Website design has gotten quite stale over the past couple of years. Thanks to all of the easy-to-use website building services and applications, it’s never been easier to put together a website in just a few clicks. To make things easier, there are thousands of templates available online that will help you create a wonderful page that can be modified to your liking.
Unfortunately, many websites have become static pages of information that don’t provide much value or content to visitors. In this post, we’ll be covering a couple of unique ways to help make your website a lot more dynamic and interesting.
Add video and sound content
Video and sound content is easy to host on a website thanks to embeds with YouTube and other services. This can turn your website into a centralised location for all of the content you’ve put onto the internet and makes it easy for visitors to find your work. This also allows you to link your website with social media platforms and other similar services, allowing you to grow your audience on multiple different platforms at the same time.
Keep in mind that you can also add video and audio content to your website by uploading it directly, but this can use a lot of bandwidth so it’s usually best to host it somewhere else and link to it. This puts less strain on your server and means you’re less likely to reach a bandwidth cap.
Use an API to provide up-to-date information on things
An application programming interface (API) is essentially a way to interface between different kinds of software and hardware. In the context of a website, an API can help you grab data from another service, piece of software, or website which stays up to date, meaning you don’t manually need to change things.
For example, using a cryptocurrency API means you can display the latest prices for certain currencies that you choose. This is updated automatically so you don’t need to manually input the prices or how much it’s changed. This is a great way to provide live information to your visitors and is a great way to make your website more dynamic.
Use social media tools
You can easily add social media widgets that display the latest posts from your accounts. For instance, you can add a live Twitter feed that shows the latest messages from accounts that you choose, and there are also options for Instagram, Facebook, and other popular social media platforms.
This allows people to engage with your content on various social media platforms, thus increasing your exposure. You can even see where your pages are shared so that you can directly interact with your audience if you want to.
While building your own website can be tricky, it’s important to consider all of the unique features that you can add which makes your website stand out from the competition. Making a website more dynamic can provide a lot more value and generally makes your website a lot more interesting.
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If it hasn’t happened yet, it’s bound to come soon — your employee wants to transition to working remotely full-time. Maybe you’ve had to experiment with remote working in the last year like much of the world or perhaps your team members have friends or family members that have discovered how great remote work can be for quality of life and now they want their own shot at making it work.
Before you write off the idea completely, it’s important to consider the benefits of offering remote work to your employees. From helping with recruitment to reducing expenses, offering flexibility in work location can be a great alternative to a traditional office for the right employee. It takes planning, great communication, and a little creative thinking but it’s an idea worth considering.
Before you dive in to offering remote work as an option for your team, here are four best practices to consider.
Set clear expectations from the start
As with any new working arrangement, setting clear expectations is mandatory. By communicating what you expect from the beginning, you dramatically reduce the chance of conflict and disappointment later. Take the time to set clear boundaries around business hours, attendance policies for team meetings, and technology requirements (like keeping video on for calls) and in the end, both the employee and the business will benefit.
Keep remote employees engaged
It can be difficult to manage both in-person and remote team members simultaneously. Take a moment to check in with remote employees daily, either through email, virtual chat, a video call, or text and let them know they are valued. If the “out of sight, out of mind” approach is taken, employee performance and motivation can suffer and lead to unwanted turnover.
Take advantage of remote resources
Some positions are more easily adapted to remote work than others. For example, an analyst or researcher who spends a great deal of time behind a computer is more likely to adapt to a remote-working arrangement than a receptionist or assistant who answers calls and serves other team members throughout the day. However, this doesn’t mean those employees don’t deserve a shot at working from home, too! If your business requires someone to frequently answer incoming calls and yet you also want to offer a remote working arrangement, call answering makes good sense. By taking advantage of resources designed to help businesses adapt to having a remote workforce, you’re more likely to see the benefits of virtual working like having more productive employees and cutting costs on in-office expenses.
Get creative with the technology
It’s easy to fall into a rut of using Zoom or Google Hangouts to conduct yet another video conference call or relying on email to answer the latest questions about a report or project. Instead of risking employee burnout by holding every meeting via Zoom, consider getting creative in your approach. Ask everyone to take the afternoon meeting call outside and turn their cameras around so team members can virtually enjoy some new scenery. Send a fun “get to know you” poll via instant messaging on Fridays and ask team members to participate in sharing their favorite recent book or tv show. By demonstrating that technology can be used creatively, employees can see their remote-working circumstances as a valuable benefit and become more grateful in the process.
Remote working is likely here to stay so by using some of these best practices, you’re more likely to benefit from the “new normal” and might even end up enjoying it!
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If you want to take the plunge and start your own restaurant, then you are certainly not alone. So many people want to take things to that next level, but at the end of the day, you also need to face the facts. Only one out of three businesses make it past their first birthday, but there are things that you can do to ensure that your restaurant business is a success in every way.
Don’t Do it for Vanity
You probably wouldn’t choose to buy a football club because you love the game. Why would you do the same for your business? Make sure that you have a genuine desire when it comes to starting your own restaurant and also make sure that you love what you do. If you can do this, then you’ll soon find that you are able to have the best time in your business venture.
Do your Homework
Everyone knows that the secret to running a great restaurant is understanding your customers. You need to make sure that you do your research and that you also make sure that the location is good too. Would you feel more comfortable running a fine-dining establishment or would you much prefer to keep it casual? You also need to make sure that you understand your strengths and weaknesses too. Having a plan is crucial if you want your business to stand out from the rest.
Choose the Right Chef
If you cannot cook, or if you do not want to be working behind the scenes then you need to make sure that you choose the right chef. Your best investment will always be in your chef, so if you are yet to get this asset sorted, then make sure that you take the time to do this. You need to find someone who can bring someone back time and time again, not to mention that you also need to choose someone who cares as much about your business as you do.
Put Someone in Charge
You have to trust in your brigade. After all, you’re paying them, so you need them to develop and then evolve into staff who are going to keep on pushing your restaurant forward. You also need to be the boss and you need to take responsibility where possible. You have to know what’s happening in every single area of your business too. Sure, you don’t want to be a control freak, and you also need to try and listen to the opinions of your staff. This will help you to act accordingly and it will make you a better leader.
Communication is Key
The key to starting a restaurant that’s successful also comes down to communication. You have to make sure that your management are talking to your head chefs, and that they are passing on the message well. That being said, it doesn’t stop there. You also need to make sure that your staff are working as a team with the customers. They are the ones who are paying your wages, so make sure that you do your part and that you treat them well. If you can, look into the SCHADS industry award too, if you‘re hiring a team.
Get your Menu Right
Long menus tend to lead to a lot of confusion. They will have your chefs running around, not knowing what to do as well. To make things even worse, you may find that you have customers walking in or walking out. Start with a simple menu if you can, and also make sure that the produce you are dealing with is high in quality to begin with.
Quality Control
Quality is essential, and so is consistency. You need to make sure that everything that goes out, is the best it can be. There’s absolutely no excuse for having sloppy plates of food lying around in your kitchen. If you know that it is not good enough, then don’t even think about serving it. If you do, then you may find that you end up ruining your reputation, and this is the last thing that you need.
Clean and Organised
You have to make sure that you keep your restaurant clean and organised. If you don’t run an organised kitchen then you may find that things become much more difficult. You have to make sure that there is a place for everything and that you put in the work to ensure that you monitor the process you have. As things expand, you may need to tweak things to keep everything nice and organised.
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You will already use technology in one form or another within your business. Whether this is for cybersecurity or operating a webpage. However, there is a wide range of other ways technology can help. It won’t be able to take away from you and your employees bring the business on a day to day basis. But, when it is being used properly, technology can change your life and your business for the better.
Here are a few suggestions as to how technology can use technology to support business growth.
Use The Cloud
Gone are the days of storing data on hard drives. To provide more freedom and ease for data storage and access it is worth using the cloud. By doing this you will have the ease of being able to host data in an online storage account, with the flexibility of being able to invite peers or employees to access this with a simple invite. The benefit of this is not needing to spend a fortune on manual and bulky storage solutions, you have access to these documents anywhere in the world, as it is digital it automatically backs up your documents, you have an option for unlimited storage.
Social Media
You can harness the insight of knowing your audience. Social media is used worldwide and by such a wide and varied cross-section of society. With this, you really can learn about your target audience, know their behaviors, their motivators, and, in short, anything else that will help you market your business. In addition, social media is also another tool in your marketing arsenal where you can share the word about your business, your brand, and your network.
Analytical Tools
Where once you never knew which aspects of the business were supporting in it thriving and which areas needed focus and improvement, technology can help. From using it to find an ecommerce agency or finding digital tools to assess your business’s insights.
There are so many ways to improve your business, from understanding and improving site load speeds to assessing your SEO. With all this data available the sky is your limit as to how to utalize the information and change your business accordingly.
Marking Campaigns
By opting for digital marketing, you give yourself the potential to market specifically at a targetted group. You will be able to see immediate results. By being in a digital format there is also the likelihood of higher returns due to potentially being able to reach a larger audience than more traditional marketing and advertising forms.
Ease Of Communication
With recent technological advancements, communication is almost effortless. There are so many variations and ways to communicate to cover any and all business requirements. Not only is it now extremely easy to do, but now it is extremely fast and incredible low cost and affordable. With this, previous barriers have been removed and as a business you can now easily work with or collaborate with investors, business partners, manufacturer etcs anywhere in the world.
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The Point-of-Sale system, popularly known as POS, is one of the must-have tools of business owners who want their businesses to thrive. 54% of businesses now use POS to process transactions, and the total number of POS users is expected to reach 85.6m by 2025.
Why is POS the current most sought-after tool for many business owners? What advantage can POS have on your business? And what are the top POS systems to use?
This article answers all these questions in detail.
What is a POS system?
A POS system is an electronic device used by business owners to accept credit card payments and complete business transactions. A POS system is equipped with a POS terminal and software that enables sales transactions to take place.
How can a POS system improve sales for your business?
As a business owner, your ultimate goal is to reach your sales goals. And the way to go about it is to ensure you create a seamless experience for your customers and perform business transactions efficiently.
The good news is that a POS helps you achieve this and much more. Let’s check out the different ways a POS system can help grow your business.
Increased productivity
A POS system helps you get more things done.
Rather than checking balances and accounts for business transactions with manual documentation, you can easily automate all these activities with a POS system.
This means you won’t have to spend so much time trying to document daily transactions because your POS system does all the work for you.
Through this, you have enough time to focus on other aspects of your business that matter.
You will give more attention to your customers during purchases and satisfy them with top-notch customer service. The result of this? A great customer experience that paves the way for high customer retention.
Provides you with actionable data
One of the invaluable assets a business owner can have is access to vital data.
Besides providing you with your customer data, a reliable POS system gives you insights into what you have in stock and the items running out of stock.
This means you will never run out of stock on any purchase unaware, making you a dependable business owner for all your customers.
Your customers can always count on you when they need you, which increases your chances of getting high returning customers.
What’s more? You can work with the stock data your POS system provides you with to know what goods are doing well and what goods are not.
With this, you know what item to stock more and what things to put on hold. This reduces the rate of damaged goods and ensures you don’t run at a loss in your business.
Keeps your customers updated
A POS system isn’t just a medium for you to complete sales transactions with your customers. You can maximize the POS functions to impact your business by making it an effective marketing tool.
To make this happen, you can install the capture feature on your POS device to keep your customers abreast of the latest offers and promotions or new products available.
With this strategy, you can guarantee your customers will never miss a thing on your offerings and products. This simple technique can contribute to increasing sales for your business.
10 Highly sought-after POS systems for your business in 2021
When purchasing a POS system for your business, it’s important to opt for one that provides you with all the functions your business needs to excel. Below are the ten most coveted Point of Sale systems for 2021 to consider.
Lightspeed is one of the best Point of Sale systems for businesses that manage large and complex inventories.
Lightspeed helps you create several product bundles, put multiple variants in different sections, and run numerous orders from a centralized catalog.
Lightspeed gives you detailed analytics on items’ costs and items running out of stock so you can stock up before things run out.
You can access reports from any location and track your inventory from anywhere. Lightspeed offers the convenience that makes trading easy for small and large businesses.
What’s more? Lightspeed comes with an easy-to-use platform that makes transactions easy, and you won’t have to break a sweat to train your staff to sell and take payments anywhere.
Square POS is one of the most prominent POS systems used worldwide. One of the main reasons Square POS is among the top list of the best POS systems is its flexibility.
Its flexibility allows you to accept payments en-route or through standup terminals.
Whether you own a coffee shop, grocery store, or you run an online business, Square POS allows you to complete your sales transactions in the most convenient way for you.
You don’t have to purchase POS hardware if you don’t want to; you can convert your phone to your POS solution. There are also several options to choose from to suit your needs if you want a POS hardware system.
3. Helcim
Helcim Card Reader is famous for its multi-functionality.
It doesn’t only allow you to make online transactions wirelessly; it allows you to create and design your store online.
With easy-to-use templates and interfaces, you don’t have to be a designer or web developer to set up your website in minutes.
Helcim also enables you to make and accept payments from all your devices.
This means you don’t have to always be on your desktop or in your store to take and complete payments; you can make sales transactions while you are on the go, on your tablet, or mobile phone.
PayCafe is among the best POS systems to use if you plan to run your online store simultaneously with your physical store.
It enables you to complete your sales transactions from one place by allowing you to make and receive payments from online transactions and physical transactions.
PayCafe also provides you with reliable data to work with. It gives you insights on your customers’ transactions, and how well your store is doing so you can make changes and devise new strategies for what works and what doesn’t.
Shopify is among the most common POS Systems among business owners who accept payment transactions across multiple channels.
Shopify POS integrates your business transactions in one place so you can take and make payments seamlessly on any platform.
Shopify POS offers inventory management and detailed analytics. It comes with features that let you sell on social media while you are on the go and also on third-party market platforms.
Due to the effective integration Shopify POS offers for your online store and in-person store, your customers can make payments online and pick up, exchange or return purchased items from your physical store.
TorchBistro is a functional POS system for business owners in the food industry. So, if you run a restaurant, club, or bar, TorchBistro is your go-to POS system.
It comes with several functions such as table management, staff management, inventory management, data analytics, and much more.
TorchBistro lets you take orders online with your POS hardware or software. You can also purchase both and use them simultaneously for the success of your business.
Revel is one of the best POS transactions for businesses that run transactions from several platforms.
It offers a centralized system that enables you to take and make payments from different platforms from one comprehensive place.
A unique feature of the Revel app is its ability to enable you to perform transactions even when you don’t have a connection, as it makes use of both the cloud and your local network to store your data.
Toast POS system is one of the ideal POS systems for restaurants as it was explicitly customized for food-based businesses.
It comes with all the functions to facilitate sales for your restaurant business. Such as table mapping, inventory management for ingredients in store, and the feature enables you to take online orders.
Toast offers other features that let you manage your staff effectively. Such as automated payroll and labor reports features.
POS Nation is designed to be one of the best POS systems for liquor and convenience stores.
It comes with functional features like actionable analytics on sales and employees—inventory management on carton packs, purchase orders, stock details, and many more.
POS Nation doesn’t only allow you to complete sales transactions and keep track of business activities; it is equipped with built-in ID scanning and age verification features that guide you through selling to the right people.
Conclusion
A POS system is an essential tool to facilitate your business success as it offers flexible payment methods and business analytics. This article discussed the top 10 POS systems you can employ to build a thriving business. Before you proceed to choose your POS system, be sure to check out each review to help you make spot-on decisions.
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Website design has gotten quite stale over the past couple of years. Thanks to all of the easy-to-use website building services and applications, it’s never been easier to put together a website in just a few clicks. To make things easier, there are thousands of templates available online that will help you create a wonderful page that can be modified to your liking.
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