If you need to create a presence on the Internet and you already have web hosting, then there are a few things that you can do to create a professional looking site in under 30 minutes.
Blogging – WordPress
Using a blog is one of the most effective ways to build a following and create a professional web presence with little fuss.
The results won’t be immediate, but with continued blogging, you’ll soon start dominating your key search terms. Blog frequently, with no less than 300 words on topics related to the words that you’ve discovered people use when searching for your products or services.
WordPress is software that is completely customisable and can be used for practically anything you need. There is both a downloadable version, suitable for parking at your web host (e.g. www.myblog.com), as well as more limited online version (e.g. myblog.wordpress.com).
Due to the flexibility of WordPress, you can tailor the look of your blog according by downloading hundreds of free WordPress themes, or buy purchasing one that better suits your needs. You can also engage WordPress designers to create bespoke themes at a later stage if you wish to add to the unique nature of your blog.
These days, it’s possible to use specially designed software to convert or transform your WordPress blog into a Joomla Site, so that if later, you want to give your blog greater functionality and potential, then it’s possible.
Content Management – Joomla
Joomla is a powerful Content Management System, or CMS, which easily allows you to build your own website. Many successful businesses that do not want to spend a fortune on designers fees and wish to retain complete control of their website choose Joomla software. Joomla is easy to use, flexible and can be tailored to your precise needs. It’s completely free to download and there’s a great deal of help and support both on Joomla’s website and across the Internet.
A content management system will help you to get found on the Internet. The CMS organises and maintains all of the different content on your website and presents it to you in a way that makes it very easy for you to create, edit and publish your content to the website. With Joomla you can add music, text, photos, video – whatever you need, it’s all very simple. The main advantage of using Joomla is that CMS systems like this do not require you to have any programming skills, so once you’ve mastered the basics of Joomla, you can quickly create great looking pages without the need for technical expertise or experience.
Forums/Community Site – SimpleMachines
A great way to create interest in your site, build online credibility and drive traffic towards your products or services is to create a forum or community site. A great way to add an online community to your website can be found at Simple Machines Forum. They offer a professional software that’s completely free and only takes a few minutes to setup and get running. It has a completely customisable layout and unique technology allowing your website and the forum software to work together seamlessly.
A forum is the perfect tool for bringing people to your site. There they can express their opinions on a range of subjects, all under your watchful eye, and every comment or question they add helps you to attract more people to your site.
So what are you waiting for? Do you want to create a professional looking website quickly and with no fuss? Try WordPress, Joomla or SimpleMachines, but when you need a place to host your new website, then go to Gradwell, our Internet services are designed specifically for business, so visit www.gradwell.com/email-web/web for more details.
Businesses and individuals across the globe are becoming more aware of their carbon footprint than ever before.
We have all learnt to switch off lights in empty rooms and turn off the tap while brushing our teeth but the expectancy on us to do more to stop global climate change is increasing.
It can be hard to see what more you can do if you are already very conscious about your carbon footprint but perhaps your work or business life has not had as much scrutiny as your home life.
With all the great advancements in technology surely there are alternatives that many businesses may have overlooked. Here are a few of our suggestions:
Cut Your Travel With VoIP
How often do you travel across town for a ten to thirty minute meeting? Cut the cost of travel and the price to the environment by exploring the benefits of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Call conferencing features enable you to hold meetings over several sites on one phone system – saving time, money and emissions.
If you would like to enhance your meeting then you can use services like GoToMeeting (www.gotomeeting.com) where you can share your screen, and therefore PDFs, spreadsheets, presentations, video etc with all the meeting participants. It will add extra interaction to your meeting and help add the visual element conference calls lack.
By holding meetings ‘online’ you can easily work from home meaning; you don’t have to drive to work, or drive around all day to meetings. Cutting transport emissions is key to the Government’s ‘Low Carbon Transition Plan’. It’s not just great for your company’s green image, but also your budget.
Why Run Two Offices?
Think about all the things that are needed to run an office. Electricity for your computers, phone system, servers, lighting, air-con etc. And then there’s the gas for your heating systems, staff facilities. Why not seriously cut costs and do your bit for the environment by encouraging your staff to work from home?
Not only will you cut emissions from reducing travel to an office but you’ll also be using almost the same amount of energy that is used to heat and light your home anyway!
If you are concerned about accessing your files and you still have an ‘office machine’ then you can remotely log into your work computer by installing free programme LogMe In (https://www.logmein.com) or ask your IT consultant about remotely accessing your server.
Accessing files wherever you need them also reduces the amount of hard copies you have to make, saving paper, ink and energy on printing those long documents – which are usually only read over once or twice before being discarded.
There are also other hidden benefits to working from home such as reduced stress, increased productivity and no train delays or traffic jams.
Gradwell is keen to assist their customers to reduce their carbon footprint. One such client Sustain IT (http://www.sustainitsolutions.co.uk) has already adopted this as part of their corporate culture and reducing their carbon footprint is seen as a vital part of their company policy, with VoIP being the centre and catalyst for this.
“Initially we had not thought of our carbon footprint. However we now consider it to be a vital part of our Company Policy. Internet Telephony helps us to reduce our employee travel and therefore reduce the impact on the environment that commuting is having. So anything we can do as an employer to encourage our staff to use home working or increase the use of the public transport network and cycling has to be good for the future of our children and the planet.”
Everyone making a small change will make a big difference to the planet – and it can benefit your business too. Choose Gradwell VoIP to start reducing your carbon footprint today.
In the current climate it serves to be one step ahead of the game. Increasing the efficiency of staff will ultimately cut costs and increase your profits. Perhaps you have reception staff in each of your local offices doing the same job – answering phones.
What if you could pool your call takers in one place and still use local numbers for your customers and clients to call?
You could make significant savings by reducing hours or even assign your staff with new tasks designed to address other shortfalls in their location.
We know of a number of small and medium businesses in the United Kingdom that are looking at cost cutting measures to ensure the survival of their company through the downturn. Many are considering closing some of their local branches. However, the customers will still have the same number saved in their phones and on old written correspondence. It’s likely that they will still try calling the same local number. Do you want to lose out on their custom?
If your business is considering a similar measure, but you are concerned about losing a proportion of your loyal customers, you can simply port the phone number to Gradwell’s business VoIP, the Voice over Internet Protocol service. This way, you can keep the same old telephone numbers alive and not worry about missing out on losing customers because you can just have their calls answered from your main office. Branch closures are tough, but it doesn’t mean close of business for everyone. You can use VoIP to keep your business functioning, even at the toughest times.
When finances are tight, then profits really matter; do you really need to keep a receptionist working on quiet afternoons in each branch? We know of a successful optician who runs their branches with fewer staff on a Friday afternoon because one office can handle all the calls coming from over twenty-two of the branches. Now that seems like a great way to cut costs doesn’t it? With VoIP it’s possible to cut expenditure and cut calling costs at the same time.
Furthermore, while you’re cutting the number of staff hours that you need to run your organization, you can also extend your opening hours by routing all of your after-hours calls through to a central reception. You don’t need to have a separate office for each number, you can have all calls routed straight through to a single receptionist, or if you have high call volumes, a single office of receptionists. Seriously, how many receptionists do you actually need? With Gradwell VoIP, you can set up your phone to identify the precise type of call that’s coming in and direct it to the next available receptionist or automatically send it to voicemail, if it’s non-essential.
What if you needed to move your entire operation to a different country to cut costs? You’d still want to maintain the same low cost local numbers for your customers? Well, it’s simple, using VoIP, your number stays the same wherever you go, at still a fraction of the cost of traditional telecommunications companies. Sound like a plan?
VoIP (Voice over IP) offers businesses the lead when it comes to communications. It’s a cost-effective, flexible and professional option for businesses that want to benefit from the cutting edge of communication technology.
But can VoIP (or Internet telephony) really help your company improve its marketing? Well, the short answer is yes. Clearly, the most frequently given reason that people switch to VoIP from traditional calling plans is the amount of money that can be saved. VoIP uses the Internet to call, which can massively reduce your calling costs, especially if you call long distance or overseas.
VoIP offers many more advanced features than regular landlines could ever provide. Nevertheless despite the technological advantage and the greatly reduced costs, it’s the marketing benefits that must not be so easily overlooked.
When VoIP is used for business, it helps to improve the relationship and communications with your clients. The VoIP system allows you to easily track and monitor calls and offers a professional front for anyone calling you. You can create specific numbers and attach them to particular promotions, products or services. Your staff can answer the phone with this already in mind and offer the caller a specific greeting that’s particularly targeted to the promotion, product or service that’s associated with that particular phone number.
By choosing to use a range of phone numbers for different types of marketing (newspaper ads, emails, website or poster) you’ll be able to tell which campaign is the most successful and tailor your future marketing strategy accordingly.
Using Gradwell’s unique VoIP control panel, you can produce monthly reports showing precise call statistics : how many calls were made to your numbers, which number was used most frequently, how long the call were and more. You can also relate the data to the productivity of your employees for motivational purposes. Reports can be exported and circulated for analysis in your marketing strategy meetings.
While each of your marketing methods may display a different number, all of the calls can be directly routed to come through to just one desk, one office or a whole call centre. Furthermore, when someone calls one of your VoIP numbers, a short piece of text can be displayed to your staff telling them which product, service or promotion the caller is interested in learning about, preparing them for the call. It really is that simple to improve your marketing efficiency and reporting with VoIP.
Is your business based in one place but you want to expand your coverage area to the next town?
VoIP can help you.
With a local VoIP number, you can give your customers and clients the assurance and low-cost calling charges of dialing a local number.
You can obtain a VoIP number for the next town or city, or even the next country and have phone numbers for all the different sales areas ring through to the same phone in a single base of operations.
An example would be a company in Leeds and looking to widen their sales perimeter to include Manchester, Birmingham, London or Paris. Rather than opening up an office in that city, with all of the capital costs involved, they can simply print their local phone number for that town in their Yellow Pages or Telephone Directory. All the calls can be routed through to a central office and services can be advertised anywhere, widening the coverage area and really letting online marketing mean global sales opportunities. You can choose a local number from a choice of over 650 UK area dialing codes, which means your customers will get that same familiar local feeling, wherever you’re based. If you want a local number for the USA, Europe or the Middle-East, there is a wide range of local, national and toll-free numbers available to you.
Wherever you set up your VoIP account, you bring existing number with you, so you’ll still maintain the integrity of having a local number, but the possibilities for your telephony has now increased ten-fold. Should you be looking to offer your customers a freephone number instead of a local number, then it’s just as easy to set up an 0800 number as it is to set up a local one.
Imagine a taxi company that served only Bristol, but it wanted to include Cardiff too. Does it need to set up an office in Cardiff or does it simply need a local VoIP number for Cardiff and handle all the calls through the Bristol office? It’s the same for florists and courier services too – give out a local number and let your central hub take the calls. It’s not complex; it’s a straightforward, hassle-free solution to your telephone issue.
Do you travel for business meetings with many clients in many different cities? Create a local presence for your business and help the customer feel closer to you. You can hand out business cards with local numbers for Birmingham, Hamburg, Tokyo or Sydney, helping the client feel closer to you. The client’s happy because they don’t have to call long distance or international to get hold of you and you’re happy because you can track where the business has come from.
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