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5 Technical Considerations When Starting Your Business

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StrategyDriven Business Startup Article | Entrepreneurship | 5 Technical Considerations When Starting Your BusinessIf you’re starting your own business and you don’t know what technical aspects you need to consider then don’t worry, you have definitely come to the right place. There are so many different technical considerations you need to think about before starting your business, working out whether or not you need to hire help in advance. Whilst it may take a chunk out of your start-up budget, you can relax knowing you’re not going to run into any problems. With that in mind, here are 5 technical considerations to think about when starting your own business:

Do You Have A Website Up And Running?

One of the most important parts of owning a business is ensuring you have a website up and running. Although it doesn’t equal success for every business, most business owners have found that creating a website has increased their visibility ten-fold. Whilst you can set up a site on your own, often it’s better to hire both a designer and a developer who can help you put together the best possible solution. For tips and tricks when it comes to hiring a website team, you can visit this site here.

Do You Need To Consider Hosting And Servers?

Although this may sound a little too technical, you need to think about both hosting and servers, especially if you have a large business. If you have a business that has the scope to grow, you may want to consider hosting your site, your data and your systems on your own server. If that’s the case, you can visit Linux VPS for more details.

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Have You Thought About Email Addresses Across The Business?

If you’re going to be hiring a team of people when you start your business, everyone is going to need their own personal email address. Whilst this may seem unimportant to begin with, it’s important you have this set up from the start to avoid any breaches of data. Alternatively, if you want to have a variety of different inboxes depending on the enquiry, you will need to have separate email addresses for each inbox. For more information when it comes to setting up several email addresses at once, you can visit this site here.

Have You Considered Security And Protection?

When it comes to technology within your business it is important you’re doing everything you can to protect your data and your IT systems. Whether this means downloading antivirus and malware software or taking precautions when it comes to GDPR, you need to be sure your business is technologically safe.

Are You Going To Be Using Social Media?

Finally, are you going to be using social media within your business? Whilst this may not be considered a form of technology to some, using social media to grow your business requires a lot of knowledge when it comes to tech. Whether it’s setting up your accounts, building a following or using ads to reach new customers – you need to have a certain level of skill in order to use social media for business.

Are you starting a business soon? What technical considerations do you need to think about before you get started? Let me know in the comments section below.

Working Out Your New Business on a Shoestring Budget

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Starting a New Business| Working Out Your New Business on a Shoestring BudgetThe internet has streamlined everything in our life—this is a clichéd statement that gets repeated in what we read, hear and see. We often quote this statement ourselves. However, is it absolutely true? For instance, many people believe that starting out a new business is as difficult as it was, say, 20 years ago. They maintain that working out on a shoestring budget is still a tricky rope to tread no matter if you are online or offline.

We can’t deny that steering through the formative phase of a business with limited monetary resources is no mean feat irrespective of the day and age. However, it is also true that the internet helps in any such endeavor. Even if doesn’t ease it out completely, it surely reduces the difficulty level of starting out a business from scratch and on a shoestring budget.

In this article, we are going to discuss how one can work out their business dream with limited resources and how the internet can come in handy in this regard.

Making and Pitching Business Plan Online

If you are on to capital collection for your startup, then you definitely need to create a business plan to reach out to investors. Taking a conventional route with the creation and pitching a business plan is itself a costly affair. You might have to hire a specialist to make you a business plan. After that, you have to bring that plan to the tables of people that matter. It’s obvious that this approach needs both your time and money.

You can do both planning and pitching online without spending a buck. And if you don’t sure about the free business templates, you can get fully professional business plan services at a minimal cost. Similarly, you can pitch your idea through the internet. The business plans you will find on the internet are so self-explanatory that the investors will know if they need to call you to have a one-on-one meeting.

In short, you can save a considerable amount of resources on making and proposing your business plan if you are using the internet rightly.

Start out as an LLC

There are different business categories in the legal framework that are assigned to every new business. We would recommend you to choose the LLC (Limited Liability Company) categorization for your business. To begin with, being LLC is the most advantageous option for any new and small business from many legal and operational aspects.

Moreover, you don’t need to allocate a big chunk of money to complete the registration of your business as an LLC. You can do it yourself online without spending more than $100 dollars for registering anywhere in the US. Lastly, you don’t need any legal aid while filing the online LLC forms, which means you are saving yet another cost.

Even if you have the dream to make your business a C-corporation, we would suggest you start out as LLC. You can shift to your preferred classification anytime you want. Forming LLC will not just save you cost, but it also involves fewer risks.

Secure Intellectual Property

Today, when startups are mushrooming at a very quick rate, it has become really important for any new entrepreneur to secure its intellectual property at the earliest. Amidst all the informational proliferation all the time, you can’t keep your business plan and trademark under the cover for long. It’s also possible that someone else will come up with the same plan as you and have it formally patented while you are still mulling over it.

In short, the better business sense suggests that one should register their intellectual property at the onset. If you don’t have enough money at the start to hire costly experts to do this on your behalf, don’t just sleep on it for any other time. The US Patent and Trademark Office now offers its services online. From trademarks to patents and copyrights, you can register every piece of intellectual property online for a few hundred bucks.

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Arrangement of Office Space

No matter how virtualized our lifestyle gets, we still need to operate through physical spaces. Even if you are planning on to start out an online business, you will need to have some physical space to operate from. Getting a full-fledged office in commercial zones seems like an insurmountable task when you don’t have enough money to work with.

One way to steer out of this tricky spot is to go for virtual office space services where you and your team can remotely work without needing any physical space or desk. However, this idea can’t work for all business plans, particularly not for the ones where you have to meet clients in person and call meetings. In such cases, the need for physical office spaces becomes inevitable. The internet can also come in handy to find physical office spaces.

There are entrepreneur outreach programs and incubators that offer physical office spaces, conference rooms and other business amenities at the fraction of the price of the main real estate market. You can start your journey to find office space from here.

Make the Most of Cloud Computing and Pay-as-you-go Software Subscriptions

This is where the internet helps budding businesses like a guardian. With Google providing so much free online storage and Amazon providing web services at exceedingly marked down prices, you don’t need to invest heavily on you digital and software infrastructure initially.

Make the Most of Social Media

This is another domain where the internet provides some unmatched benefits. For instance, you can save the entire cost of your marketing if you are using social media the way it should be. With search engine optimized curation of content for platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you can reach out to your target market without spending a single cent.
Obviously, not every business plan can execute in the same manner. It has its own peculiarities. Nevertheless, the points that we have discussed here will surely help in working on any business idea with strained budgets.

Managing your time more effectively as CEO

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Managing your time more effectively as CEOThe responsibilities of a Chief Executive Officer are seemingly endless. From managing strategic direction, evaluating group and company operations to communicating with various stakeholders – the daily schedule of a CEO can be relentless. There are never enough hours in the day, and for business leaders this is certainly true. So, if you’re a relatively new CEO or you’ve been at the helm for a while – how can you manage your time more effectively?

Master Delegation

The most important thing any business leader can do to manage their time more effectively is improve their delegation skills. It can be tempting to control and oversee every aspect of a business, particularly if you’ve built it from nothing, but it’s impossible to do this as a company grows. In order to delegate effectively, you must have the right team around you and an appropriate structure beneath you to support this. This includes people that you trust to get the job done, and competent employees that you can rely on.

Travel Smart

CEOs can spend a significant amount of time traveling between meetings, offices and partners. Therefore, being smart with this time is an absolute must. For example, you could opt for private jet rental instead of commercial flights to save time by avoiding busy airports, and give you more flexibility when it comes to multi-destination trips. It’s also important to make best use of the time while traveling to free up space elsewhere in the day. You could use your travel time to power through some emails or catch up on some work that doesn’t require much collaboration.

Reserve Time

Much is demanded of CEOs from others in the organisation, and as such, a large proportion of their day can be filled with meetings and other scheduled commitments. It’s essential that you reserve some time each day or week for your own priorities, work or even just for a 10-minute breather. Pockets of time here and there can help to boost productivity and break up the day. Reserving time for yourself also relies on delegation – if someone else can take one of your meetings per day, you’ll automatically create more time for yourself to work on other projects.

Power Sessions

Being a CEO is all about imagining and developing the big picture, but you can still get caught up in the intricacies of operations. Use power sessions, or periods of intense focus, to blast through the more mundane or administrative tasks that you will undoubtedly have to do every once in a while. The same goes for emails – reserve a time slot to power through your inbox and you will almost certainly clear it quicker than if you have your mind on other things.

The Impact of Packaging on Your eCommerce Sales

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article | The Impact of Packaging on Your eCommerce SalesPackaging is one of the most crucial elements of an eCommerce store and it can determine the level of success your business experiences. The way you package your product goes a long way to attracting potential customers, appealing to your target audience and differentiating your brand from the competition.

With an eCommerce business, you don’t have the benefit of customers being able to pick your products up or to talk to them face to face about your offerings, so you’re reliant on first impressions. That’s where packaging comes in to win new customers, retain existing ones and boost sales.

A rising demand for sustainable packaging

Sustainability has become an increasingly prominent issue for customers in recent years, and consumers want the products they buy to be packaged in a sustainable, environmentally-friendly way. eCommerce businesses need to be sure they’re not overpacking their products which will contribute towards excess and unnecessary waste. They also need to ensure that the materials they use are recyclable or compostable to ease the burden placed on our planet.

Sustainable packaging comes in various forms and there are many packaging strategies for eCommerce businesses to try, from shipping in smaller packages to using biodegradable alternatives and plant-based solutions. These options improve your brand’s reputation, lower shipping costs for your business and increase sales.

Increased scrutiny from consumers

With the rise in online purchasing, businesses need to do all they can to connect with consumers on a personal level. In eCommerce, a customer’s perceptions of a brand are primarily based on their initial unboxing experience, so they’ll be checking for packaging damage, whether the item arrives in good condition and how the delivery experience was for them. Damage and faulty goods can negatively affect your reputation and lead to customers going to a different supplier, so the way in which you package your items makes all the difference.

This is even more important with food products. Customers have much higher standards when it comes to consumables, so you need to think about the item you’re selling and how best to package it to preserve the integrity of the product. For example, serving up one of the nation’s most popular drinks, tea bags are sensitive to light and moisture. As such, businesses in this niche need to choose packaging that provides a barrier to these elements to ensure the customer receives the product in the same condition as when you packaged it. Likewise, a company selling bath products needs to be sure the contents of a customer’s orders will remain intact and won’t absorb moisture.

The importance of visual appeal

While it’s true that packaging serves a practical function, there’s also a fantastic opportunity for eCommerce businesses to play with the design of their product and shipping packaging to elevate their brand presence and entice customers to buy. On average, customers form an opinion about a product in just 3 seconds, so you don’t have long to get their attention and keep it. Visuals are essential for representing your brand in the right way and could be the difference between a customer choosing to buy from your online business versus another.

You can use packaging design to convey your unique brand identity and messaging in a clear and concise way, so customers are immediately aware of what your business is about. Make sure your colours and fonts are cohesive with your brand and that you’re clearly displaying your business name, logo and trademarks so consumers instantly know that it’s your brand they’re purchasing from and will recognise your products from their aesthetically appealing designs.

Greater customer loyalty

Great packaging could spell the difference between a customer using your business again or switching to someone else, so it pays to take this into consideration. Consider if someone is purchasing a gift for a friend or relative. The packaging of your product could have a significant impact on whether they’re likely to consider your brand or someone else’s, and whether they’re likely to consider you again in the future.

Customer loyalty is an argument for considering custom packaging for your eCommerce goods, setting your products apart from the rest of the industry and making the design unique to your brand. Custom packaging is an underused marketing tactic that would put you a step ahead of your competition, but it also gives you the opportunity to really hone in on what your customers are looking for and provide it to them. Getting creative with the design, from the size, shape and functionality to colours and finishes, will delight your customers and encourage them to think of your business when they need to make a purchase.

Key takeaways

eCommerce businesses have to take packaging into account for a number of reasons, particularly if they want another effective method of boosting their online sales. Packaging plays an important role in protecting the interior items, providing a great service to customers and improving brand reputation and loyalty. There are so many opportunities to make packaging a focal point of a product, from playing with different designs to make your items stand out on the digital shelves to choosing sustainable materials that will give you eco points with consumers.

The main goal when it comes to increasing sales through packaging is to ensure that the style of packaging you choose is suitable for the products you’re sending out to customers and that the appearance matches up with the impression you want to give your customers.

Make Your Workplace More Hybrid Friendly For 2022

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | Make Your Workplace More Hybrid Friendly For 2022Let’s set the scene.

After spending months on end working at home throughout the various lockdowns, your employees might finally be coming back into the office with a different mindset. The pandemic has ushered in a change to workplace expectations and, predominantly, a successful transition towards remote working.

Looking ahead to 2022, employees are keen to carry on their work in a more flexible manner, dividing their working week between spending time at home and in the office.

At first, you – as their employer – think this is a great idea, getting staff back inside and gradually reintroducing them into office life. But then, over time, you start to notice difficulties and issues starting to arise with this remote hybrid working setup.

You question what you can do to resolve it and start to grow increasingly concerned at how much it will cost – both financially and morally – to set up the hybrid working arrangement your office requires.

You turn to the web for answers and it is that which brings you here. Well, we have some good news – we are here to help.

Hello hybrid working

If the above situation sounds familiar, don’t worry.

From making a few technological upgrades here and there to simply learning to trust your hybrid staff, there are a number of ways you can create a workplace that is as hybrid-friendly as possible.

Listed below are just a few ideas to get you started:

1. Consider investing in training

Hybrid working is still a new concept to a lot of employers so there is no shame in consulting an expert for their help.

Rather than you going for a gung-ho, trial-and-error type approach, hybrid management training coursesare designed to provide you with all the skills you need to not only firmly understand what hybrid working is but, more importantly, how to prioritise your affiliated workers.

Plus, with the world of work looking like it’s heading towards remote working for the long term, investing early could be a great port of call, allowing you to stay ahead of the competition, attract better employees and establish a much sounder workplace environment.

2. Prioritise communication

When the coronavirus pandemic first struck, many business owners and managers scrambled to find new ways of effectively communicating important information both internally and externally.

Whether it be via Slack, email, Zoom calls or some other form of messaging service, it’s important to continue to share information in this way so that nobody – especially your hybrid workers – feel like they’re being excluded.

If anything, you should try to over-communicate at every opportunity and make every effort to maintain online meetings as you normally would have. That way, you will help ensure all of your workers receive the information at the same time, creating a much more spirited working atmosphere.

3. Re-consider your benefits package

For hybrid workers, many of the perks of working in the office are often missed out on. So, from cakes in the canteen to in-house gym memberships, whatever your current benefits package may be, it could be worth revising it to make it more appealing to hybrid workers.

Say, for example, you have employees on your books who work miles away from the office and would struggle to commute in and out on a regular basis. By subsidising a gym membership cost in their local area instead, or providing them with the opportunity to come to you with their ideas, this could make a big difference to both their happiness in the role and their level of productivity.

4. Consider the mental health ramifications

Working remotely can be a challenging experience, especially for the more extroverted of your employees. Therefore, it’s important to normalise discussions around how hybrid working feels, providing your employees with a platform to open up and, ultimately, manage their mental health.

Whether it be through setting up a virtual meditation room, a social hangout space or simply hosting regular one-to-one meetings with your staff, the more you can do to demonstrate to your hybrid workers that they’re in your mind as much as your in-office workers, the harder they are likely to work as a result.

5. Collaborate and keep everyone online

The foundation of any successful hybrid working team is having consistent collaboration between employees. Without it, staff can quickly start to feel undervalued and seek fresh opportunities where they will be more appreciated.

Therefore, to prevent this from happening in your workplace, make sure to always keep your hybrid workers in your way of thinking, always listening to their ideas even when they can’t attend the in-office meetings.

What’s more, to encourage this concept of sharing ideas even further, make sure everyone is always online and visible at the same time as one another.

Just because your in-office workers will have their colleagues to interact in person with, hybrid workers may feel a little left out in the cold without having the opportunity to freely communicate with their fellow colleagues online.

Future workplace trends

The coronavirus pandemic has forever changed the world of work, not only leading to questions over whether the traditional five day working week is still viable but also steamrolling the transition towards remote and hybrid working.

While it still seems very much a new workplace trend, looking ahead to 2022 and beyond, hybrid working appears to be here to stay. Therefore, the more you can do to ensure your office is set up correctly and your staff’s needs are met, the more productive and hybrid-friendly your business will be in the future.