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Small Business Advice

Is Your Small Business A Zombie?

by | Oct 28, 2023 |

Is your small business a zombie business?

Zombie busi­nesses are out there, and whilst they aren’t exactly coming to eat your brains, it takes brains to avoid sharing their fate. Your small business may even already be a zombie business — or slowly becoming one, without you even knowing it! If that doesn’t sound healthy, that’s because it isn’t.

What Is A Zombie Business?

A zombie company is a business entity that barely manages to stay oper­a­tional. It may earn just enough to keep running or may rely heavily on lenders to stay afloat, but isn’t earning enough to pay for its own growth, or to reduce its debts. That often puts it just one unlucky event away from col­lapse — making it a high-risk pro­pos­ition for investors.

To be fair, most busi­nesses start like that.… Read the rest 

How To Start A Small Business Website: The Essentials

by | May 29, 2023 | , ,

Planning to start a small business website

If you have a small business, or are thinking of starting one, you need a website. There’s a lot to con­sider though — and many small busi­nesses fail because they’ve over­looked one or more of the essen­tials. So here’s how to start a small business website.

Ready? Let’s begin!

What Every Small Business Needs

First, there are a few things every business needs. Hopefully you’ve con­sidered these already, but let’s cover them briefly, just in case.

A Good Offer And A Realistic Target Market

Targeted marketing

Effective tar­geting is vital for sales.

The key words here are “good”, “real­istic” and “target”.

Startups often hope to sell some­thing they like to “everyone”. That rarely works — espe­cially if no-one else sells any­thing similar. If there’s no com­pet­ition, the market may not exist, or may not be sus­tainable.… Read the rest 

How To Avoid The Cheap Website Design Trap

by | Jan 30, 2023 | ,

Cheap website design problems

A lot can go wrong with cheap website design — and often does!

How Cheap Websites Often Kill Small Businesses

Small busi­nesses often search for “cheap website design”. That’s under­standable, but there’s a catch.

Underinvesting in your website will cost you far more in the long run. It can even cost your entire business.

This is not a pitch. It’s a warning. Over the past 25 years, I’ve rescued many small firms who made this mistake. So I’d rather help you avoid it. It may not be what you want to hear, or what flaky mar­keters want to sell you, but it’s the truth. This page explains why it’s true.

Also, that does not mean every website needs a five or six figure budget. What it does mean is that simply seeking the cheapest web design you can find is likely to cripple your business.… Read the rest 

How Procrastination Kills Projects

by | Jul 5, 2022 | ,

Procrastination kills projects. Life goes faster than you think.

Life goes faster than you think.

I was going to write about how pro­cras­tin­ation kills pro­jects seven months ago. That article wasn’t going to be so personal.

Then life got in the way. As it always will, if you let it. So what happened?

Out of the blue, my partner of over 25 years got a dia­gnosis so ter­ri­fying that we had an emer­gency wedding. “Emergency” as in, we woke up that morning not knowing we’d be married by teatime.

Eternal thanks to the Newport Registry Office, the Royal Gwent Hospital, and the Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff for facil­it­ating that. Even more so for making her con­dition more man­ageable for now.

Yeah, writing a blog post pales into insig­ni­ficance in the face of that, doesn’t it?… Read the rest 

Why Small Businesses Need Professional Websites

by | Jun 15, 2022 | ,

Professional websites are marketing vehicles

Professional web­sites are mar­keting vehicles

Professional web­sites can seem like big invest­ments to small business owners. Online mar­keting is such a huge topic that it can be hard to work out where to begin.

So why do small busi­nesses need pro­fes­sionally designed web­sites? Here’s an analogy that may help.

Professional Websites Are Marketing Vehicles

Your website is your main mar­keting vehicle in the non-stop race for sales. To extend that analogy, hosting is the garage you rent for it, and your domain is the address of that garage. Site vis­itors are pas­sengers that you pick up briefly, and some of them convert into customers.

However, your vehicle won’t get far without regular main­tenance (support and updates) and good driving (active mar­keting). Leaving it in the garage achieves nothing, no matter how pretty it is or how much work you put into it.… Read the rest 

Real Human Expertise

All art­icles by Pete Wright. Why? Because my clients work with me, not an AI. So this blog reflects over 25 years of exper­ience in the Internet sector.

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