Website statistics are vitally important when looking at your website performance and marketing. There are hundreds of website statistic tracking tools available for you to use to see how many people are visiting your site. Each software package may vary in terms of exactly what data you can extract from it but most of them offer the same basic stats such as number of visitors to the site, how they go to the site i.e. PPC or social media and what they did when on the site. Google Analytics is by far one of the best stats packages you can use and best of all its free. It gives you so much data but in a friendly manner meaning even if you don’t fully understand marketing and stats you can still find your way around.  You can add the main information you wish to see on the front dashboard and even have the data emailed to you on a regular basis. But if you are... Read More »

Most businesses can benefit from using a mobile or tablet application to help with their business. Whether it be to assist with administration or product sales there really is an app for everything! And if there isn’t a suitable app out there you could always create one. A great app for pretty much all self-employed people would be an accounting app to keep track of income and expenditure to help when it comes to completing a self-assessment. There are many different apps that can help with this including apps where you can photograph and store your receipts in date order as well as produce and send out invoices to customers. You can even link these apps to your business bank account to check whether you’ve been paid on time for each invoice. These really would save a lot of time and worry about the admin involved with being self-employed. If you have a business where you need to schedule appointments with customers then there are... Read More »

With so many people now using smart devices for their browsing and shopping, it is clear to see why a number of businesses are investing money in to creating an app for the Android and IOS stores. An app can be created to give your customers a way of browsing using personalised experiences. It can be created to give them a login to parts of your site and can often be used to send push notifications to them when needed. The cost of creating an app can vary drastically depending on what you want it to do. If you are a fairly small business, a simple app to mimic your website may cost in the region of £8000- £10000 but if you want to build a login area, set up personalisation and notifications then you may be looking at a lot more. Many of the big players will have spent close to, if not exceeding a million pounds on the creation of their app. Just... Read More »

All computers use some sort of software. Your Windows system is the main operating system but you may also have browsers installed, Adobe packages and Anti-virus software etc too plus many others. Often your computer will notify you of updates available for your chosen software but this only happens when you are connected to the internet. Updates can be released to roll out known bug fixes, security advances and additional functionality. All of these are important and some as they not only allow you to do more with the software but will keep your PC and accounts secure. Some companies make updates mandatory, not allowing you to use the software until you have update it where as others release them as optional. It is sometimes advised to wait a few days after an update has been released until you install it to see if it causes any issues for other users. This allows time for any known update issues to become known or ideally fixed.... Read More »

If you run your own business then you have a choice to make when it comes to accounting. You may wish to employ and accountant or outsource it to an accountancy firm that will already have software that they use. Some people still use spreadsheets to do their accounting, which can start to get a bit long winded if you start to have a lot of transactions that need to be inputted. There are some great off the shelf accountancy software packages such as Sage Pay, Quick Books and Xero. They are range massively on prices and functionality and all of these companies offer packages at different levels meaning you only pay for what you use. Xero for example has three packages, all of which are very similar. Package one, is their basic one which only allows you to do 5 invoices a month and reconcile 20 bank transaction. Their next package is £12 more but gives you unlimited invoices and reconciling as well as... Read More »