouraging potential patients to get in touch. To clarify what a website should achieve, here are five basic functions every dental practice’s website should fulfil.

A Website Must Have Goals

One of the biggest website design mistakes is that it has no specific goals, and its purpose for existing has not been identified. A dental practice’s website can have many functions such as expounding its impressive record of patient satisfaction, promoting special treatments, or simply getting prospective patients to call to register.

Pros And Cons Of 6 Different Commercial Carpet Cleaning Methods

Pros And Cons Of 6 Different Commercial Carpet Cleaning Methods

Commercial carpet cleaners are asked to clean carpets in offices and other business premises that may have been stained differently. In addition, the state of the rug will depend on the type of business, how many people walk across it each day, and how well it has been cared for in the past, if at all.

As a result of all these variables, commercial carpet cleaning companies have had to develop several different carpet cleaning methods over the years; no single carpet cleaning method stands above all others as they each have specific uses and individual pros and cons. Thanks to the professional advice from Brilliance Carpet Cleaning Perth, you are about to discover the pros and cons as we look at 6 of the most common commercial carpet cleaning methods.

Vacuuming: Everyone knows this method, and it is still integral to commercial carpet cleaning to remove dirt and grit from carpets.

Pros

  • Very cost-effective
  • Simple and easy
  • Ideal for removing dirt and grit
  • Helps reduce wear in carpets

Cons

  • Needs to be done regularly….daily if possible
  • Not suitable for wet stains
10 Areas Of Your Restaurant You Must Ensure Are Cleaned And Sanitised Daily

10 Areas Of Your Restaurant You Must Ensure Are Cleaned And Sanitised Daily

If you own or run a restaurant of any kind, you will hopefully be more than aware that the cleanliness and hygiene within your premises are every bit, if not more important, than how good your food tastes. After all, what is the point of having the best chefs and service staff, if no one visits your restaurant because it has gained a reputation for being unclean and unhygienic?

We are sure that is not the case and that you do all you can to make your restaurant clean, perhaps by using professional cleaners from gleamcleanwa.com.au to either advise on or to carry out cleaning tasks regularly.

Whether you use outside professionals or have your own team of trained cleaners, you need to be conscious of the fact that there are some parts of your restaurant and items within it, that require special attention and at the very least cleaned and sanitised daily. These are the ones that are especially in use when it comes to the cooking, preparation, and serving of food, plus others that many customers will come into contact with. Here are ten examples of what we mean.

Tabletops: Probably one of the most obvious examples given that multiple people will have eaten at a table and dropped food on it. It is not enough to simply wipe the table of spillages, and the like, but after each guest leaves it should be sanitised before the next guests sit down.

7 Ways Your Wills Lawyer Business Benefits From Better Branding

7 Ways Your Wills Lawyer Business Benefits From Better Branding

It may the case that within some wills lawyer businesses that marketing and branding are well down the list of priorities. Hopefully, that is not the case for your business because by ignoring them you are undoubtedly missing out on a huge number of opportunities to enhance the performance of your business.

In particular, by branding your wills lawyers business effectively you open it up to a huge number of advantages. This is especially important if you operate in an area where there is significant local competition for the sorts of legal services you provide. In this article we are going to examine 7 of the main reason why your wills lawyer business can benefit from effective branding.

Projects A Premium Identity

Any branding that means a business is perceived as being premium or first class will definitely attract more customers, and more importantly, allow that business to charge premium fees for its services. We are not suggesting that you rebrand your business simply with the sole intention of increasing your fees, but there is no escaping the fact that a first-class image, provided it is backed up with first-class customer service, gives you that option.

Improves The Chances Of Expansion

As a business’s performance improves and its revenue and profits increase likewise as a result of improved branding, its future becomes a lot brighter. Part of that future could include you deciding to reinvest some of those profits into expanding your wills lawyer business. That could mean relocating to bigger offices or even opening additional offices in other areas. Each of these new offices should see similar success, thanks to the main brand being so strong.

How To Design A Meditation Room On Your Business Premises

Suppose you are an employer who takes a proactive stance in aiding your workforce’s mental health. In that case, you may have encountered scenarios where employees have been dealing with depression, family trauma, anxiety, and also those who have gone through a drug rehab program. That you support your employees in these and other situations is laudable, and you might wonder what more you can do to promote all your employees’ mental health.

People are becoming increasingly aware that not all mental health issues require prescriptive medicine and that their mental well-being can be maintained and improved using other methods. There are many of these methods around, and meditation is often cited as highly effective.

Meditation is a means of quieting the mind and focusing on the present moment to the exclusion of anything else. People benefit in lots of ways from meditation, and the most commonly mentioned is clarity of thinking, a feeling of relaxation, and one that all is well. With regards to those who might be going through drug rehabilitation, these are indeed three excellent states of mind to be in.

Whatever the reason you believe medication might benefit your employees, you can encourage it further by creating somewhere within your business premises that they go to and meditate. Whether you call it a meditation room or meditation space does not matter. The fact that it will exist and be available for use by employees is an important point.

5 Signs Your Office Carpet Needs To Be Professionally Cleaned

Suppose you are a business owner or office manager. In that case, you will possibly be responsible for organising the cleaning and maintenance regimes within your office, and part of that will be the carpet cleaning.

In normal circumstances, it might be sufficient for your day-to-day cleaners to do the regular vacuuming and occasional stain removal for your carpets. Still, ultimately, you may need to take further action. That action is when it becomes necessary for you to arrange for the rugs in your office to be professionally cleaned.

The question this begs is at what point do you make that call, and what signs should you be looking for to tell you it is time for professional cleaners to come and use their skills and experience to get your carpets looking at their very best again. Here are five of those signs.

#1 Increased Instances of Allergies

If your office staff are prone to hay fever attacks or have shown ever-increasing signs of allergies, such as sneezing or skin irritation, it could be a sign that your carpet is playing host to many allergens and bacteria. These microscopic nasties, including dust mites and pollen, will remain permanently if a rug is not cleaned correctly.

Even daily vacuuming might not be enough, so having the offending carpet professionally deep cleaned is the answer. This will remove allergens and bacteria and make your office healthier.

Expert Digital Marketer

3 Reasons You Should Always Use An Expert Digital Marketer

If you run or own a landscaping or landscape design business, the chances are that you don’t have time to stay up to date with all of the latest advances in digital marketing technology. The digital world is evolving at a rapid pace, and it’s quickly becoming one of the most competitive spaces on the planet.

If you want your landscaping business to remain competitive, then you need to make sure that you’re maintaining a strong online presence. There are many ways to do this, including through a high-quality website, through social media, and by using things like search engine marketing. A high-quality digital marketer can help you do all of these things, especially if you’re not very technologically minded.

Our top three reasons why you should always use an experienced digital marketer, such as Slinky Digital Marketing, to promote your landscaping or landscape design business include:

  1. Digital marketers know what they’re doing

Being familiar with the digital space and how it works is a crucial part of digital marketing. Since professional marketers spend their entire working life in and around various aspects of digital medial, they need to make sure that they’re staying up to date with advances in things like search engine technology and social media marketing.

When you employ an experienced digital marketer to work with your business, you can rest easily with the knowledge that they will do the best job possible. You won’t have to spend hours of your own time researching the latest online marketing techniques, and they will probably be able to show much better results in a much shorter space of time.

The Important SEO Tips for Small Businesses in Australia

Do you want to improve your business visibility online? Ever wondered why everyone prompts you to improve your SEO marketing techniques? It is because this technique is the foolproof way for you to tap into an ever wider customer market, knowing no geographical boundaries or limits.

Search engine optimisation techniques are the magic formula which let you attract, draw in and ensure customer conversions, and make a success of your business in a unique way. As the popularity and impact of SEO techniques are gaining momentum and fame, it is fast becoming the foolproof way to reach out to and penetrate a large potential market, and enjoy business and success for your company.

To compete in a highly aggressive Australian market, it is essential that you play all your cards right. Remember, even if your business has a good website and a social presence, but lacks the search engine optimization techniques to boost its business, then you will have no chance to gain any visibility in the market.

Want to know great tips on how to build up, develop and improve on your search engine optimisation techniques? Then read on…

Recognize SEO Importance

The first step is to make sure that you understand how important SEO is for your business. You need to know how relevant it is to the success of your business. To sum up the necessity of having SEO, you just need to understand that with no efforts in this field, you won’t be able to attract any visitors from the different search engines.

With no SEO methods, search engines will not able to categorize or rank your website for any business relevant keywords.

online presence

Importance Of Online Presence For Your Brand

The traditional means of marketing have become quite dull to grab audiences’ attention. Digital marketing methods on the other hand are very impressive in bringing the audience close to any brand. Therefore, every brand that is part of the online world needs to ensure that they have maintained an appealing image in the eyes of the audience. Without a solid and easily recognizable online image, brands will be unable to attract customers and succeed.

Greater Business Opportunities

The world of internet is overflowing with opportunities for businesses to grow. A brand can easily reach out to its target audience through online platforms and even interact with their customers to build good relationships as part of its overall online reputation management. These opportunities cannot be utilized by traditional means, which is the reason a sound online presence is important for every brand.

Furthermore, due to the popularity of internet, consumers now prefer researching about a company online then go out and make the purchase immediately. If someone is looking for a good dine in place, they will first look for restaurants online. This provides business a great chance to entice customers with their appealing online image. Similarly, bad reviews on your brand can really mean losing business.

WordPress SEO Mistakes to Avoid

How Can I Avoid Common WordPress SEO Mistakes?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a crucial part of any WordPress website’s digital marketing strategy. SEO depends on hundreds of different factors, but some factors carry a lot more weight than others. This means that simply avoiding a few common mistakes when building and maintaining a WordPress website can go a long way towards improving your search engine ranking and making sure that you appear near the top of the search engine results for relevant keywords.

With this in mind, we’ve put together a short list of the most common WordPress SEO mistakes and the best ways to avoid them. They include:

Ignoring Meta Titles & Descriptions

Meta titles and meta descriptions never appear on your website design, so you might be excused for thinking that they aren’t important and ignoring them. However, to do so would be a very bad idea.

Both meta titles and meta tags are two SEO tools that play key roles in your website’s SEO score, and it’s very important to customise them for every single new page you publish. Try and write rich descriptions with keywords and a short summary of a page’s content, and make titles catchy and clickable.

Duplicating Content

A lot of people base their new website on a competitor’s site, especially if you’re working in tight niche. While this can work in your favour if you do it well, it’s important to make sure that you don’t duplicate someone else’s content, otherwise you will receive significant SEO penalties. Make sure that every single piece of writing on your website is completely customised to prevent any SEO penalties or red flags.

Using Too Many Plugins

Now, don’t get me wrong – plugins are great! However, it is possible to use too many. Most WordPress plugins are resource intensive, and they can slow your website down a lot if you’re not careful. A slow website will perform poorly from a SEO perspective, so it’s important to make sure that you only use good quality WordPress web design plugins that are relevant and useful.

SEO

How Web Design Techniques Affect Search Engine Rankings?

Captivating web designs always have a competitive edge over any other website design. It is essential for a website to be listed high in search engine rankings so that it can be easily found by the searchers.

Higher the ranks, easy the search

A nicely built website designed by web design professionals entwined with artistic designs and precise yet detailed information is the one desired for exploration. Imagine, who would want to mark his presence on a website that has incomplete information and a dull composition? The searchers need a reason to visit the website. Each website must have certain design structures in order to rank high in a SEO campaign.

Let us have a look on few of the web designing tips required to accelerate the search engine rank through search engine optimisation.

1. Increased Number of Pages

A large website can increase your chances of ranking high in search engines. So if you have a good number of pages added to your website as compared to your counterparts, you are likely to mark a top page ranking for your website. Make sure that your pages are relevant and do not deviated out of the context. Search engines like a huge number of relevant pages with information. Also, since you have a huge website, you can possible keep the visitors engrossed for a longer time, thus resulting in potential sales.

2. Include Graphic Representation

Only content and no graphics appear to be a boring option. You may have concocted a really good content and filled your website but it doesn’t serve the purpose of those who are more inclined towards exploring the graphics. If you are selling a product, putting up pictures with relevant amount of information will be more preferable for visitors to comprehend the essence of product. Read more on the importance of images here.

Pros And Cons Of Using An Office Removalist Company

Pros And Cons Of Using An Office Removalist Company

Whenever a business decides that it wishes to relocate to another office it has many choices to make. One of the first decisions will surely be whether they wish to organise and facilitate the relocation themselves, or whether they are going to hire the services of a professional office relocations company.

Clearly, the matters that each business needs to weight up with regards to making this decision will be influenced by the size of the business, the distance between the two offices, the amount that has to be moved, and obviously the budget that they are able to allocate to the relocation.

Beyond these, it is a case of weighing up the pros and cons of hiring office removalists, and then deciding. Being the helpful people that we are, we have those pros and cons here for you.

The Pros

They will Know How To Plan It

One of the keys to any office relocation is the planning of it, and often business owners do not even know where to start, let alone actually create a plan. A professional office relocation company will advise you on the best way to plan and prepare for the relocation.

They Will Support You

Even though they may have helped you with the plan, there are bound to be things that crop up which you are unsure of. Rather than trying to work them out for yourself,  your office removalists will be happy to take a call or answer an email that asks for help or advise.

They Can Supply The Packing Materials

No doubt many of the items which are being  moved will be expensive, such as computer equipment. To ensure that they and any other valuable or fragile items are protected properly against damage en route, they will be able to supply you with the best packing materials for the job.

Top 10 Mistakes To Avoid When Designing Your Dental Website

Top 10 Mistakes To Avoid When Designing Your Dental Website

As a well respected dentist, you will undoubtedly know the ‘Top Ten’ mistakes that every dentist should avoid but are you as familiar with the web design mistakes to avoid when building or updating your dental practice website.

You might think that you do not need to know these as it is not you who is building or developing the website, however, not knowing them could mean that if your website developer does make one or more mistakes, you will be oblivious to them. Some mistakes might be easily remedied, but others are not, and if it means that the ranking of your website is negatively impacted, that is not going to be an overnight fix.

So, rather than having the hassle of trying to fix mistakes after they happen, by knowing what they are, you can ensure that whoever is designing your website, does not make them in the first place. So, with that in mind, here are ten of the worst dental website design mistakes to avoid.

Slow Load Speed: One of the biggest mistakes made is that the website takes too much time to load, meaning visitors click away immediately. A poor web design strategy that uses unnecessarily large file sizes is one of the major causes of this.

No Calls To Action: Ultimately you want your website visitors to take some kind of action such as book an appointment or follow your social media, for example. Make sure you have clear calls to action on every page.

Media Auto-Playing: One of the reasons that someone will choose to leave your dental practice website quickly is if it has audio or video that plays automatically. It might work on certain websites, but for the most part, almost all visitors hate it, so make sure any media only plays when visitors want it to.

How to Reduce Overhead Costs of eCommerce Business?

eCommerce is one of the best and most effective ways to earn windfall returns on investment. The online platform offers the perfect tool to attract great number of qualified leads. The digital arena is full of online marketing tools that can be harnessed to generate large number of online leads. Social media advertising, search engine optimization, online forums, press release sites, and business directories are just some of the few online tools that can be used to funnel maximum number of visitors to the site.

One of the greatest benefits of starting up an ecommerce store in Australia is that it does not require investing large amount of capital. With just a few hundred dollars, individuals can set-up an online store offering goods and services to the consumers. Moreover, the overhead costs are little as compared to running a brick-and-mortar physical store. And the best part is that there are various ways that entrepreneurs can cut online eCommerce costs thereby boosting online revenues.

Below we have listed 5 effective measures that eCommerce businesses can implement to cut overhead costs.

1. Streamline Supply Chain Distribution Process

Streamlining supply chain and distribution process is one of the best ways to cut online costs. Incorporating supply chain management measures such Just in Time Inventory (stocking just the required products), integrated supply chain methods, vendor managed inventory are some of the ways online companies can streamline their supply chain process and earn above average return on investment.

Boosting Dental Client

Boosting Dental Client Numbers With Effective Google Ads Campaigns

For any dentist who wishes to expand their client base, and in turn their dental practice, there are many ways in which it can be done.  The number of marketing and advertising options is greater than the number of teeth in a healthy mouth, but there is an advertising platform that has proven time and time again to be one of the most effective, and that is Google Ads.

We should actually caveat what we just said, by including the words, ‘if done correctly’, because if a Google Ad campaign is set up without following some basic principles and implementing certain steps, then it is doomed to fail. That failure can range from you not getting any traffic to a website, to wasting lots of money getting traffic that is not really interested in what you are offering.

We mention taking a step-by-step approach and the first step you take isn’t to write and or do keyword research, but to sit down and establish exactly what outcome you want from your ads. It may not always be the case that you are trying to attract new clients, but instead, you might wish to add subscribers to an email marketing campaign, or you could want to expand your brand awareness to a wider audience.

Whatever the objective might be, that is what needs to be at the forefront of your thoughts as you progress through the rest of the process. Different objectives will mean that different keywords may need to be used, and obviously, the ad copy is going to differ also when alternate objectives exist.

If we focus on the objective of attracting more clients or patients into your dental practice for dental implants, then you need to ascertain what that audience is going to be. Parameters to consider are demographics such as age group, what their financial circumstances might be, and what locations they might live in.

Beyond these demographics you should also be thinking about what sub-groups new patients to a dental practice could be in. Are they people with poor dental hygiene? Are they those looking for a cheaper, or alternatively, a more exclusive, service? Do you offer cosmetic dental services and are trying to attract those customers?

Benefit From An Office Relocation

5 Ways Your Business Can Benefit From An Office Relocation

There are many office relocations that take place, not because the business chose to relocate, but due to other circumstances that arise. It could be that the building in question is being renovated by the landlords, or even sold.

Another reason could be that the business’s finances are such that continual rent increases mean the costs of remaining in the current offices is simply not affordable any longer. Of course, there are many other reasons out with the business’s control that force relocation, and the potential upheaval can also cause problems if it is not done properly by professional removalists.

Thankfully, forced relocations are rare, and a more positive type of office relocation is one which the business chooses to undergo of its own volition. These tend to occur due to the owners or senior management of a business seeing that there are several advantages to office relocation, and wishing to avail themselves, and their business of them.

An Improvement in Productivity

It is a well-known fact that if staff are happy and feel comfortable in the environment and surroundings they work in, then their productivity rates will be higher. Any business, including those that operate from offices, will benefit from increased productivity.

New premises can allow for the purchase of new and updated office equipment which can further improve the working environment for employees and provide them further ways to increase how productive they are.

Ranking Your Home Page

The Business Case For Not Ranking Your Home Page

Whenever an SEO discussion takes place, and the subject matter is about ranking a website, the automatic assumption is that it is the website’s homepage that should be ranked.

In a lot of cases that will be true, but there are many arguments that differ from that thinking. Instead, the theory is that whilst the homepage might be ideal for optimising for the company’s branding, SEO rankings should be focusing on other pages, especially with regards to products and services. This is why we recommend hiring an SEO agency.

Now, this might surprise many of you, but if you read on, we will explain the justification and the business case for not ranking your homepage.

Diversity Of Products And Locations

Now it is likely that your business has more than one product or service on offer, and it is also possible that your business operates in, or targets, more than one location. Even if it does not at the moment, assuming you plan to expand, it may well do so in the future.

Whilst multiple products and locations may all be under one roof in terms of your website, each of them should be promoted on their own individual web pages, or on pages more aligned with that range or location.

If you are solely focusing on ranking your homepage, none of those inner pages ever stand a chance of finding themselves rank number one on google.

The point here is that the kinds of keyword phrases that you would target for those pages, may not actually be difficult to get good ranking for due to poor or limited competition.

This is a huge open goal being missed, as some simple, but effective SEO, could see those pages rank highly and thus your products and services being seen by a much larger number of prospective buyers and clients.

Eco-Friendly Office Space

Top 5 Tips for Creating an Eco-Friendly Office Space

Eco-friendly living is becoming increasingly popular in the modern world, and this environmental mindset is rapidly expanding into the business world. It doesn’t matter if you run a website design agency or a mechanics workshop – there are numerous things you can do to make your premises better for the environment.

In the rest of this article, we’ve explored our top five tips for creating an eco-friendly office space. Remember, these are just a few of our top ideas – there are plenty more things you could do to reduce your office’s carbon footprint and save our wonderful planet.

  1. Turn Everything Off Every Night

Although it may seem a little self-explanatory, it’s amazing how many people don’t turn everything off before leaving the office. It’s a good idea to get into the habit of switching off all electronics – including computers, printers, and routers – along with lights and heating devices before you leave the office. Doing so will save electricity, and therefore reduce your environmental footprint.

  1. Create a Sustainable Office Policy

If you don’t already have some sort of recycling and environmental policy, you need one. It’s as simple as that. Not only will these documents help you reduce your environmental footprint and transform your office into something “greener”, but they will also help you ensure you’re not breaking any laws.

  1. Avoid Single-Use Items

Single-use plastics and other items, including stationery, coffee cups, and a wide range of other common office equipment, are the leading cause of what is arguably the biggest modern environmental catastrophe – pollution. Reduce single-use plastic in your office, and you will be going a long way towards becoming a much greener operation.

Security Alarm System

Five Reasons Your Office Needs a Security Alarm System

Installing a security alarm or some other security system is a great way to ensure your office is protected from intruders and anyone else who may want to break in. This can save you significant amounts of money, especially if you hold valuable stock or other items on your premises.

There are numerous other benefits associated with installing an office security system. For example, it will help your staff feel safer – especially if you have people working night-shift or in a dodgy neighbourhood. With this in mind, we’ve outlined five of our top reasons why you should consider installing a security alarm system for your office. They include:

  1. It Will Encourage Customers to Trust You

Having a visibly obvious security system installed will not only protect your business from fire and theft but will also help customers trust you and your services. A business that takes security seriously is much more likely to do things properly, as opposed to one that’s secured with a padlock and heavy chain or something similar. Additionally, people will be much more likely to trust you with their sensitive information if your premises are properly secured.

  1. It Will Help Secure Your Stock and Other Valuables

Many businesses carry thousands of dollars worth of stock. If you don’t hold a lot of stock, the chances are that you use valuable electronic equipment. Or, you may even have customer items that are awaiting repair or replacement. Whatever the case, the chances are that you have a large number of valuable items on your premises, and having a reliable security system will help you protect these.

Workplace Policies

When Do I Need to Draft New Workplace Policies?

If you’re an employer or manager of a large business, you need to ensure that the relevant workplace policies are in place. These are basically legal documents that outline the appropriate response or actions in specified situations such as covering what is or is not unfair dismissal. Many businesses use Perth Employment Lawyers to help them draft new policies.

However, it can be difficult to know when you need new workplace policies, and exactly what these should cover. To help you make these initial decisions, we’ve created a short guide outlining when you should consider drafting new workplace policies:

When Current Policies Are Out Of Date

If your current workplace policies are old and potentially outdated, you should definitely think about reviewing and potentially updating them. Old policies could contain misleading or incorrect information with the potential to lead to serious workplace incidents.

If the People Using the Policy Have Changed

It often happens that when a business grows, the people working under a specific policy will change. When this happens, you need to conduct a careful review to ensure everyone is covered.

In many cases, you will only need to update small parts of the existing policy. At times, though, you may even need to draft entire new documents that complement the existing ones. If this is the case, think seriously about getting help from a workplace lawyer or other industry expert.

Managing WordPress Website

Top Tips For Managing Your WordPress Website

So you’ve got a decent WordPress website with an attractive website design and all the content you want. It looks and works great, so you’re done, right?

Wrong. Running a WordPress website requires a lot of ongoing maintenance. Even if your site does work well, it’s a great idea to add new content and continue improving processes over time. Doing this will help improve the user experience for your site’s visitors, help you improve your site’s performance, and help ensure continued growth and success going forwards.

With this in mind, I’ve put together a short list of my top tips for managing a WordPress website. They include:

  1. Update your WordPress software

WordPress regularly releases new performance and software updates. If you want to get the most out of your website, it’s important to make sure that you regularly update your software.

Luckily, the WordPress dashboard will usually tell you if your current version is out of date, and it lets you update with the click of a button.

Keeping your site up to date like this will ensure that you benefit from all the latest WordPress features and functions, letting you stay ahead of your competition.

  1. Use a decent back-up plugin

There’s nothing worse than spending countless hours building a fresh web design, only to lose it all when your hosting provider’s servers crash. Luckily, there are ways to protect yourself against this.

Start by installing a decent back-up plugin. There are plenty to choose from, but try and find one with decent reviews that backs up your site’s content regularly.

Build Websites with Wordpress

Building Your First Website With WordPress

As the world’s most popular content management system, it’s estimated that over 30% of all websites are now built on WordPress. If you’re an inexperienced web developer who wants to build their first website, then WordPress is a great place to start!

However, WordPress isn’t all fun and games. You do need to make sure that you do a bit of research and learn about the platform and what it offers before you start, otherwise you will almost certainly run into problems. The following should help guide you through the basics of building your first WordPress website:

Choose between WordPress.org and WordPress.com

The first thing that you need to do when building a new website is choose which WordPress platform you want to use. WordPress.com lets you sign up and start building a website immediately. While it is certainly the simpler choice, it has a lot less flexibility and it can become a lot more expensive than WordPress.org.

This is because WordPress.org is basically software that allows you to host your own website. If you use WordPress.org, you will have to go through a lot more steps to get your site up and running, but you will have a lot more control over how you customise and design it. WordPress.org is definitely the better choice for anyone who wants to make money off their website.

The rest of this article will assume that you have chosen to use WordPress.org.

Choose a hosting provider & domain name

Before you can do anything, you need to choose a hosting provider and a domain name for your website. Make sure that you do some research and choose a hosting provider who offers at least 99% uptime and a dedicated resources. The team at Slinky Digital can make this process as smooth as possible.

Choosing a domain name should be relatively simple if you already know what your website is going to be called. Most hosting provider let you purchase a domain directly from their platform when you sign up with them.

Professional Car Mechanic

Why A Business Should Use A Professional Car Mechanic

DIY mechanics can save you a lot of money. However, they can also lead to a huge range of problems, especially if you don’t have a lot of mechanical knowledge. If you’ve got an old car that’s not worth a lot of money, then DIY mechanics can be an acceptable option. However, owners of newer or luxury vehicles should always use a professional car mechanic for all repairs and maintenance.

Although something like a Mercedes Benz service can be expensive, according to MB Star Motors it’s worth paying the money to get it done properly. Using a professional car mechanic has a whole range of benefits, including:

  1. They Will Identify Small Problems Before They Become Big Ones

Often, it’s hard to find small problems with your car unless you know what you’re looking for. An experienced mechanic who services cars for a living will know exactly what they should be looking for, which will help them spot problems. Fixing these problems before they got too big can save you a lot of time and money in the long run, especially if you’ve got an expensive car.

AdWords vs SEO

AdWords vs SEO For Law Firm Marketing

People throughout the world need lawyers on a daily basis. As a law firm, you want them to employ you, right? However, people can’t employ you and make use of your services if they don’t know that you exist, which means that it’s absolutely essential to build a strong online presence. A strong online presence will help more people find you, and can put you at the head of the pack as one of the leading law firms in your area.

Making sure that you appear in the search engine results when people search for lawyers and lawyer related keywords is a major part of building a strong online presence. You can do this in two ways – through Google AdWords, or through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). In this article we will compare the pros and cons of both.

SEO

SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the act of making your website appear highly in the search engine results pages for certain keywords or subjects. It is relatively cheap, it is effective, and it brings results. However, it also takes time to get yourself to the top of the search engine rankings pages.

Pros:

  • SEO is relatively cheap compared to AdWords, especially for law firm marketing.
  • It isn’t all that hard to get yourself to the top of the search engine results pages, especially if you focus on location based keywords.
  • A well crafted SEO strategy brings results. The majority of people click on one of the first couple of results on a search engine page, which will send them to your website if you rank highly.

Cons:

  • SEO takes time.
  • SEO takes a fair bit of work, especially creating content and building backlinks.
  • Competitive keywords like ‘lawyer’ or ‘law firm’ can be quite difficult to rank for.
Settlement Agreements

Settlement Agreements

All good lawyers will tell you that most cases settle before they ever come to court. This is both a necessity and the logical outcome of the judicial process.  It is necessary because if every case were to continue through trial and a decision by a jury or judge, the judicial system would quickly be overwhelmed.  It’s a logical outcome because the very nature of the legal process is designed to illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of each party’s case and give them incentives to settle.

Furthermore, the settlement allows parties to exercise more control over the terms of the settlement and have access to remedies that might not be available from a trial court.

But what kind of settlement ought to be achieved?  And what type of process should govern settlement negotiations.  Here are some tips:

(These six tips are based on the Ethical Guidelines for Settlement Negotiations produced by the American Bar Association)

Purpose:  The purpose of settlement agreements is to resolve any disputes the client may face satisfactorily.  The attorney represents the client legally and financially and must always act in the client’s best interest.

Honesty:  A lawyer’s conduct in negotiating a settlement should be characterized by honour and fair dealing.

Communication: Good lawyers must promptly consider and discuss with the client any and all alternatives to resolving the dispute outside of litigation.  Without assistance from lawyers, clients often are not aware of potential alternative methods for dispute resolution.  A lawyer’s desire to convince the client of the lawyer’s support for the client’s position ordinarily will not justify delaying efforts to discuss early settlement.  As negotiations progress, the attorney is obligated to constantly communicate the status of the discussions and the subject matter of the negotiations to the client.

Accountant

How Can An Accountant Save Me Money?

When it comes to running a business, forking out the money to hire an accountant can actually save you a lot of money in the long run. Although many small businesses can’t afford to hire someone full-time, even hiring a bookkeeper for just a couple of hours per week can make huge differences.

There are numerous ways that an accountant or bookkeeper can save you money. They can make your business run more efficiently, they will help you minimise your tax bill as much as possible, and they will be able to identify potential problems in your business model before they become major. Some of the main ways that accountants can help you save money include:

Via tax deductions or offsets:

Although you may not realise it, you may be missing out on a lot of potential tax deductions or offsets by doing your tax return on your own. Employing an accountant to both manage your books and complete your tax return can help you minimise these losses.

However, it is important to make sure that you use a seasoned professional who knows what they are doing. Try and find someone with experience relevant to your business, and don’t be afraid to pay a little more for someone who knows the rules inside and out.

Commercial Lawyer

Why Your Business Needs a Commercial Lawyer

Many Australian business entrepreneurs hire lawyers only when a problem crops up. It’s much wiser to seek the services of commercial lawyers as they can identify potential problems before they occur. It’s natural to be extremely busy with financing, loans, hiring staff, marketing etc as you launch your new business. In our minds, these issues often take precedence over legal problems which don’t seem to be of immediate concern. However, the truth of the matter is that smart business planning involves preventing problems before they occur and this includes working with a business lawyer right from the start.

Even if your business is a small one, many legal problems could crop up in the early years and interfere with successful operation. In general, commercial law is complex and so is the language that is used with it.

A reliable business lawyer can help you understand your options and select the ones that correspond to your business requirement. Dealing with legal issues can be frustrating, exhausting and demoralising. Your lawyer will be on your side from the time of inception of the business and will help you create partnership agreements in case of multiple owners. Lawyers can also help with drafting employer, contractors and other business agreements. While these may seem like extra work during the early days, the contracts become very important as the business becomes valuable. Even if you are an efficient problem solver, it always pays to forestall legal issues before they turn into problems.

Business owners cannot be expected to be familiar with every facet of Australian commercial law.

Do You Think Your Lawyer Has Overcharged You?

While the majority of workers in the legal industry will deal with clients in an ethical manner, there are those who might take advantage of their clients. The average person relies heavily on the expertise and skill of their lawyers, to make sure that they do not wind up in serious legal trouble. They also depend on their lawyers to disclose costs, and deal with them fairly regarding fees. Since the costs for legal matters can become exceedingly high, there are laws in place to protect clients.

These laws are intended to allow sanctions against any lawyers who charge overly high fees. Costs are also able to be reviewed by independent bodies. Under some circumstances, agreements regarding costs can even be set aside.

Overview of Costs Disclosure Requirements

When starting a professional relationship with a legal representative, it is best to get the retainer in writing. This serves as the work contract, but it is not a prerequisite. However, ensuring that you do get it in writing is a smart idea. This will allow future costs to be compared to what the lawyers claimed they would be in the beginning.

OptinMonster

Setting Up A WordPress Email Campaign With OptinMonster

Setting up an email list is one of the most important steps on the road to website success. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t realise just how important it is, and therefore fail to do so for a long time after creating their WordPress website.

Current statistics say that over 70% of people who visit your website won’t ever come back unless you can get them to subscribe to your emailing list. Once someone is subscribed to your list there is a fair chance of them returning sometime in the future and who knows – they might even become a regular visitor!

There are a number of very good options when it comes to setting up an email marketing list that is directly linked to your WordPress website. Our favourite is definitely OptinMonster. Although it isn’t free, and can be somewhat difficult to get your head around to begin with, it is an extremely useful tool for all web developers once it is mastered.

What is OptinMonster?

The best thing about OptinMonster is its extreme versatility and the sheer number of features that it offers. Sure, you might have to pay for some of these features, but it will be worth every cent – I promise!

Fire Safety

Who Is Responsible For Fire Safety In Your Workplace?

Fire safety is a huge concern in workplaces throughout Australia, especially in the hotter, drier parts of the country. While fire protection equipment like fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems can help protect your workplace, effective fire safety is about more than just installing the right protective gear.

Ultimately, you can have the best fire safety equipment in the world, but if no one knows how to use it, it will be pretty ineffective. It is therefore extremely important to make sure that you understand who is responsible for fire safety in your workplace, and to make sure that they understand what their responsibilities are.

So, Who Is Responsible?

Under Australian occupational health and safety laws, the management of any business or company has the responsibility to make sure that all health and safety risks – such as fire – are minimised. If a fire does occur, there must be someone on site who knows where fire safety equipment is kept, how it is operated and what sort of fire safety gear is appropriate for different types of fires.

However, it is also the responsibility of employees to cooperate with a workplace’s fire management policies and procedures. In a lot of workplaces, these will include some sort of safety induction at the start of a job or when you enter a new workplace. This will often include an identification of where fire safety equipment is kept, and a brief explanation of how it is used. It is your responsibility, as an employee, to make sure that you take note of any safety information provided by your employer.

Eye-Catching Email Copy

Developing Eye-Catching Email Copy

Email marketing is a major part of any large marketing campaign. It lets you connect directly with anyone who is interested in your business, your products, or what you do. Sending an email is a great way to deliver information directly to a lot of people, especially if you are finding that your website’s visitor numbers are dropping.

If done right, a marketing email sent out to your email audience can have extremely positive effects. The first (and arguably, most important) part of email marketing is the words themselves. You need to develop email copy which is eye-catching, engaging, and which will encourage the reader to choose your email over all the others in their inbox.

Get the subject line right:

The first thing that anyone sees when they open their email inbox is all of their new messages. Each of these messages is accompanied by a subject line which, ultimately, helps them choose whether or not the email is worth reading.

It is therefore extremely important to make sure that you get your subject line right. Even if you have average content within your email, a catchy subject line will still lead to a lot of people reading it. However, if you have a poor subject line, you will find that a lot of people don’t even open your email.

Keep it short, but strong:

People don’t want to spend hours reading an email. Keep your email copy to the absolute necessities. Once you have written a draft, go through and edit out any words which are not absolutely necessary. Doing this will help you create content which people can engage with, and will increase the chances of people reading your emails through to the end.

Social Media

7 Ways To Keep Your Social Media Followers Engaged

There are lots of social media sites with each having different formats, visuals, and means of communicating with followers. To explain how to keep your social media followers engaged on each individual site would be impossible, but here are 7 ways that should cover most of them, especially the most popular ones.

#1 Post Regularly With News and Comments

Failing to do this means your followers will think you are disinterested in them, and they will soon go elsewhere. An active social media presence with updates appearing regularly will have followers checking your pages or profile every time they log in. More importantly it will encourage them to share your posts which can increase your follower numbers significantly.

#2 Mix It Up

On sites which enable you to use content other than text, take advantage of this. Posting videos, graphics, memes and audio are great ways to keep your followers interested in your posts and keen to share them with their friends.

#3 Answer Questions Quickly

This is a very good way of letting your followers see you are active and more importantly interested in helping them. Often a question will be answered by you which could turn a potential customer into an actual one.

Top 4 Benefits of Using Linux Website Hosting

Affordable and reliable web hosting services may be hard to find, but every web hosting service worth his salt knows that Linux and Windows are staples. However, it is the former that has the bigger piece of the pie when it comes to satisfying the needs of online entrepreneurs and publishers. Here are some of the top reasons why it is favoured:

  1. Easy Modification and Experienced Developers

Since Linux is an open source platform, programmers can easily teak, distribute and improve it through different stages of development. Plus, the industry is filled with quite experienced developers who are constantly working to improve its functionality and fix issues as they crop up. Since they are not part of a corporate culture per se, most Linux developers are extremely disciplined, experienced and motivated. In other words, when you opt for a web hosting service that offers Linux, you can rest assured your website is in good hands.

  1. Unmatched Flexibility

If a web hosting service offers Linux then it means it can take care of a number of important tasks that a website needs to remain supported 24/7. This includes hosting business applications, multimedia applications and even blogging websites such as WordPress. Plus, since the platform can be modified at a moment’s notice, it can be updated if required and issues can be fixed as they crop up. In other words, you can rest assured that your ecommerce website will remain online 24/7 if this platform is supporting it.

Court Fees Deter Average Australians from Seeking Litigation

Australian citizens often do not appreciate having access to a fair legal system. Being able to have a hearing is something that should be available to everyone. However, the costs associated with legal trials is often a deterrent to people who do not earn high incomes. Steep increases in litigation costs are one factor that is making it harder for “average” Australians to seek their own justice. And then there are the alternatives for dispute resolution, which seemingly work to encourage people to forgo litigation.

A problem arises because there is a risk that people who have enough money, including government bodies and large corporations, have access to litigation. If they cannot use mediation to get what they want, this is a viable option for these groups. On the other hand, people without the monetary means are left accepting alternative dispute resolution (ADR) decisions. Even when your average person wants to pursue a matter with litigation, they often just do not have the money to do so.

It does save a lot of time and money, when people are encouraged to seek mediation to solve their disputes. It can also save people the hassle of entering a courtroom, and dealing with a full-blown trial. Using the high costs as a way to drive people toward ADR could be creating a two-class system in regards to the law. Read more on Alternative dispute resolution

Terms of Use

Why Your Website Needs Terms of Use

If you are in the middle of getting a website built, by a professional web design team, to conduct an online business, you may not have thought of the Terms of Use that are needed. Commercial lawyers would tell you that these are needed to protect you as well as to inform users of your website what to expect when using your website. Any visitors to your website become potential customers or clients and so need to have everything made clear to them about what you offer and what they should expect.

Without this important document, you leave yourself open to being sued if the customer finds that your goods are faulty or if the instructions on your website are followed and they don’t get the result they expected. For the best result, the Terms of Use document should really be drafted by a lawyer so that it is specific to your business.

Aspects of Business

12 Aspects of Business a Financial Planner Looks at

According to experts Andep, correct financial planning is an essential part of conducting business successfully. If you are considering purchasing a business or starting up one from scratch, having a financial advisor will be a great help and can save you a lot of money. If you are new to business, you might be wondering exactly what role a financial planner would play in your business.

Here are some of the aspects of business a financial expert would look at to help you: –

  • Income protection
  • Identifying business goals and aims
  • Business debt management
  • Risk management – insurance
  • Long term planning for expansion and growth
  • Investment strategies to maximise income
  • Managing tax to maximise deductions
  • Wills and trusts for when you sell the business
  • Asset protection
  • Estate planning
  • The financial planner may also work with other professionals such as accountants or lawyers.

They don’t just fix up your finances and then leave. Working with a financial planner is a long term thing as circumstances and rules tend to change over time. This means that what was once a good plan may need to be tweaked or changed completely in order to continue as a plan that is successful. It takes time to review the strategies and work out if they are still right for your business and then if they are not, to advise of and implement different strategies that meet your goals better.

Have a Unique Product, Want to Sell Online?

Have a Unique Product, Want to Sell Online? Are Your Prepared?

Congratulations!!! After months of rattling your mind you have decided on a lucrative online business opportunity and have accumulated capital to launch it. However, without a professional digital agency, starting an online business would not be easy as it appears, there are roadblocks before you can achieve a break-even in terms of profit. So, here is a 5-step checklist to guide and steer you toward success.

  1. Did You Actually Get a Feedback on Your Product Before Launching?

If you thought your family and friends found your business idea or product highly useful, think again! Feedback obtained from people who are emotionally close to you would appreciate every business idea that emerges from your mind. Seeking a nod from them is a disaster for your launch. To validate if your product/service is unique and sell-able, you must conduct a market survey. Connect with potential customers on the social networks such as Twitter, What’s App, Pinterest, Google+, and FaceBook to gauge their interest in your product or use customer insight survey tools, such as Client Heartbeat and Qualaroo.

  1. Know Your Competitors and Customers

Research the market competition before you can pitch your uniqueness to your audience.

Use tools like SimilarWeb, Google Alerts, Google Trends, and LinkedIn to gauge what your competitors are offering, how they are delighting their customers, and which are the popular sites in your niche. Use this knowledge to make your product different from your competitors.

Often, entrepreneurs first gauge the market response by launching a prototype of the product/service.  They use the forums, blog sites, and social media channels to encourage potential customers to participate in their survey by offering them free samples or holding a contest.

Commercial Lease Negotiation

Main Issues to Consider In a Commercial Lease in Australia

If you are thinking of setting up a business, then either you have your eye set on a property or are scouring the market for the suitable commercial setup. If you don’t have the finances to buy the property at once, then you must surely be looking through different leasing options on offer. Commercial leasing in Australia for small businesses is quite common, and that is why there are many options available to accommodate the needs of different businesses in the segment.

While commercial leasing is a good option for anyone trying to setup a new business, there are also some important issues and regulations linked with the process. If you want to make sure that there are no legal irregularities, then you need to pay close attention to meeting all the requirements without error.

Some of the important issues related to commercial leasing for small businesses in Australia, include the following,

Rights as a Tenant

The lease details all your rights and related obligations as a tenant. If you want to make any changes or add any adjoining space to the property, then make sure that you have the right to do it, under the negotiation terms made with your landlord. Some important rights as a tenant that you would probably want to include in your lease documents include,

  • Use of any common area
  • Access to all areas of the premises
  • Use of certain facilities like toilets
  • Putting up additional shelving and partitioning
  • Putting up any sign on the property

It is important that you discuss all the details before signing a lease contract.

business

How to Make the Most of Your Business Prospects

Many people start off with high hopes of climbing the corporate ladder only to find as the years go by they didn’t get as far as they expected. There could be many reasons for this and appearance is one of them.

The trouble is that most companies tend to look for younger employees who can be trained and stay with them for many years. This saves them the cost of constantly training new staff. They also want to present the image of a company with a workforce that is young enough to be up with all the latest technology. If, in your work you have to deal with the public a lot, looking older may work against you.

Divorce

Dividing Finances Equitably After Divorce

Before you can get a divorce you need to have been separated for 12 months. Family lawyers will tell you that this does not have to be in different accommodation; you can be separated while still living in the same home if moving would cause financial difficulties.  However, one way to prove to the court that you are separated is to have separate bank accounts.

So on the day you separate, you should set up an account in a bank or other financial institution in your name only. Even if you have no money, you can often simply set up the account with a zero deposit or a low deposit of one dollar. After that, if you are on a government pension or benefit, you can to go to Centrelink and have them pay the money into your new account.

While you are there, ask whether you can also have the child benefit payment redirected into your account if you are the main carer for your children. You will need to have at least some money in order to apply for the divorce because there is a fee involved. You can reduce the costs of a divorce, if you are on a government benefit or have financial hardship, but if you’ve set the account up on the day you separate or shortly after, you’ll have the chance to save some money in readiness.

Content Strategies

Content Strategies To Boost Your Site’s Ranking

None of these are “sneaky” in the sense of being gray-hat SEO or even immoral – they’re perfectly square strategies to become recognized as an expert on your topic. But they’re all strategies beyond “blog and hope” and link-mining, too. Consider what each of these content ideas can do for your ranking:

  1. Interview a famous expert in your field – can’t get the Google Juice away from your competitor? Why not invite them to speak on your dime? Do a podcast interview with a leading expert in the field of your site’s focus. Many experts in small fields seek greater publicity, and there’s nothing like an interview invitation to boost somebody’s ego. Now Famous Competitor is linked to your site inextricably!
online business

Getting Help for your Online Business – Why and How

Well, now that you have started your very own online business, you have work to do. Now work, like every other work, needs to be done; if you don’t do it, things can turn to a point which you wouldn’t like. Now sooner or later you will realize that you should work on your online business rather than in your online business. And for working on your online business, you need people who can do the work in the business for you.

Why you should give out Responsibilities in your Online Business

Well, the answer can be fairly simple and can be summed up in a few words – saves time for other tasks.  An online business, when grown big, can be hard to handle by a single hand; you will be needing more hands, thus hiring other people to do the work helps and lets you focus on other things that are important too.

On the off chance that you are at a point in your business where you need to begin appointing and outsourcing tasks to others, here is a rundown of tasks and obligations that you can make others do for you:

  • Social Media Marketing – It’s about managing your social media pages & platforms (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)
  • Web Design and Development – By means of Small Business. You can help people to manage and tweak your website while you are away doing things that are more important to you.
accc-versus-reebok-australia

Misleading Product Promotion

Misleading Product Promotion Leads Federal Court to Order Significant Fines

According to www.lawyerslist.com.au it pays for businesses to get advice from lawyers and be careful with the way they promote their goods and services. In the case of ACCC versus Reebok Australia in 2015, the Federal Court gave Reebok Australia a fine of $350,000. They were found as having falsely advertised their footwear in Australia. In addition to these fines, there were also restraining orders issued, an order to correct the advertising, and $45,000 in legal costs. This was paid to the ACCC. Of particular interest is the fact that Reebok’s parent company, Reebok International, had already been dealt with for similar conduct in the United States.

The Federal Trade Commission, which fills a similar role to the ACCC in Australia, investigated the issue of false advertising and dealt with it accordingly. Reebok Australia was fully aware of the problem with false advertising, but did nothing to bring the practice to a stop, as far as the Federal Court viewed the matter.

Comfortable Office Environment

How to Create a More Comfortable Office Environment

If you conduct your business from your home or from a small complex that includes an outdoor area, it’s a great idea to provide alfresco furniture for staff to relax on during their coffee or lunch break. Being outside for just five minutes is so refreshing that they will come back to work full of energy, not to mention much healthier for having been in the fresh air and sunshine.

The idea of creating comfort in the office may seem at odds with that of getting staff to work in a brisk, efficient manner. But if employees are uncomfortable at their desks, they will take a lot more breaks simply to ease the aches and pains they feel.  In addition, it is much harder to focus 100% on any task if you are feeling physically uncomfortable.

Creating a more comfortable office is not difficult and your staff will be much happier and more productive.  Experts tell us that it is not good to sit at a desk for hours at a time. Employees need to get up and walk around a bit and they can do this when they take business calls on their mobile phones.  But they may not always want to walk, especially if space is limited, or if the call is a confidential one.

Instead of walking around – or as well as – provide an easy chair for them to relax in while they are taking calls or even talking to clients.  This will give them a chance to move from the computer chair and sit somewhere else that is different and so uses different muscles. Their position will have changed at least six times, when –

eBooks and iRecords – Director’s Duties in the Cloud

Cloud storage, cloud accounting packages and similar applications for communication and recording of information have changed the face of business forever. Before you run off to your lawyers in a panic, please read some of the following information.

While these advances have been beneficial to company directors who can discharge their duties at greater speed and from almost any location, we should pause for thought about whether or not these advances can potentially place directors in breach of their duties to the company.

Financial Information

Good commercial lawyers  can explain and advise on Section 286 Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (“Corporations Act”) requires the company to maintain records of financial information that accurately reflect the financial position of the company.  The records can be kept electronically on the proviso that the electronic records can be converted into paper records within a reasonable time after a request is made (s288).

Pursuant to s289 the company can decide where to keep its financial records, however if they are kept outside of Australia the company is required to keep sufficient information to allow preparation of accurate financial information inside Australia; and notify ASIC of the place where the records are kept.

The cloud implications of this are clearly the location of the records.  More often than not, the cloud server on which your data is stored will be located in a low-cost jurisdiction, generally not inside Australia.   Financial information, pursuant as defined in s9 Corporations Act includes all source documents, statements, entries and adjustments in books of account.

The Fundamentals of Trademark Law

Customers Puzzled by Business Names: 

According to commercial lawyers Fletcher Law, “Trademark”- in simple terms, a brand indicator that lets customers know the basis of a good or bad service. Thus, a central role of concern in trademark lawsuit cases is played by the fact whether a customer is puzzled by the origin of a product or service.

The court came out with 7 factors in order to find out if customers were puzzled (or were expected to be puzzled) by the businesses’ names. The court carried out a balancing test to conclude if score was in support or in opposition to consumer confusion.

The 7 factors that they weighed which you might wish to think about when naming your business:

  1. The Mark Strength

A mark is a business’s trademark (the name word, design or symbol that classifies the business, product or service) in trademark law. Marks could range from quite low and weak to very strong: generic, descriptive, suggestive and arbitrary. The more the mark is strong, the higher the protection it gets under trademark law.

ecommerce sales in australia

3 Common Challenges Faced by eCommerce Start-ups in Australia

With estimated online sales totalling $40.83 billion for the year 2014 and more projected in 2015, the eCommerce industry in Australia is becoming more attractive each passing year. Online businesses have revolutionized the way retail sales are conducted in Australia. And it is projected that online sales will continue to grow in popularity in the coming years presenting significant opportunity for eCommerce businesses.

Online selling can be conducted 24 hours a day and seven days a week. This presents a great opportunity for online businesses to earn windfall returns on investment. Thanks to the ease of setting up a business online, budding entrepreneurs can easily create a start-up business without investing huge amount of money. However, there are certain challenges and roadblocks that business owners have to face when setting up an online business. Here we will take a look at three main challenges faced by fledgling online businesses and the tactics that can be employed to overcome them without much difficulty.

Challenge #1: Constant Flux

The foremost problem faced by online businesses is that the technology and consumer trend is always on the flux. Keeping up with the evolving technology is important if the online businesses want to remain afloat. If the start-up business does not adjust its tactics in line with changing technology and trends, it will lose out on the opportunity of boosting revenues, and even go out of business.

Challenge #2: Satisfying Online Customers

The survival of online business depends on satisfying online customers. Satisfied customers will lead to repeat clients increasing revenues of the company. However, keeping online customers satisfied is no easy task. It may be easy to cater to needs of customers when interacting face to face with them. But catering to online customers requires completely new strategies and tactics. Some of the ways online business can satisfy online contacts include offering 24/7 customer support, buyer friendly return policy, and free shipping. This simple acts will go a long way in ensuring happy customers and making them repeat clients.

Electronic Signatures, How Valid Are They?

There is no escaping the rapid advance of technology. People are interacting in ways that would have been completely alien to businesses and their employees just decades ago. Keeping in step with technological innovation, people are always seeking easier and faster ways to carry out their business. Doing business with people all over the country leaves little room for physical documents, or the signatures that are commonly used on them.

The electronic signature is commonplace now, but there is still concern about just how valid they are. Would they be legally binding in court, for example? According the the law in Australia, electronic signatures are in fact considered valid for signing agreements. Trouble arises when it becomes difficult to identify who actually signed a contract, or whether they were aware of the implications of signing. There are special tools that can identify the parties, and these can help to reduce the risk of a signature being declared invalid in court.

Overview of Electronic Contracts

All contracts, both physical and electronic, must meet certain requirements. Signing parties must be aware that they are entering into a legally binding contract, that they are accepting an offer, and must be given a chance to benefit from the exchange. This could include something as simple as being paid for a promised service. These are the standard guidelines of a contract, and they do not change in the digital world.

A digital contract needs to be stored in a way that it can be accessed by the parties after being executed. And each party much agree to using an electronic agreement, as opposed to a traditional one of ink and paper. Legally, the originator of the agreement is bound by the contract, provided that they consented to sending it. This becomes a problem when it is hard for each party to verify the identity of the other, and confirm who sent the digital agreement.

Why You Should List Your Business on Local Search Directories

In online marketing, the greater the visibility of your business, the greater the chances of conversions. As of today, nearly every company wants to leverage getting qualified leads more quickly and efficiently than their competitors. Other than online marketing campaigns and advertisements, business listings on local search directories are an effective way to get more exposure and are affordable, too.

Bright Local states that 31% of SEM activities are focused on building local SEO strategies. Despite that, seosydneypro.com.au says that some businesses may fail to understand the ability of local search directories, even though 8 out of 10 people would look up those places when finding products, especially services such as electricians and plumbers. If you’re still unsure about local search directories, here are five reasons you should list your business today!

Improved Visibility

As mentioned before, most, if not all, internet users will look for local information in search directories. Hence, if your website is listed and gives the users the data they need, you have a great conversion potential. Following this, if your website is listed in several directories, then your online visibility increases.

Accessibility

With more visibility on local search directories, it will be easier for people to find out more about your business and contact you regarding products, services, and solutions. Effective content marketing and SEO will help you convert users into paying customers. In this case, local search directories are the gateway to your customers and vice versa.

Things You Need to do to Qualify for a Business Loan

Applying for a business loan is Australia requires you to follow a standard set of guidelines as issued by the local government. One of the preliminary requirements for a business loan is to have a detailed business plan and contingency plan prepared that informs the potential lender(s) about your venture.

While a contingency plan is not really necessary like the business plan, it can help increase your chances of being awarded a business loan. Let’s take a look at some of the things you need to consider in order to qualify for a business loan in Australia.

Questions to Ask

Once you have created a business plan, you should ask yourself the following questions:

  1. How much money do I need to borrow to start my business?
  2. What type of loan do I need?
  3. How long will I need the loan for?
  4. Can my business repay the loan in the specified time period?
  5. What interest rates, ongoing fee, and one-off terms are going to be associated with the loan?
  6. What securities can I offer to the lender?
  7. How will the securities affect the interest rate?

How to Take Your Business Offerings to Online Customers

Creating a business website is one thing, creating an online presence is quite another. To create an online presence, you need to have a live and active website that serves its purpose. Depending on the nature of your business and your target market, you must have a branding, marketing, and revenue strategy to take your business, its products, and services online.

We’re in 2015, and it’s much easier to take your products, services, and solutions online than ever before. With ecommerce developing as a sustainable platform, opening an online store gives you the convenience of scaling operations like warehousing and consignment management. Let’s take a look at three ways you can take your business products and services online.

Introduce Payment Gateways on Your Website

Once you have a website, you can create a products/services section where people can easily place an order. Good product descriptions, clear pictures, and clear terms of payment, shipment, and other details can go a long way in successfully selling online. Through organic and paid search engine optimization and social media marketing, you can route more traffic to your website that increases the potential of conversions.

For convenience, give customers the option to pay online by integrating payment methods and gateways like PayPal, Skrill, MasterCard, Visa, and cash on delivery. This allows you to sell directly from the website.

The Significance of Getting your Business Online

It’s a prerequisite that any start up or established business today must have an online presence, regardless of whether it’s an active one or just for referrals. Other more standard business strategies, from team building to customer service are still of utmost, one of the key drivers of success for an Australian business today is having an engaging and reliable online presence.

While tracking ROI on online investment can be difficult, there is no denying that a good online marketing and branding strategy can turn around the fortunes of your business. If you’re still thinking about whether or not you should take your business online, consider these factors that will change your mind!

Virtually Limitless Marketing Opportunities

Just think about this for a moment – almost 90% of the population in Australia has access to the Internet, which means there are more than 21 million Internet users in the country. However, only 52% of the people use it for business and work purposes. In other words, there’s a huge market and potential for your business on the Internet that you are wasting by not going online.

Getting your business online enables potential customers to know more about what you offer, something which they didn’t have access to, with traditional marketing strategies. Online marketing gives your business the opportunity to reach out to a large number of customers that would otherwise spend their money on your competitors.

For instance, if you are opening a new sushi bar in Melbourne, you will be able to get more customers by creating an online presence and through marketing, than with traditional flyers, brochures, and newspaper advertisements. While we are not asking you to give up on traditional marketing because human interaction can never be replaced, online marketing helps you do much more for less!

How to Setup Your Online Ecommerce Business

Do you plan to set up your very own ecommerce business? Have you planned out each detail and see great potential in your new enterprise for business success? Then what are you waiting for? Get started!

But before you set out to begin your business, make sure you know the steps to setup an ecommerce business and run it successfully in the industry without any problems.

To get started in ecommerce, you need to be aware of all the details and trends in the industry. Know the dynamics which govern the market and be aware of what you can do to make the conditions beneficial for you.

Be mindful of the following things before you setup your online business and designing profitable websites.

Know About the Work Involved In Your Online Business

To start an online store, you will need to have a clear idea of the competition in the industry, the prevalent trends and the essential factors needed to initiate a successful start-up.

Make sure that you know how to manage needs of online customers and their orders, and have a team to constantly update and add new content on the online store site. Employ the best people for managing the different marketing and social media channels and give your business the exposure and boost it deserves in the initial phase.

Marketing with style through WordPress

WordPress acts as a catalyst to promote businesses, big or small, digitally. In this global world, people opt for products that are more popular and trending. Therefore, to increase the views on your business content you must make the presentation alluring.

WordPress is not only used as a blogging website or plugin, but with the help of an expert digital marketing agency, it also facilitates in marketing your products in which you can use features such as themes that goes with the industry you are doing business in. Themes give your product a more professional outlook and are custom-built which has necessary features essential to run a business online. These themes consist of functional designs and unique varieties that you can choose from.

There are two types of themes that can be used on WordPress:

  • Paid themes
  • Free themes

You can choose from thousands of themes from a WordPress Themes List or you can invest in premium (paid) themes. Premium themes offer support and are dependable and that’s the advantage of paying for it. Some of the paid themes offer you the preference of customizing the design and page layout.

Following are some of the themes you could utilize while using WordPress:

Sparkling

This theme adds classiness to you website and is absolutely free. Bootstrap technology is used to create this contemporary and even theme. It is also consists of a number of amazing features which are available in the paid themes of WordPress. It appears exceptional on smartphones because of its sharp design and flowing arrangement. The full-screen glider feature brings attention to the images present on the website. The plug-ins it supports includes: Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, W3 Total Cache, and many others.

Online Marketing Trends

Three Online Marketing Trends Dominating 2015

Online businesses achieve commercial success in leaps and bounds for a reason in this era. Since information is literally available at our fingertips through smart devices and cloud technology, consumers are way more informed and practice caution when it comes to making purchases. So, it stands to reason that today’s marketing tactics must be tweaked accordingly as well. The following are some of the biggest trends in 2015 that have taken online marketing by storm.

  1. Valuable Content is More Important than Ever!

One of the main channels businesses are harnessing to establish authority in their industry and gain customer trust is by creating and publishing relevant content. This typically includes specific industry based information that can not only entertain target readers, but provide them insightful information regarding a brand along with its services/products. Not only does this help a business build a rapport with its demographic, but it also increases credibility both online and off. Typically, social media, blogging websites such as WordPress, videos and articles are used for such endeavours.

  1. Diversity in Social Media Marketing Trends

Social media has literally connected the world via multiple social platforms and the trend just keeps getting bigger with time. Besides offering online businesses a plethora of advertising options, it allows them to utilise multitudes of media forms and access new audiences through more channels than ever before! As a result, social media has become a staple marketing trend in the current business landscape. Now most businesses prefer to branch out and experiment with a number of networks, which in turn allows them to target specific demographics and thus create more focused business strategies.

Top 5 Tricks to Reduce Web Page Load Times

Fast loading websites hook users. On the other hand, slow websites repel visitors. Hence, to grab your web page visitors, reducing web page loading time is a must! Moreover, minimalist web design techniques that allow websites that load quickly are also ranked better on the search engines.

Here are 5 ways you can lessen web page loading time:

  1. Existing Website Speed Analysis

To decrease your web page loading time the first prior step is to check the current time taken by your web page to load. After you find out the loading time of your website, you will be able to estimate the improvement is required. You will also know whether the tricks applied are working to lessen your web page loading time.

Three free tools that can be used to analyse web page loading time are-Pingdom, Web Page Test and Page Speed.

  1. Optimize Your Images

It is essential to identify when you need to format your images and which file is ideal for the image formatting process. Certain file formats reduce the image size radically so being aware and knowing the details is necessary.

Three options most popularly used are JPEG, GIF and PNG.

  • JPEG is to be selected for those images which contain lots of colours and elaborate detailing such as in case of photographs.
  • GIF is best suited for the images that consist of a few colours such as logos.
  • PNG is the right alternative when you require transparent images with high quality.
Sam-Sorgiovanni_Sorgiovanni-Designs

Where’s Your Office Now?

These days luxury yachts are not just about having a great lifestyle of relaxation and pleasure. You’ll see many such yachts are also equipped with an office. That is so the owners can sit in comfort and entertain their guests, while still keeping an eye on their investments and other business dealings when necessary.

Nomad, a luxury yacht designed by Sam Sorgiovanni and built by Australian ship builder Oceanfast is one of the most luxurious yachts you could hope to see and has many wonderful amenities; she also has an office. So the owners can take off for overseas locations at any time without losing track of what’s happening with their business. They can have fun and enjoy their friends in such beautiful surroundings without losing sleep worrying about what’s happening at their business.

Modern up-market homes could also be designed to not only cater to the lifestyle many people enjoy, but to enable much of the hard work that goes into providing that lifestyle to be done at home. With today’s technology there are many work-related things that could be done at home if the home was set up properly with all that is needed to contact the downtown office and run a business.

Australian Man Files 50 Lawsuits, Prohibited from Filing More

The average person might only file a handful of lawsuits and require criminal lawyers in their lifetime. Many will never file a single one. Over a period of 10 years, an Australian man filed an astounding 50 lawsuits. The result is that he is now somewhat prohibited from filing any more. The man’s name is Mr  Rahman, a science teacher who is a resident in Sydney. Justice Michael Adams made the ruling, stating that the man had been using using the legal system to “harass” and “annoy” people, among other things. He is only the 12th person to be put on the register for vexatious litigation.

While Mr Rahman is still allowed to start a litigation proceeding, he must get permission from the courts first. And since he has proven himself to be such a nuisance in their eyes, that is not expected to be forthcoming. Some of his offences include attempting to re-litigate matters where a decision had already been made. In addition to that, he also sued his very own legal representatives. The result of that lawsuit was that Mr Rahman was ordered to pay them more than he had already owed.

Rahman has spent more than $500,000 in the process of filing all of these lawsuits. He is also said to be in danger of losing two houses that he owns. However, even after being placed on Sydney’s vexatious litigant register, he is still not giving up his fight. He claims that the ruling is a “crime against humanity”, and that he will go to the International Criminal Court if necessary.

Death Caused by Dementia in the Elderly and Testamentary Capacity in Creating Wills

With the number of elderly citizens increasing in Australia, more people are dying as a result dementia, as well as other similar disorders. Since people are continuing to live longer on average, they are also able to build up greater amounts of wealth. This can often lead to some difficult litigation, by people claiming that wills were made by those without the capacity to make proper decisions.

The appropriate court is the only entity with the jurisdiction required to decide on these matters. They will generally use a specific test, which includes the following requirements:

  • The person making the will needs to understand the legal significance related to creating the will.
  • They must be at least generally aware of the extent, nature, and value of their assets.
  • They must understand who might be able to claim their accumulated wealth, as well as why and how such people can make claims.
  • They must be able to decide the validity of people who make claims for the aforementioned wealth. No “disorder of the mind” should be able to skew their decisions.

In these types of circumstances, it is sometimes too easy for disgruntled beneficiaries to appear, and start litigation to overturn a will. Without proof as to the mental well-being of the deceased, these cases can be particularly trying. Even if your will is upheld in the end, the legal costs might have taken a toll on your intended beneficiaries.

Leaving a Charitable Gift in Your Will

People often think about those who are closest to them, when making a will. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing that, many Australians are starting to leave money to charities in their wills. When doing so, it is essential that legal requirements are all fulfilled, to ensure that the gift is going to actually get to your charity of choice. Simply writing down the name of a charity that you remember is not a good idea. There are more things to consider.

Things to Consider

When naming a charity in your will, it is important to consider the following:

  • The charity’s name must be included, or the name of the association.
  • You must indicate if it is actually a charity, or some other body.
  • Your charitable bequest needs to be made in the form preferred by the charity, if there is one.
  • You must find out whether you need to account for any taxes or estate regulations that might be imposed upon your gift.

Double Check the Terms of Your Bequest

It is important to ensure that your gift will actually go to the charity that you have chosen. For starters, be sure that you have the name of the charity absolutely correct. There are a lot of different charities, and you cannot simply use a general term, or assume that you have the name right. While you might have given to the charity some time ago, it might not exist any more. If the charity does not exist any more, you can choose to have the executor of your will give the gift to a similar organisation. This is a good option for people who want their bequest to go to a deserving charity, no matter what.

Steps To Set Up Your New Business

So, are you thinking of setting up your own business in the market? Have you planned out all the details and are ready to make an impact by making your entrepreneurial debut in the field of your choice?

No matter which segment of the industry you plan to enter, there are some very important steps you need to follow if you want your business enterprise to be legal and not have to face any problems in the future.

So, what are these critical steps you need to follow on all accounts in order to setup a successful business in the land of opportunity, Australia? Here they are detailed below. Make sure you don’t miss out on any one of them.

Choose a Suitable Business Structure for Your Enterprise

The structure of a company is of great importance as it plays a significant role in the growth and survival of the company in the industry. Not every business plan or structure suits every kind of company. You need to investigate all options very carefully before you make a decision.

Each type of structure has some advantages and disadvantages linked to it, and certain industries require a certain kind of company structure. The structure of your company also depends on the number of owners and type of organization being set up.

Choose from amongst a partnership enterprise, a company, a sole trader and a trust.

Listing Your Business Online

Yellow Pages are no longer the primary directory for businesses. In fact, in only five years, Yellow Pages have declined by more than 50% in use. More people today prefer using an online business directory when they are looking up for businesses. If your business is based in Australia and has yet to be listed on online directories, here are the top 10 places your business needs to have an online presence on!

  1. Google

We’ll start off with the most obvious inclusion since more than 6 billion searches are carried out on Google. Getting a business listing on Google is free, and with a great online marketing strategy, there is no telling how great Google can be for your business. Google works cohesively with other Google products to help you dominate your geographic market.

  1. Bing

Bing is a search engine by Microsoft that lets you add multiple locations for your business easily. You can upload photos, videos, and other business content on Bing listings and can also increase geospatial marketing prospects. It’s the second most active search engine so there is reason why you should list your business on Bing.

What You Will Need to Start Up Your Entrepreneurial Project

An entrepreneur seeking to make it big in the industry needs to know that there are some things that he needs to keep in mind before he makes an entry into the industry. There is a lot to see, do and organize, before you can actually think of taking a step forward and setting up your own company in the competitive Australian market.

As a young, energetic and ambitious entrepreneur, there are some important things you need to keep in mind before you start your own venture. Following is a list of some important things you will need and have to do, to have a successful entrepreneurial start-up.

A Concrete and Thorough Business Plan

The first thing that you will need is a thorough business plan which has all the details of how you aim to run the company operations, secure the finances and  design a plan for future growth. Remember, a well constructed business plan is the first step in the long line of processes which are necessary for a successful business enterprise. Without a good business plan, you can say goodbye to all your dreams of setting up a new venture, and getting any investment from financial experts or institutions. Writing a good business plan.

Training and Help

Once you have crossed the first milestone with flying colours, it is now time to understand how difficult it can be to survive in the real and highly competitive industry. While a detailed business plan is an essential requirement for success, the most difficult and crucially significant part is the execution of the plan.