What Small Businesses Need to Know Before Choosing Cloud Hosting

Small businesses are flocking to cloud hosting because it’s affordable, popular and makes sense. Cloud hosting is scalable, so the hosting provider you choose will scale as your business grows. And while small businesses can benefit from the cloud, there are a few aspects to consider first:

Cloud hosting servers room

1. Managed vs Unmanaged Options

Small business owners or teams will quickly find that not all cloud options are created equal. There are managed and unmanaged options available. Unmanaged options are ideal for companies that:

  • Have an in-house IT team
  • Need a custom environment

But small businesses that want a hands-off approach to cloud hosting will want a managed option.…

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Importance of Best Customer Experiences to Increase Your Retail Store Revenues

If your customers enjoy their experience while shopping at your store, then they will choose your store over your competitors. That way, you will be assured of loyal customers, who will keep giving you repeat business, thereby helping you increase your profits or revenues.

Helpful salesperson enhances customer experience

In this post, we shall check out some of the critical aspects of improving the customer experiences at the retail stores.

Train your staff about the importance of building customer relationships

The success of your retail store will depend on the repeat business from your customers. That is why you will need to emphasize on proactive engagement with your customers to improve their shopping experience.…

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Top Considerations for Mobile App Development for SMBs

Smartphones are an essential tool in most people’s day to day routine.  Have to keep organized? Use your calendar app. Need to get to a meeting across town?  Drop the location in your GPS app and head off. Trying to find the best local eatery? Hit up Yelp.

The bottom line is consumers’ smartphones are their modern-day Yoda.  It’s the first place they turn to make a decision. And, this is precisely the reason why your SMB cannot afford to be without a branded mobile app.

Mobile app development

Mobile apps create a virtual relationship between an SMB and its customers. That is if you structure and build your app correctly.…

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Finding Your Flavour – How to Get Into the World of Hospitality

The hospitality industry is all about the relationship between a guest and a host. If you’re looking to get into the food and beverage world, there are a number of considerations to keep in mind before taking out a loan or making a large investment.

Find Your Size

The food and beverage industry offers a wide variety of opportunities for businesses of all sizes. Choosing which size is best for you can be a huge factor in your success and longevity in the industry. It’s important to start small to avoid taking on more than you can handle, but be sure to organise your business so that you create the room to grow and scale up your business as you find your feet and sales being to increase.…

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How to Use Charity to Develop Your Brand

Americans are the most charitable people in the world. Private philanthropy in the US has the size of around 1.4% of the country’s GDP, which is almost twice as much as the next most charitable country in the world, Canada. 67% of American households donate an average of 4% of their incomes to charity.

With 71% of total charitable donations, individuals are the biggest charity donors in the country. That is surprising for many reasons, including the fact that charitable giving can come with significant benefits to businesses. If you are a business owner, a CEO, or someone in charge of the development of a brand, here’s how you can leverage charitable activities to further develop your brand.…

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How Do We Adopt ITIL Outside IT?

“Can you adopt ITIL outside of IT” was the first question when I interviewed for a service desk job 4 years ago. “No, ITIL is specifically designed for IT”, was my innocent answer back then. It sounded like a crazy idea, then, when I didn’t have a clear understanding of how businesses run.

ITIL

My bookish knowledge told me that ITIL was meant only for IT, and other departments probably had their own best practice framework.

How very wrong I was…

I failed to see the similarity between an IT Team and other support functions that provide services to employees. I’ve since learned, the nature of work they do might differ, but the relationship with internal customers is the same.…

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4 Steps To Supercharge Your Business Focus

Sometimes the best thing that you can do for your business is learning how to focus. Focus on the little things that matter.

Focus on your broader picture in context. Focus on your target audience. Focus on your budget. All of these things can be made better by analytically figuring out what parts are the most important, and then aiming your business trajectory squarely in the middle.

Discussing business focus

A few examples of things that you can do to supercharge your business focus, regardless of industry, is to get into growth hacking, pay close attention to your budget, narrow down your target audience as tightly as possible, and use specific corporate strategies to gain industry leverage.…

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4 Ways to Transform Your Small Retail Space to Increase Footfall & Sales

A small retail space is an ideal choice for budget-constrained business owners as they don’t require a significant investment. However, making the most out of the area can be challenging, from making checkout convenient for shoppers to having enough ample space for your items.

Surfboard store owner

The good news is, with some creative hacks, you can make your small retail space look bigger and create unique experiences for the visitors. Below are some ideas.

1. Consider Tablet-Equipped POS

Retail store owners can replace bulky checkout stations with tablet-based POS (point-of-sale) systems to maximize floor space. Freeing up space means shoppers have more inventory to look at, and you have a more significant area to showcase that inventory.…

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What Does Web Application Penetration Mean

Web Application Penetration Testing is the procedure which uses penetration testing methods on a web app to find vulnerabilities. The process uses either manual or automated tests to spot any vulnerability, security issues, or threats to web applications. Using any of the known malicious attacks, the tester mimics attacks from the attacker’s point of view — such as using SQL injection testing.

Web application penetration testing

The main result identifies security weaknesses across the entire app and components, including source code and back-end network. The testing assists in prioritizing known vulnerabilities and threats, as well as searches for a way to mitigate gaps in security.…

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Lawsuits For or Against You and Your Business

Even though you would probably prefer that your business never gets involved in any lawsuit, there are lots of different instances where it can happen. Sometimes they’re your fault. Sometimes they are not. But, at least having a basic set of information about what lawsuits mean coming from you or going away from you as a business entity makes sense on a practical level.

Small business lawsuits

You need to know about lawsuits on defense and offense. You need to understand how to legally protect your money and assets in the event of issues. And it’s not a bad idea to do a risk assessment if you might end up losing more money than you gain even if your lawsuit is successful.…

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