Category: Business Advice

  • 7 Ways Modern-Day Commercial Cleaning Is More Eco-Friendly Than Ever

    The threat of global warming and the many environmental issues it creates has meant every industry and business sector has had to change many of their working practices to make them more eco-friendly, and commercial cleaning is included in that.

    What that means is that commercial cleaning companies such as Gleam Clean and the companies they work for have had to alter, remove, or introduce many of the cleaning methods they undertake, as well as consider far more carefully what cleaning products they use, from the most straightforward cleaning cloth to the most powerful industrial floor cleaner, for example. To explain all this further, here are seven ways modern-day commercial cleaning companies are greener than ever.

    Using Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products

    One of the most significant ways that commercial cleaning companies have moved to a greener means of operating is their increased use of environmentally friendly cleaning products, inducing many of the cleaning solutions they supply to their operatives. Gone are the days of harmful chemical cocktails being used, to be replaced with proven safe cleaning products that are just as effective but not harmful to the environment.

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  • 3 Tips For Optimising Your WordPress Website

    Optimising Your WordPress Website

    With the immense amount of resources at your fingertips, creating an attractive WordPress website that looks great has never been easier. However web designers advise that building a website that’s search engine and user friendly is about more than just looks. If your site doesn’t function right, then people won’t hang around and you’ll develop a poor reputation in the web space.

    Luckily for you, there’s a few small things that you can do behind the scenes to improve the performance of your website dramatically. The three tips listed below will help you speed up your website, improve the user experience and ultimately, will help you achieve a lower bounce rate and a higher visitor retention rate.

    1. Make Sure You Use A Good Hosting Provider!

    If you’re running on a tight budget and trying to create a website that doesn’t cost a fortune, then it can be tempting to try and save as much money on hosting as you can. I mean, there’s even a few free WordPress hosting providers out there, so you may as well use them, right?

    Wrong!

    Don’t fall into the trap of using a cheap or free hosting provider who doesn’t allocate enough resources to your website and who doesn’t guarantee at least 99.9% uptime. Using a good hosting provider will improve your page load times, will make sure that your website is always accessible and will help improve your reputation in the competitive digital space.

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  • 7 Advantages Of Resolving A Commercial Dispute Using Mediation

    7 Advantages Of Resolving A Commercial Dispute Using Mediation

    For every business owner there is the possibility that they may be a party to a commercial dispute with another individual or business, and then need to seek guidance and ultimately representation from a commercial law firm. That representation may manifest itself in a court which will rule upon the dispute.

    Court hearings are never desirable, firstly, because they are so costly. Second, no matter how strong you believe your case is, and how well your commercial lawyers argue that case in court, you are never certain as to whether the court will come down in your favour or that of the other party. For these reasons and others, having to go to court to decide upon a commercial dispute can be extremely stressful for all concerned.

    Thankfully, there are alternatives to going to court, and one which many business owners and commercial lawyers will vouch for is mediation. In effect, mediation is a means of settling commercial disputes informally, and the process is presided over by a third party who is both neutral and independent.

    Mediation is a voluntary process, so it relies on both parties who are in dispute agreeing to it. Unfortunately, this means if the other party is determined to have their day in court, mediation will not be possible. However, when mediation is possible it has several advantages over going to court to settle a commercial dispute, and here are seven of those advantages.

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  • 7 Essential Online Tools That Can Enhance Your Family Lawyers Business

    Web Design

    In the work that you do within your family lawyers business, you undoubtedly rely on support from others such as your receptionist, personal assistant or other family lawyers who work with you. This confirms that no matter what you are doing work-related if someone or something can make it easier, you should use them. This certainly applies to online tools which make the running of businesses easier.

    If we listed every tool you could use, we would write a book, not an article. Instead, we are going to highlight seven tools that have proven themselves repeatedly to make running a business easier, including family lawyers businesses. The good news is that many whilst many have paid upgraded versions, most also have free versions which are perfectly adequate.

    Siteground – Website Hosting

    To give potential clients the best first impression your website needs to function well. A huge influence on that performance is the web hosting you use. There are hundreds of hosting companies but the one that is invariably at the top of most hosting review league tables is Siteground whose hosting packages, reliability and features are all exceptional.

    ConvertKit – Email Management

    Email likely plays a huge role in your communication with clients and other third parties. Having a means to create, manage and respond to emails efficiently is important in a family lawyers office, and the email management tool which is #1 for many businesses is ConvertKit. Its email templates, delivery rates and automation tools are first class.

    Trello – Project / Team Management

    Many businesses suffer from spinning plate syndrome where they randomly and haphazardly complete tasks. On the other hand, successful businesses are organised and efficient and this is often due to them using project management software. Whether you work on your own or have a large team, a project management tool like Trello can be invaluable to you.

    Google Docs – File / Document Creation

    The use of documents, spreadsheets and presentation slides play a role in a huge number of businesses, including family lawyers. One of the most popular office suites to provide the means to create, edit and manage all of these is Google docs. This allows you to access your files from any location and the fact it is completely free makes it even more desirable.

    Dropbox – Cloud Storage

    Given the nature of the work a divorce lawyer does, you will undoubtedly have many documents and files which are confidential and must be kept secure. This applies to both physical and digital files. A hugely popular platform for securely storing your digital files is Dropbox which has enhanced encryption technology whilst also making the files accessible to you when you need them.

    Fiverr – Outsourcing

    If you often have tasks that do not require huge knowledge and experience, but which do require significant amounts of time, one solution used by millions of businesses is outsourcing the work. Examples include research, transcribing interviews and proofreading documents. Fiverr is a platform where you will find thousands of willing freelancers capable of doing these tasks for an extremely low fee.

    Hubspot – Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

    Finally, and some would argue the most important tool, we have one which enables you to manage your clients. Great customer service ensures your clients look upon your family lawyers business favourably, and in turn, recommend you to others. HubSpot’s CRM software is the perfect solution to achieve this.

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  • The Benefits Of Workplace Drug Testing

    It is to their credit that many employers take a supportive stance with regards to any of their employees who have a drug addiction, such as an ice-addiction. For them, making sure that the employee receives help and is able to attend drug rehab sessions, is far more important than seeking to punish the individual, as is the case with employers who go for immediate dismissal without any reference to what underlying issues might exist.

    Of course, not every employer has a choice, and they may legally be obliged to dismiss an employee who is working under the influence of drugs. This would apply to industries where safety is put at risk by someone whose performance is severely impaired due to drug use, such as an airline pilot or a maternity nurse.

    Carrot or Stick Approach?

    To even get to the point where an employer can act to either discipline an individual or get them started on the route to rehabilitation, they must first be aware that a drug problem exists. It is often unlikely that an employee will volunteer the revelation that they are addicted to drugs, although that does not mean none will. This very much depends whether the company rewards honesty and provides support, or discipline and punishment rule supreme within the company.

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  • The Most Common Mistakes with SEO

    Common Mistakes with SEO

    Have you ever started on some SEO work and got a bad feeling that you might be doing something wrong? Here are some mistakes made in SEO from SEO Perth, as well as tips on how to avoid them.

    Not using your homepage

    It is by far your most powerful page because the majority of your inbound links will go there. You also need words on your homepage, and your words have to include your target phrases. You can test what works, trying keywords of varying degrees of difficulty and ambition. It is important to maintain a certain keyword density for your targeted phrases.

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  • NOPSEMA Provide Feedback to BP

    BP has today received an update from the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) on our Environment Plan for exploration drilling in the Great Australian Bight.

    NOPSEMA has provided BP with a further “opportunity to modify and resubmit” its Environment Plan, which is not a rejection but another step in the normal, iterative process with this regulator.

    BP initially submitted its Environment Plan in October 2015 and a further iteration in March 2016. We will now assess NOPSEMA’s feedback and work toward resubmitting our Environment Plan in the coming months.

    We have allowed sufficient time in our programme schedule for this regulatory process and continue to work toward commencing exploration drilling in late 2016, subject to the acceptance of our Environment Plan.

    Further information

    An overview of the NOPSEMA assessment process for Environment Plans: A475763

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  • Learn Good Design From Bad Design

    Web Design

    We had to wrinkle our nose at this post on 6 famous web design atrocities. It may be more about which re-designs caused the most backlash – draw your own conclusions – but the overall sites seem to be doing fine regardless.

    Gawker – Wait, what changed? We barely noticed.
    TechCrunch – Look, any guru worshiped by his own personal cult can’t be said to fail at anything.
    StumbleUpon – Guilty as charged, but Stumble has been concentrated on shooting themselves in the foot since they grew beyond being a Firefox plugin. Whatever they do to their site doesn’t matter now.
    Netflix – Again, people still flock there.
    YouTube – Ditto. And again, we barely detect any change since Google bought it.
    Target – Hey, they’re a brick-and-mortar store. Do they even care about web traffic?
    Still, it’s a good guide to what your user base might backlash about. Our take-away: Prioritize function over style.

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  • Helpful Html5 Tutorials On Youtube

    Html5 Tutorials

    Alright, let’s get this HTML5 tutorials guff sorted out. If you website slingers haven’t gotten your mitts dirty on the new generation of browser code, here’s some video tutorials we dug up that are sure to teach a new trick or two:

    HTML5 Tutorial – 21 – Text Shadows, Gradients, and Alpha – Three of the coolest new features in HTML5, no more static images in Photoshop for a simple test effect.
    HTML5 Tutorial – 24 – Making Awesome Rollover Buttons – Another neat HTML5 feature. Rollover buttons give your site a tantalizing bit of interactivity.
    HTML5 Tutorial – 38 – Making Sweet Custom Shapes! – This uses a path drawn on canvas to get any shape you want. Like your company logo, for instance. Canvas uses vector graphics, and isn’t it about time we got these standard in every browser?

    Audio in HTML5 Tutorial – Figuring out audio in web design has always been a major pain; mastering it is a must. Beginner HTML tutorial # 11 – How to create forms in HTML5 – Forms are another essential. Really not too much has changed since the old days anyway.

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  • Microsoft Windows Desktop Is Dead

    Microsoft Windows Desktop

    It’s hard to think of any technology sphere that won’t feel an impact from this, so web design customers may as well know. This Computer World article makes no bones about declaring that Microsoft will no longer be focusing on Windows on the desktop. The declaration comes from Gartner analysts, who cite that the technology paradigm is shifting rapidly away from desktop computing altogether.

    Instead, they’re looking to more of the mobile and pad market, with WinRT and Metro. They’ve also already made a jump to this with their design decisions on Windows 8, such as killing the ‘start’ button. Not since the shift from DOS to Windows has Microsoft undergone such a massive user-interface overhaul.

    What does this mean for website owners? It means that now more than ever, you cannot count on the standard platform of Internet Explorer running on Windows desktops. The desktop market, already fragmented the past few years, is going to experience a huge fragmentation as a plethora of devices are used to navigate the web.

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