A phone number is often the very first touchpoint a potential customer has with your business. Long before they read your “About Us” page or look at your pricing, they see those few digits on your website, Google Business listing or vehicle wrap. In that split second, they get a sense of who you are, how big you are and how much you’re likely to charge.

For an Australian local business, choosing the best phone number isn’t just a technical decision. It’s a strategic marketing move. Get it right, and you build immediate trust. Get it wrong, and you might be signaling that you’re either too small to be professional or too big to care about a local customer.

Here is the deep dive into the psychology of phone numbers and why the “local office” number remains the undisputed champion for small business success.

1. The Power of the Local Landline: Stability and Trust

In an era of digital nomads and “pop-up” shops, a local landline number (02, 03, 07 or 08 area codes) acts as a digital anchor. It provides what psychologists call “social proof of permanence”.

When a customer sees a local area code, it tells them three vital things:

1. You are part of the community: You live where they live. You understand the local climate, the local suburbs and the regional expectations.
2. You have “skin in the game”: A landline implies a physical presence or at least a dedicated business infrastructure. It suggests you aren’t going to disappear overnight.
3. You are established: Rightly or wrongly, consumers associate landlines with established “office” environments. It creates a sense of professional gravity.

For a business looking to dominate a local niche, this credibility is worth its weight in gold. It lowers the barrier to that first phone call because the customer feels they are dealing with a neighbor, not a faceless entity in a different state.

In most cases, a local call is also free of charge, typically included in the caller’s monthly cap, which reduces initial friction.

2. The Mobile Number: High Touch vs. Low Scale

Mobile numbers are the backbone of the modern solopreneur, but they carry a complex set of connotations. In the context of a local business, a mobile number can be a double-edged sword.

The Pros: Directness and Accessibility

A mobile number implies that if I call, I’m going to get the person. There’s no receptionist, no automated menu and no “on hold” music. For some customers, this is a huge plus. It feels personal and urgent.

If a pipe has burst or a laptop has crashed, a customer might prefer a mobile number because it promises an immediate, human response.

The Cons: The “Man in a Van” Perception

On the flip side, a mobile number can signal a “single-person operation”. While there is nothing wrong with being a solopreneur, it can limit your perceived capacity. If you are a consultant or a professional service provider, a mobile-only presence can make you look like you’re “working out of your car”.

It can make it harder to justify premium pricing because the customer doesn’t see the overhead of a “proper” business.

3. The 13, 1300 and 1800 Trap: The Mirage of the National Brand

Many small business owners are tempted by 13, 1300 or 1800 numbers because they want to look “national”, “respectable” or “professional”. However, for a local business, this is often a strategic mistake that costs money and kills trust.

The Perceived Price Tag

To the average consumer, a 13, 1300 or 1800 number signals a large corporation. While that might sound good, large corporations are often associated with high prices and “standardised” (read: impersonal) service.

If a local homeowner wants a small repair or a local business owner wants a quick consult, they might see a 1300 number and think, “They’re going to be too expensive,” or “I’ll just be a number to them”.

The National vs. Local Conflict

Your “localness” is your greatest competitive advantage. Using a national number dilutes that authority. It suggests you could be based in a call center anywhere in the country. You lose that “neighborhood” advantage that allows you to beat out the big national franchises.

The Hidden Costs

Beyond the marketing downside, these numbers are a drain on your profits. Most small business owners don’t realise that they often pay for the incoming calls on these lines. You are essentially paying for the privilege of alienating your local customers.

It’s an unnecessary expense that adds zero value to a business focused on filling local capacity.

4. The Modern Solution: The “Virtual” Landline

You might be thinking, “But I’m never in the office! I need to take calls on my mobile”. This is where modern VoIP technology provides the perfect bridge.

A Virtual Landline allows you to have a professional local area number that rings directly through to your mobile phone. For a small monthly subscription fee, this gives you the best of both worlds:

• The Credibility of an office number on your website and business cards.
• The Directness of being able to answer the call anywhere, ensuring you never miss a lead.
• The Professionalism of having a dedicated business voicemail that is separate from your personal greeting.

But what about call charges?

This is where the Soft Phone App comes in. You can receive your calls for free on your smartphone via the Internet!

5. How to Choose the Best Phone Number for Your Niche

The “best” number ultimately depends on your specific niche and your goal for filling capacity.

• For High-End Professional Services: A local landline is nearly mandatory. It justifies your hourly rate and suggests a stable practice. If you have an actual office, it’s also good to have someone else answeting the phone.
• For Urgent Trades: A (virtual) local landline should be the primary number, with a “24/7 Mobile” listed as a secondary option can signal the speed of service.
• For Local Retail: A landline is essential. If you only have a mobile, customers may wonder if you actually have a physical shop they can visit.

May your phone never stop ringing (during business hours ),
Gal

Originally posted on What’s the Best Phone Number for Small Business?

Over-reliance on AI

Human beings give up privacy and control to gain convenience and comfort. This is how social media networks became so successful and it’s why cloud services are doing so well. Using AI is simply the next logical step.

The AI revolution presents risks that could impact society on a fundamental level. While AI offers immense benefits, a lack of human oversight and critical thinking can create new vulnerabilities.

If things continue as they are now, people will become more reliant on AI. Here are ten key risks and issues associated with this over-reliance, each one with specific notes for small businesses.

1. Job Displacement, Business Closures and Economic Inequality

As the AI revolution automates more tasks, it could lead to widespread job losses in various sectors, from manufacturing to creative industries. This could increase unemployment and exacerbate the wealth gap, as a small number of people who own and control the technology may benefit disproportionately.

Small businesses must adapt to integrate AI into their work and reduce costs. Some will close due to AI-based competition. On the digital marketing front, AI will increase productivity, but will severely damage prospects’ ability to trust online messages.

2. Loss of Human Skills and Critical Thinking

Relying on AI for tasks like decision-making, problem-solving, and writing could lead to the atrophy of our own cognitive abilities. When AI becomes a crutch, humans may lose the capacity to think critically, innovate, and make ethical judgments independently.

Since AI can “hallucinate” by relying on inaccurate data, this may increase the value of true expertise. While reducing the need for unspecialised workers and saving the cost of their wages, the cost of specialists and experts may rise.

Small businesses can differentiate themselves by taking on less work and charging a premium for reliability and human connection.

3. Algorithmic Bias and Discrimination

AI models are trained on existing data, which often contains historical biases. If left unchecked, AI systems used in areas like hiring, lending, or criminal justice could perpetuate and even amplify these biases, leading to unfair and discriminatory outcomes.

Small businesses will need to increase quality control, which can be a challenge due to the increased speed of AI-assisted production..

4. Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities

A world heavily dependent on AI is also a world with a larger attack surface. AI systems can be manipulated through “adversarial attacks,” where malicious data is used to trick the system into making mistakes. This could compromise critical infrastructure, financial systems, or defense networks.

Small businesses should carefully consider their AI’s exposure to the Internet, as well as where they store sensitive information. Using servers on their premises and/or choosing a security-minded hosting provider may be safer than using popular cloud services.

Similarly, where security matters most, it may be safer to use paper documents and (face-to-face) human communication than digital means. Have your own little anti-AI revolution

5. Erosion of Privacy

The vast amounts of data needed to train and operate AI systems can lead to an unprecedented level of surveillance. Without strong regulations, AI can be used to monitor and track individuals, collecting highly personal information that could be misused by corporations or governments.

Besides employing ways to protect clients’ data, small businesses can invest in building trust through human interaction.

6. Lack of Transparency and Accountability

Many advanced AI models are “black boxes”—it’s difficult to understand how they arrive at a particular decision. This makes it challenging to identify the source of errors or bias, and it can be nearly impossible to hold anyone accountable when an AI system causes harm.

Small businesses should integrate AI into their systems gradually and test thoroughly at every step. Despite the temptation to joing the AI revolution, it’s better to be the tortoise than the hare in this race, because this also reduces the need to update when the technology changes.

7. Creation and Spread of Misinformation

AI-powered tools can generate incredibly realistic but fake content, including text, images, and videos (deepfakes). This technology can be used to create and rapidly spread misinformation, manipulate public opinion, and sow social and political discord.

Unfortunately, this will be harder to detect as the AI revolution progresses, until it becomes (almost) impossible. For small businesses, it means the prospects and clients will likely be suspicious and the preception of uncompromising integrity in every engagement is critical.

8. Technological Stagnation

If AI provides “optimal” solutions, this could discourage human creativity and the pursuit of new, unconventional ideas. This could lead to a cultural and scientific stagnation, as we stop exploring alternatives and settle for what the AI suggests.

Small businesses that foster creativity and focus on one-of-a-kind or highly-personalised products and services will have an advantage. These will likely require more time to provide, but should justify charging higher prices.

9. Dependency on a Few Corporations

The development of cutting-edge AI requires immense computing power and data, concentrating power in the hands of a few large technology companies. This could create a monopoly on innovation and influence, giving these companies control over the very tools that shape our world.

Small businesses will need to choose their AI services carefully and even consider running them in-house or within enclosed networks. To reduce the cost of entry into the AI revolution, small businesses can start with applying AI to the 20% of the work that will bring 80% of the benefit, and possibly grow that later.

10. Ethical and Moral Dilemmas

As the AI revolution continues, AI systems become more autonomous and face more complex ethical choices. For example, a self-driving car may need to decide how to act in an unavoidable accident. Without clear ethical frameworks programmed into these systems, the decisions they make could have devastating and unforeseen moral consequences.

It’s important to identify such points within your small business and always have a human being supervising critical moral decisions.

Still unsure, or even worried about the AI revolution and what it means for you? Let’s talk.

I’m here for you,
Gal

Originally posted on AI Revolution for Small Business – Don’t Be Scared

This WordPress database optimisation technique is useful in general, but especially so if your website runs the popular WooCommerce shopping cart plugin. In just 2 steps, your pages will load at least 2 seconds faster, but often a lot more than that.

One of my clients owns a site that sells dresses and despite being hosted on a business-grade server and using various caching and minification techniques, the product pages we often slow to load. Often, the WordPress back-end (admin area) was also slow. Since page loading speed is a big factor in conversion rate optimisation, as well as search engine optimisation, this was important to sort out.

To find out what was going on, I first installed the Query Monitor plugin, which shows various issues in the PHP proccessing of the page, including slow queries. On every page load, it was showing one particular query as taking at least 2 seconds, often longer. That query was run by a core function to load all the options with “autoload = ‘yes'”.

Web discussions showed that other people were plagued by this, but the WordPress core team was opposed to addressing it with an index, or in any other specific way. I had to do it myself.

Before you read on, please note it is crucial to have a backup of your database handy, just in case.

Step 1: From table locking MyISAM to row locking InnoDB

The table wp_options used the MyISAM storage engine, which uses table-level locking. Since WooCommerce uses this table for caching sessions, and the table contained more thn 600,000 rows, there were frequent clashes between the insertion and updating of records and scanning the entire table for rows with “autoload = ‘yes'”.

So I changed the storage engine from MyISAM to InnoDB. Here’s how:

1. Log into phpMyAdmin
2. Select the database
3. Select the table
4. Switch to the Operations tab
5. Change the Storage Engine to “InnoDB”
6. Click “Go”

Step 2: Autoload index

To speed things up even further, I wanted MySQL to process only 682 rows (those with “autoload = ‘yes'”), instead of 600,000. This is precisely what an index does. Here’s how:

1. Switch to the Structure tab
2. On the 4th line for the “autoload” field, click “Index”

That same query now takes 0.01 seconds on every page and there are no more interlocked pages. Talk about WordPress database optimisation!

Final thoughts

I’ve seen recommendations to change storage engines to InnoDB on wp_posts and even all the  tables. This is probably good for sites where multiple people update and view posts concurrently. I applied this change on a large blog and it seems to run faster now.

Due to the level of locking, switching to InnoDB should produce a noticeable benefit on the WordPress back-end (admin pages), where adding and changing posts and settings no longer requires full table locking, so basically, it’s a good idea.

Here’s how (advanced, pleases be careful):

1. Replace “database_name” in the following query and run it in phpMyAdmin

SET @DATABASE_NAME = 'database_name'; SELECT CONCAT('ALTER TABLE `', table_name, '` ENGINE=InnoDB;') AS sql_statements FROM information_schema.tables AS tb WHERE table_schema = @DATABASE_NAME  AND `ENGINE` = 'MyISAM'  AND `TABLE_TYPE` = 'BASE TABLE';

2. Copy the resulting SQL statements (you may have to change the display options to show the full statements) and run them

2025 Update

There’s a plugin, Index WP MySQL For Speed, that changes the storage engine for you, adds several high performance indexes, including the autoload index, and even converts core WordPress indexes to high performance ones.

Naturally, using this plugin is safer and easier than phpMyAdmin. It also forces the user to confirm having done a backup before every change, which is great practice.

Enjoy,
Gal

Originally posted on WordPress Database Optimisation

If often see discussion on the web around the question “Is Google Search getting better?” More often than not, the consensus is that Google provides better results over time, but let’s put this question in context.

Google Search is a free service, but Google is still a company. So to answer the question “Is Google Search getting better?” we need to determine our perspective. Do we mean “better for those who search”, “better for those who pay for advertising on AdWords”, “better for shoppers” or “better for businesses”?

In fact, even in the business area, global brands differ very much from local businesses or small businesses trying to break into the marketplace.

One obvious answer is that Google Search just keeps getting better for Google the company, because it is the foundation of everything they do. Without Google Search, the other things Google does would be possible and some things would stop making sense altogether.

From a small business point of view, however, I don’t think Google Search is getting better. In fact, I think that for many small businesses, Google Search keeps getting worse. Here’s why:

1. When Google started to prefer fresh content, small businesses couldn’t compete, and even those who write and publish content are mostly getting traffic related to the free information they provide.
2. When Google started to prefer long, informative content, shopping pages lost ground, because there is only so much information you can put on a product category page or even on a product page. I mean, how long can you make a page about a USB drive or a dress?
3. When Google downgraded the importance of links, demoted web directories and made link exchange damaging to search rankings, small businesses could no longer pay to compete with information sites in order to do better.
4. Even the recent emphasis on mobile friendliness, which I wholeheartedly support, spells disaster to those small businesses that run a desktop-only website. Those who gain will do it based on their IT technology, not their products or services.

The TEDx presentation below contains some other things Google has done to improve its own situation under the pretense of providing better search. It’s an overview of Internet search evolution and a glimpse into what the future holds for us and for our children.

Like the man says, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated”. There is no way to fight this monstrous wave of change. It’s coming. The only thing we can do is see it coming and learn how to float.

Keep searching,
Gal

Photo source

Originally posted on Is Google Search Getting Better for Small Business?

By definition, business owners looking for a new website lack the technical skills to look “under the hood” of what they get. They can grasp the concept of a content management system, they recognise the name WordPress, but for the most part, they look at their website as the public would look at it, move around a bit and give their lowest-bidding web developer the thumbs up to go live.

A couple of months later, a major WordPress update comes along, with a flurry of updates to plugins and themes that must be made compatible. Most, if not all, of these updates contain bug fixes and security patches, so it’s really important to apply them. If left untouched, the website will gradually become more and more exposed and the online business will be in too much danger of being hacked.

“No problem”, thinks the hapless site owner, “All I need to do is click that Update button and my site will do the rest automatically”.

Famous last words…

What sometimes happens next is that some of the updates break the site’s layout and disable important functions, like … OMG … the “add to cart” button! Yikes! Oh shit! What now!? Should we restore the site from a backup? How will we update it afterwards? What’s all this going to cost?

And if you’re thinking this is rare, think again. I was called to fix 2 situations like this just this week and found out in both cases that the original developers did not use the proper coding methods to build the sites’ themes. In both cases, I had quoted for building the site. In both cases, the client had decided to go with a lower bidder. In both cases, it cost them dearly, because instead of using sustainable coding practices, I had to spend a lot of time discovering how things were done (badly), undo them and then rewrite them properly.

Poor man pays twice

The strange thing is that WordPress and every plugin used come with good online documentation that can be used as reference. I guess that price cutting leaves no time for research and fine tuning, which leads to sites that hang by a thread when they go live and fall apart once a significant update comes along.

In one case, I had based my quotation on the need to upload a large number of products into the shopping cart and to organise them effectively with categories, tags, variations and attributes. What I discovered was that some products were set up in a way that prevented them from being purchased when stock levels reached 1, which applied to many products. Think about it: many of the products are right there on the site, everybody can view them, but nobody can buy them.

Business owners beware. Always opt for quality over price. As my friend Avi often says:

The sweetness of low prices is quickly replaced by the bitterness of low quality

“How would I know?” I hear you ask. Good question. I was just about to tell you.

When engaging a web developer, or any other professional help, ask questions about the long term:

How long have you been working with WordPress and the particular plugins proposed for your site?

Don’t risk working with inexperienced web developers, no matter how cheap

Is there a warranty period?

The only correct answer is “Yes, of course”

If so, how long is it and are warranty fixes free?

3 months should be good. See more below

Does the warranty include fixing things broken by updates?

Aim for “my code is update proof”, but just asking this question should prompt the developer to code better

Do you offer an ongoing (paid) maintenance service?

“Yes” means this person knows what happens during updates and your site should be ready for them. You may choose not to use that person’s service, but I strongly recommend using a professional service to maintain your site

Can you provide 1-2 references of clients with similar sites from at least 6 months ago (preferably longer)?

Be sure to check those references, too, and direct some questions at the site’s quality and long term operations

How often will the site need to be updates?

If the answer to this is anything longer than “at least every 3 months”, seek someone else

Have a relaxing day,
Gal

Originally posted on Nice website! What happens when you update it?

Website owners all around the world depend on Google Search for their livelihood and spend considerable amounts of money and effort to rank well on Google Search results pages (SERPs). Google boasts delivering the best results for those who search and spends a huge amount of money and effort to make its search results more and more relevant.

Part of this effort was the recent demotion and exclusion of directory sites and archive or index pages. For small businesses, this often cuts out the “middle man” and shows links directly to relevant websites, instead of forcing potential buyers to view a list of competitors first. In a sense, these directories were stealing website traffic for their own direct revenue (through paid listings) or indirect revenue (through advertising).

Another part was the addition of Knowledge Graph, which attempts to provide direct answers to search queries on the search results page. Unfortunately, this change, despite being great for information searches, can really hamper business’ promotion efforts on Google Search. Google keeps telling us to market our business by publishing fresh, informative content, and then grabs that content, shows it directly and forgets about giving us the traffic.

A few days ago, my youngest daughter started looking for a song to sing at a school concert. We all got together and searched for songs with music that would suit her voice and lyrics that would suit her age and style. I must say it was wonderful to find the results right there on the Google Search results page and even to scroll for more results without leaving the page. We found videos, lists of songs, information about singers and more, all of which helped us on our search for a good song.

However, much of the information shown to us was taken from YouTube, a Google site we all like to use for streaming our videos for free, from WikiPedia, a community-based information site built on volunteering and donations, and sites around the net that had made the information public, but probably didn’t mean for it to be republished by Google.

I’m not legal expert, but Google seems to be republishing content without permission. On the other hand, no website owner in their right mind would ever prefer to block their site from Google Search, which makes us all silent accomplices in the global abuse of our content marketing work.

SEO just seems to be getting harder and harder, and since Google makes a lot of money from advertising, that’s hardly surprising. The number of searches that bring traffic to websites will keep getting smaller, so advertising competition will go up and with it, click prices and Google’s revenues.

But is there an upside to these changes?

I think so.

Until recently, if you searched for “buy laptop” or “ipad for sale”, you got mostly “shopper bot” sites – aggregators of products from other sites that act as affiliates for commissions. Now, however, you mostly see the actual sellers’ sites. This generally means that when it comes to commercial searches, shopping sites are likely getting more buying traffic and keeping more of the profits from sales.

So is Google Search stealing our traffic or being true to their commitment for a better user experience? Will other search engines take a different approach and gain market share or follow suit? Will a different kind of search engine spring up as a result of website owner pressure? Only time will tell…

Have a great day,
Gal

Originally posted on Is Google Search Stealing Your Website Traffic?

Online marketing consultants deal with computers, web sites and technology and the work can sometimes be frustrating, but we get to make a positive impact on our clients’ business and life and sometimes, they even take the time to write about it.

When I read the message below, I had to hold back tears, both from the sense of frustration in my client’s journey before she started to work with me and from happiness at having made such a difference. I’m very proud to post it here for everyone to see.

The message is from Michelle Kenway, who dedicates her life to helping women (and men) strengthen their pelvic floor muscles. Her clients have an embarrassing problem, which she solves through physical therapy, e-books and DVDs sold on her site, Pelvic Exercises.

When I started working on the site, the shopping cart did not work properly, the site was statically designed and Michelle was frustrated from trying to find someone to help her get sales from very healthy traffic. Here is what she wrote after 1 month:

Gal I have been wanting to tell you the following but I am so mindful of interrupting you when you are so busy, I will be brief.

To be honest I have been busting myself online for the last 4 years. I was asked to write my first book by the publisher who then passed away unexpectedly about 2 mths after publishing. I was thrown into having to promote the book myself and that’s how the site started. During this time I have lost my mum and my dad – I just tried to keep things going with the aim of getting this info out to help women, usually with mediocre response from women and minimal financial reward – it was never about that from the start for me however it is nice to receive some reward for hard work. Late last year I was seriously wondering if it was all worth it. As you know I tried to access help for the site but no one really bothered to help me out – it was all about their time and the dollar.

Since you have looked at things and sorted out issues the site has gone from strength to strength. I am getting so much satisfaction from the fact I am finally getting much needed health info to women, the number of emails I am receiving from ladies around the world who don’t have access to pelvic floor physio is just amazing. I put out my newsletter this week and the orders for my new book went crazy. This month I can actually say I have made an income for the 40 hours work I have put in.

So I just want to say thank you for making this possible, for going above and beyond, for working with commitment and precision, you have made it possible for me to continue with this, help many and have time to be here for my beautiful children too. If you ever need an advocate/testimonial/more work I am here to promote you.

Best wishes to you Gal, and thank you
Michelle

Originally posted on How I Enabled an Important Business

Amazon announced this week a new mobile phone with a solid design and many features, called Amazon Fire. Will it be a game changer and give Amazon a big advantage in the marketplace? And what does it mean for small business owners?

Amazon Fire comes with 4 cameras, positioned in the corners of the device, as well as infrared sensors, so it “knows” where its user is located and where he or she is looking. The phone uses this information to rotate the display in “3D” and allow the user to peek into the display, as well as scroll and navigate with one hand.

To make life even easier, this phone can recognise many things in real life (using a technology called Firefly) and use them to offer relevant actions. Here is a quick summary:

• Phone numbers, email addresses, URLs, QR codes and bar codes on signs, posters, magazines and business cards: Once these items are recognised, they can be used to make a call, send an email, create a contact or go to a website without typing
• 245,000 movies and TV episodes and 160 live TV channels: Amazon Fire uses IMDb for X-Ray to show actors, plot synopses and related content, add titles to Watch List or download and start watching immediately
• 35 million songs: The phone recognises music with the help of Amazon Music, shows information about the artist, suggest additional songs, adds them to Wish List or downloads instantly
• 70 million products, including household items, books, DVDs, CDs, video games, and more: Access product details, add items to your Wish List, or order on Amazon.com

There are already third party extensions for the new phone technology in the Amazon Fire and more will be coming for sure when the phone gains momentum in the market. Here is a video about the Amazon Fire and what you can expect to get with it (and my conclusions below):

Life after Amazon Fire

Is there a catch?

As you would expect, although this phone provide a great user experience, it is closely linked with Amazon’s vast network of cloud services, like music, photo storage and, of course, online store. Using anything provided by Amazon is super easy and super intuitive, but it comes at a price, while other services are not likely to be as easy to use on this device.

For small business owners, if Amazon Fire takes the world by store, this makes selling on Amazon more sensible than it ever was, especially when combined with using Amazon Payments on the business’ website. From there, the path is short to putting additional parts of the business and/or the site on Amazon’s systems.

Unfortunately, Amazon still doesn’t cater to Australian businesses very well, which means that the release of the Amazon Fire is very good for Americans (yet again) and for those who can offer their products worldwide and make a profit from selling on Amazon.

On the other hand, now that the concepts used to make the Amazon Fire are out in the open, it’s only a matter of time before they are copied to other mobile phones and used by other giant cloud companies to boost their respective sales.

Are we headed for a time when we’ll need more than one mobile phone, then?

Most likely not. As with many good inventions, once others join in, the idea stops being exciting and people see it for what it is: gross manipulation.

Have a great day,
Gal

Originally posted on New Amazon Fire Mobile Phone: Game Changer?

Building a website and starting an online business seems to many small business owners like a big step. This often makes them feel exhausted after it’s done and they do their best to pretend that it’s all they’ll ever need.

So much so that when someone tells them that their site’s software needs updating or that the content needs to be refreshed and extended, they almost hate that person. “What?” they say, “I thought the website was my online business. Is it not enough I’ve spent all that money getting an responsive, singing and dancing WordPress site with mobile bells and whistles, now you tell me I need to spend more money?”

Sadly, it’s not.

Yesterday, a friend rang me and casually mentioned that his online business website had been hacked. He was miserable, because he didn’t know how to recover it and had no way of getting his site back, because he had not kept any backups of the files or the database.

I managed to un-hack the site and restore a lot of the functionality, installed and configured a security plugin to stop future attacks and gave him some tips on how to restore the remaining missing bits, that were deleted by the hackers (why anyone would deliberately damage another person’s business is beyond me). My friend was happy to have his online business working again and invited me for a steak dinner next week.

But this brought up some important things that every small business owner should know and pay attention to when it comes to their online business:

1. Good hosting service – cheap hosting often comes with bad service. When you need some quick action, the loss of business, the loss of your time and the loss of your peace of mind will add up to more than you ever saved by going with a cheap hosting provider and getting the “no frills” account. Cheap hosting is for personal sites, not for online business
2. Regular backups – cheap hosting often comes with limitations, like not having regular backups. Sure, the hosting control panel lets you take a backup of different things, but do you ever know trouble is coming and prepare for it in advance? Of course not. Having regular backups can save you, so it’s worth paying for
3. Enough disk space for backups – cheap hosting often comes with limitations, like not having enough disk space to generate backup files. I sometimes try to save a backup of a client’s site and this fails for lack of disk space. Hosting accounts should have at least 3 times the amount of space required for the website and for emails
4. Regular updates – hackers are great at finding bad lines of code in site software and exploiting them. By updating WordPress, its themes and its plugins, the change of someone breaking into your site are lower. Nothing is ever completely safe, but if you make it harder, most hackers will just go somewhere else
5. Good security settings – using predictable passwords, keeping default settings and having open settings are very common. The main reason for installing a security plugin is as a guide for tightening security, but such a plugin also provides means of blocking known attach sources, hiding the site better and more, all with clear advice and an easy to use interface
6. Trusted professional help – some online business owners are really cluey and good for them, but most people don’t have the time and knowledge required to maintain a (WordPress) website and keep it running smoothly. I often wait before applying changes, check their community ratings closely and save special backups before applying updates and thus save my clients from a bumpy ride and from business downtime. On the other hand, I get a few calls each year from clients who have tried to go it alone because they wanted to save

How to keep your online business running smoothly?

The bottom line is this: to keep your online business alive, get quality hosting with good service, regular backups and enough disk space and hire a professional to secure your site and keep it up to date.

In the long run, this is the cheaper option. Think of it like getting insurance, paying taxes or using an accountant. It’s just part of doing business (online).

Have a great day,
Gal

Originally posted on How to Keep Your Online Business Alive

Twitter is finally joining the ranks of Google Plus and Facebook by changing its page design to include large banner images, better navigation and blocks. It’s been a long time since Google Plus and Facebook changed their designs and now, Twitter is finally joining the party. This should be a celebration for businesses and marketers.

No matter what I tried to do with the previous design, my Twitter profile didn’t come out looking like a winner, until I gave up. Today, my inbox contained an invitation from Twitter to try the new design and I found everything I’d been looking for:

1. Large banner image, which can be used for branding – it looks great on a desktop, shrinks to fit on Android mobiles, but doesn’t seem to be displayed on iPhones and iPads (I’ve only emulated the different devices)
2. Better use of page space – rather than focusing everything on the tweet stream, Twitter has made good use of navigation levels and blocks to show more in the same space, while being responsive
3. You can now “pin” a tweet to your profile page and it will show at the very top
4. The most recent tweet appears next (or at the top, if nothing is pinned), then the two profiles you followed most recently, and then by the rest of your tweets
5. The tweet feed contains only original tweets. Switching to “tweets and replies” is just a click away
6. Photos and videos are given as much space as they would on Google Plus and Facebook
7. Followed/following profiles are shown as 3 colourful blocks in a row

For those using a rather small desktop computer or laptop, Twitter not fit to the page, but this new design certainly caters much better for larger screens and high resolutions than the old one did.

It took a few attempts to get the banner right, so here are a couple of tips:

1. You can zoom the image in, but not out, and you can reposition it, so start with an image that shows what you want somewhere around the middle, with lots of good background around it, especially on the sides, and then position and zoom until Twitter shows what you want
2. To get the most out of your profile block as it appears in other people’s followed/following lists, position your brand symbol a little to the right and a little higher than the middle. You can check what it looks like on your home page. This may take a few iterations, but the result is quite pleasing, especially when combined with a suitable background colour

You can see the result here.

Happy tweeting,
Gal

Originally posted on Twitter Gets a Facelift