Website Makeover: 5 Tips to Revamp Your Website

From time to time, you may want to give your website a facelift. Why? Because a poorly designed and unattractive website can actually hurt your business.

Potential customers are more inclined to leave your website and go somewhere else if your website is slow to load, poorly designed, and has no contact information. Every website needs many crucial elements, and a well-planned layout that is aesthetically pleasing is one of them.

Take a look at your current website and see how it makes you feel. If you’re not proud of it or happy with how it looks, we have five tips from CBS-CBS.com on how to revamp your website.

Set a Goal

Why do you want to redesign your website? If you’re unsure of that answer, you should determine that before you begin.

There are various reasons why a company revamps its website. It could be to speed up the loading time, a change in branding, or it’s been a decade, and it looks outdated. Having a reason or a goal for your redesign will help keep you on track, and it will also tell you what to spend the most time on to engage your customers (i.e. Reducing photo sizes to improve load times).

Document Your Current Website

First, you want to ensure you have your current website documented if you need to go back to the original site. Having a website record allows you to reference back to check important information (like pricing and product descriptions). Also, it’s not a bad idea to keep track of your website’s progression over the years. It’s a great way to compare and see how far you’ve come in website development.

Be Consistent With Your Brand

Every company has a brand. Within that brand are specific colors that represent the logo and the company. It’s essential that you use the same branding across every page on your website.

Consistency comes in many aspects of your redesign, including font used, what’s bolded or italicized, and the photos. Keep things similar across all pages.

Follow the Less is More Rule

Have you ever loaded a website that bombards you with popups, paragraphs of information, and pictures everywhere? It’s distracting, annoying, and not very pleasing to the eye. Most users would likely leave.

With a website, you need to go straight to the point. Cut out any fluff (you’re not writing a novel). Our attention span to websites continues to shorten, which means you only have a handful of seconds to hook the reader into staying on your website.

Have a Call to Action

Make your website as easy as possible for the user to maneuver through. Don’t send them on a wild journey just to find the vital information they need. Instead, tell them where you want them to go next in the form of a call to action.

A call to action can be a statement to “click here,” “signup now,” or “join our email list today.” The purpose is to tell the user what you want them to do next. Using a call to action is a simple tactic to help guide the user to your end goal (increased exposure, more signups, higher sales).

Enjoy redesigning your website. When you have fun with the process, it’ll show through with the overall results. Remember, a website is crucial to your business’s success. Ensure it gets the time it deserves.

The World of Clickbait: What It Is and Why You Should Use Caution

You’ve likely come across them before – you see a headline that sounds epic, only to quickly realize the article has nothing to do with the title. You just went to a clickbait article.

Clickbait articles aren’t anything new, and there are many mixed feelings about them, yet you still can find virtually everything. In videos, paid advertisements, and blog posts, you likely can’t browse the internet without coming across something that is clickbait.

If you’re curious about what clickbait is and even thinking about using it yourself, hold that thought. First, let’s understand what we’re talking about. Then, your Corporate Business Solutions consultants have a few caution points to consider.

What is Clickbait?

Clickbait is something with a sensationalized headline (whether it be a Facebook ad, YouTube video, or a blog post). The purpose is to have a title that draws on your emotions, which, ultimately, connects to your curiosity and makes you want to know more.

The sensationalized headline usually uses words like “you won’t believe this,” “OMG, she did what,” or “this one simple trick will change your life.” It’s easy to see why people would want to click on articles with titles like that – they promise something dramatic and amazing.

However, the problem lies when you actually click the title and go to the media. Once there, you quickly realize that the video or article doesn’t live up to the exaggerated headline. Not only that, but the quality and accuracy of the content are usually questionable.

Why Use Caution With Clickbait

Now, there’s a difference between a more dramatic title that catches the reader’s attention and blatantly using a sensationalized headline that provides no relevance to the content. The goal of posting content is to get users to click on the headline and spend time absorbing what you provide.

There are a few problems with only using clickbait. The first is building trust with your viewers. If every time they click on your content, and it doesn’t live up to what you advertised, you’ll have issues creating that trust with your viewers. Ultimately, they’ll stop going to your content, which will hurt your business.

Another issue is with SEO (search engine optimization). Search engines consider the quality of your content with where you show up in search results. Clickbait content that is low quality will get punished by the search engine, which will put you lower in the search results.

Continuing with search engines, if they notice viewers spend only moments on your content before leaving for something else, they also mark that as less valuable in the search results. Basically, the more clickbait you use that doesn’t provide much value, the more you’re hurting your overall website (and business).

Now, that isn’t to say you should never use clickbait. When used correctly and sparingly, it can actually benefit your website by generating organic traffic.

When using clickbait, though, err on the side of caution. If you’re using sensationalized words to draw the reader in, ensure that the content and quality lives up to the expectation. A well-planned and phrased headline can use “clickbait” words that draw the viewer in. It’s up to you, though, to ensure you’re providing something that makes them want to stay.

Mental Health and Entrepreneurship: 5 Tips Business Owners Need to Know as a Business Owner

Mental health has been a growing topic in the last year, mainly due to shutdowns and isolation from Covid-19. With many businesses forced to close their doors and families isolated at home for weeks on end, mental health becomes very prominent.

As an entrepreneur, your mental health is a crucial aspect of your overall success and wellbeing. Without taking care of your mental wellbeing, stress can overtake your life and ultimately make you quite unhappy.

Luckily, you can do many simple things in your day that will help boost your mental health. Corporate Business Solutions has five tips for entrepreneurs to help with their mental health.

Get Enough Sleep

For business owners, their company is their entire life. Although you need to put in the work to get the results you want, it shouldn’t come at the cost of other vital aspects in your life – sleep.

Sleep is essential for everyone. Not getting enough can negatively impact all life elements, including how you focus, increase your risk for health issues, and even put you at risk for mental health illnesses. So, make sure you get enough sleep each night so you can tackle the next day with a clear and focused mind.

Write Things Down

Have you had those days when your to-do list is never-ending, but you’re frantically trying to remember what you all need to do? How do you feel in those moments? Likely, stressed, anxious, and frustrated.

Prevent your stress levels from rising too high by staying organized. One way to do so is by writing things down. Whether it’s a notepad with your daily tasks or journaling the night before to clear your mind, getting your thoughts on paper will help you remember them and keep your life more organized.

Ask for Help

Never be afraid to ask for help, even as a business owner. You may wear multiple hats, but if you’re drowning trying to get everything done, your quality of work will likely suffer. Higher employees to take over specific tasks to focus on the essential parts of running a business.

Asking for help isn’t just about hiring employees. It also comes in the form of mental support. Psychologists are trained to help provide the proper tools for an individual to manage their stress and anxiety. If you find you’re always overwhelmed, it may be time to ask for professional help.

Give Yourself Downtime Hours

Working every hour of the day may seem like a good idea, but you must give yourself time to unwind and relax. It could be at the end of the day or taking a lunch break. Whatever the case may be, those downtime hours are meant to disconnect you from work so you can focus on yourself.

Add Meditation to Your Routine

You’ve likely heard of meditation before, but do you include it in your daily routine? If not, you should.

Meditation for entrepreneurs is an excellent way to take a time out, reduce stress and anxiety, help with your sleep and even improve your creativity. Give it a shot one day and see how you feel after taking a moment to center yourself and clear your mind.

Make your mental health a priority this year by adding elements to your routine meant to slow you down and take a moment to think. You may be surprised by how much more productive and happier you are when prioritizing your brain’s health.

Happy Workers, Successful Business: 4 Tips to Motivate Your Employees

What makes a business successful? There isn’t just a straightforward answer. It requires dedication, leadership, cooperation, creativity, determination, and so much more.

For a company to grow successfully, though, you can narrow down the traits to something more specific – your team.

You can only do so much as the owner until you reach the moment when employees are necessary to keep moving forward. Without them, you’re left drowning in tasks with no time to grow your business.

It’s more than just having employees, however. They also need to be happy and enjoy coming to work for them to stay and be productive. To help ensure they stay, reviews for Corporate Business Solutions have four tips to motivate your employees.

Be Nice, Honest and Respectful to Employees

First, one of the best ways to keep the peace in the office is how you interact with your employees. Bad management is one of the top reasons why employees quit their jobs.

Put yourself in the shoes as an employee (or, you’ve likely already experienced it). If you have a boss that undermines your work, is rude, closed off, and difficult to communicate with, how would that make you feel? Likely, frustrated and wanting to leave fairly quickly.

As the boss, be a positive influence in the office to help keep employees happy and ready to work.

Provide Room for Growth

If you want employees to stick with you long term and motivate them to achieve greatness, you need to provide them opportunities to grow. Change their mindset that they’re merely working at a job to the possibility of it being a long-term career.

Part of growth opportunities comes with creating positions within the company, so employees have somewhere to strive for. Next, you also need to provide training opportunities. Even if employees don’t want to move into a different position, offering chances to further their skills shows them that you care about their development and want them to stick around.

Give Them Encouragement and Feedback

Work satisfaction comes in various forms, including feedback you provide as the boss. When you’re told you’re doing an excellent job at something, you likely feel pretty good about yourself and want to continue performing well. Positive feedback and encouragement is contagious and can do wonders for motivation and happiness.

Feedback shouldn’t just be all positive, though. There is such a thing as constructive criticism too. Again, it’s about showing that you care about their performance on many levels and want them to achieve in their position.

Listen to Your Employees

One of the best ways to improve office happiness and motivation is to seek out what your employees want and need from you. You can do this in many ways, but a good idea is to have an open door that employees feel comfortable walking through. If you show them that you value their opinion, they’ll be more likely to express what they need from you to help them be their best at work.

Keep your employees motivated and happy with simple things. Although offering rewards and pay raises are excellent, it doesn’t always have to be monetary. Being available to talk, offering support, and encouraging your employees to succeed can go a long way.

How to Start A Business From Home

With all the changes we went through in 2020, you may be wondering how you can make a business work that can withstand a global shutdown. Many home-based businesses were still able to operate in some capacity (with some not affected at all).

Home-based businesses are an excellent way to make an additional income or use it as your career option altogether. You may be interested in working from home for many reasons, so why not get one started?

Reviews for Corporate Business Solutions has five tips to help get your home-based business started and on the path to success.

Make a Note of Your Talents

Before beginning, it’s a good idea to jot down you’re talents. What are you good at?

When going into business, working on a path that uses your talents can help in many ways. For one, you’re more likely to enjoy the job if it’s something you’re good at, and it will show you if you’re suited for running a business.

Brainstorm Business Ideas

Next, spend some time brainstorming ideas that you could turn into a business. Start with ideas that use your talents already listed. Next, move onto any hobbies you have that you could sell as a product or service. Many home-based businesses begin from someone’s hobby.

Create a Business Plan Draft

Once you have an idea, you’ll need to ensure you can turn it into a business. Do that by starting your first draft of your business plan. Your business plan is something you’ll refer back to as your business grows and use it for any financing you may need.

When writing your business plan, start with a summary of what your company would look like. How would you operate and make a profit? What would your target audience look like and the competition in your field? As the business grows, you can start to include growth goals to move forward.

Do a Test Run

So, you have a plan in place and ready to open the doors. However, it’s a good idea to do a test run of your business with friends and family. Ask for their honest opinion about your plan, if they think the public would like it and if it’s something you can make a living from.

If you get positive feedback from that test run, you can then take your business idea into the public world as a beta. Beta is when you’re testing what your business sells to the public to get honest feedback. You can do this by creating a social media account and asking for a select amount of people to do a test run on what you’re offering. Provide them with a discount to entice customers.

Legalize Your Business

After you’ve gone through everything above and feel confident that you have a solid business idea, it’s time to legalize your business. That means applying for a business name, creating tax accounts, and getting any required licenses.

Upon legalizing your business, you can then create your website and social media accounts to promote your new home business.

Starting a home business has its challenges but can very rewarding when it takes off. Stay dedicated, work hard, and enjoy the journey of starting a home-based business.

How to Manage Your Time Like the Boss You Are

Time management is a crucial skill that every business owner should know. Good time management can be the difference between checking off every task on your list and falling behind in growing your company.

Why should you work on your time management skills? For starters, it’s an excellent way to help relieve some stress in your day (by completing everything you wanted that day), give you more time for a better work-life balance, and even open more opportunities for your company.

With time management having such a positive impact on your life, here are six tips from your Corporate Business Solutions consultants that will help you master this necessary skill.

Plan Your Week and Day

One step for time management is to plan your upcoming day and week. Having a plan for what you need to achieve that day will help you stay on task, rather than feeling overwhelmed, trying to determine where to start.

Prioritize Your Tasks

Prioritization is another element of time management. If you spend most of your time in a day working on tasks due at the end of the week, rather than focusing on something due tomorrow, you’ll feel less rushed and stressed about everything. Plus, prioritizing allows you to see what items you can delegate to your team so you can focus on what’s the most important to the business.

Start Your Day With the Most Important Task

Are you someone who dreads working on certain things? Rather than dwelling on them throughout the day and procrastinating, schedule them for the morning so you can get them out of the way. You’re likely to have the most amount of energy at the start of the day, and completing those problematic or annoying tasks right at the beginning is an excellent motivator.

Remove Distractions

Did you know that a distraction can cost you roughly 25 more minutes than what you expected? A study into workplace disruptions found that it takes the average person almost 25 minutes to recover from a distraction and refocus on their task. If you kept track of how many times you got distracted in one day and added 25 minutes to each distraction, how much time was wasted?

Eliminating distractions is a crucial element of time management and keeping yourself organized, focused, and motivated. Close down additional tabs on your web browser or close your office door so you have more privacy. Whatever your main distractions are, think of how you can remove them or minimize how often they steal your attention from your work.

Focus on One Task at a Time

Think of this tip alongside removing distractions. Do you find yourself trying to work on multiple things at once? Maybe you’re in a phone meeting and shooting off emails to a client. Trying to accomplish multiple tasks at once doesn’t have the effect you’d hope. Instead, pick one item on your list and focus on just that task until it’s finished, then move on to the next one.

Set a Time Limit to a Task

A good trick to try is to set a time limit for each task you do. Whether it be doing the dishes, writing a report for work, or even cleaning your office, setting a time limit can help keep you focused and motivated to finish the job.

Don’t stress trying to master time management, as it’s a skill you’ll always be learning. However, making it a priority in your life will help ease stress and stay organized.

5 Tips for Setting Your 2021 Business Goals

Do you set goals for yourself and your business? If not, it’s something to consider, as goals are an excellent way to keep yourself motivated for bettering yourself and your company.

There are many benefits to setting goals in a business. To start, it can help you stay organized and prioritize what’s most important for growing your business. You’ve likely been in the overwhelming position of determining where and how you need to grow your business, only to not do anything about it. Setting goals is one way to battle feeling overwhelmed and allow you to progress forward.

Are you ready to grow your business this year? Use the following five tips from Corporate Business Solutions to help you set smart goals that will lead you to success.

Determine What You Want to Accomplish

Before setting an actual goal, you need to distinguish what you want to accomplish this year for your business. It could be focusing on growing your clientele, increasing your income, or even starting a new branch in your company. Whatever it may be, make a list of the things you want to accomplish with your business, as you can use this list to start setting goals.

Be Realistic

It’s important to stay realistic when setting goals. Trying to take on too many things or setting unrealistic timeframes are quick ways to set yourself, and your company, up for failure and disappointment.

You’ve created your list of things you want to accomplish. The next step is to prioritize what is most important for this year. Remember, you can’t do everything at one time.

Be Specific

For goals to work, they need to be specific. If your plan in 2021 is to grow your customer base, that’s a good starting point for creating a goal. However, it’s quite vague still and doesn’t give you much to work with.

When setting goals, be specific in the details. Using the customer growth example, you could break it down and say you want to grow your active customer base by 12 clients by the end of 2021. Stating a number with an end date can help you create a plan that enables you to achieve this goal.

Create a Plan

Once you have your general goal in mind (and it’s a good practice to start writing them down), you can then create your action plan. Think of your plan as mini-goals that are the stepping stones to achieve your end goal.

For our customer growth example, you could start your plan by adding one new client each month. Then, you’ll want to explain how you’ll do that. What ideas do you have that will allow you to add a new client each month? Write out your steps as part of your business plan.

Make a Commitment

Setting goals and making your plan is only part of the process. You need to commit to what you come up with. Otherwise, you won’t achieve your goals.

Make a commitment with yourself, your employees, or your customers (depending on your goals). Track your results as you progress and reward yourself for each milestone you hit, as this will help keep you motivated.

Ready to take your business to the next level this year? Use the above five tips to help you set realistic goals that you’ll be able to achieve.

Organization 101: 5 Tips for Daily Planning

How do you start your day? Do you hit the snooze button multiple times before rushing to get ready? Maybe you get upright when you’re alarm goes off and jump right in the shower before enjoying your morning coffee. Whatever it may be, it’s worth considering adding daily planning to your routine.

Daily planning can help you with many aspects of your life, not just with the organization. You’ll be more prepared for upcoming obstacles and deadlines, reduce your stress, knowing you have a plan, and will help hold you accountable for the task at hand.

If you’re ready to take a few extra minutes each morning for daily planning, the following five tips from CBS-CBS.com will help.

Physically Write Out Your Daily Plan

Daily planning doesn’t mean you take a few moments to think about everything you need to accomplish today. Chances are, you will forget lots of it halfway through. To be successful at the daily plan, you need to physically write it out. Having a calendar with space to write out each day will help.

Set a Time for Planning

Why should you plan your day at the same time, whether it be the night before or while having your morning coffee? It will help you create a habit. Once-daily planning becomes a habit, your chances of forgetting to do it will significantly decrease.

Have an Ongoing Task List

If you struggle to think of all the things you need to accomplish in a day, create an ongoing task list. Whether you make it a weekly or monthly list that you have on hand, you can refer back to it while you’re planning your day. That way, you always know what tasks are coming up.

Not only that but having that list will help you prioritize what’s most essential and what can wait for another day. Prioritizing is an excellent organizational trick that will keep you on track of everything you need to do.

Give Yourself More Time Than You Think

A trick you’ll quickly start to realize is that tasks often take longer than you expect. Distractions occur at any given moment that can throw you off schedule. If you give yourself some flexibility in your daily plan, you’re less likely to fall behind and get stressed and more likely to achieve everything on your list.

Reflect on Your Day and Carry Over Tasks

You’ll have days when you don’t accomplish everything in your plan, and that’s okay. Try not to stress over what you couldn’t get done. Instead, reflect on your day and carry over any tasks to the next day.

Taking a moment to reflect on your day can help you in a few ways. First, you can see if you overscheduled yourself or if you had too many distractions that took away your attention. Reflecting can also boost your confidence when you see everything you did achieve in the day.

Incorporate daily planning into your morning or nighttime routine. It will help you stay organized, prioritize what is most important right now, and will likely help prevent you from feeling overwhelmed with what to do.

Ready to Boost Security? 5 Cybersecurity Tips to Keep Your Business Safe

Cybersecurity is crucial for all businesses, and small companies are no exception. In fact, a 2018 report (The 2018 State of Cybersecurity in Small and Medium Size Businesses) found that almost 70 percent of businesses in the study had fallen victim to a cyber attack. Unfortunately, nearly half of the respondents didn’t know how to protect their organization against threats.

Don’t let your business be another statistic of cybersecurity threats against a small business. Take action today to protect yourself tomorrow. Reviews for Corporate Business Solutions has five cybersecurity tips to keep your business safe.

Always Create Backups

Backups are your best friend if you save a lot of important information on a computer. Not doing so leaves all of that critical data vulnerable. If you have all your personal belongings stored in one garage that has minimal protection and it catches fire, you’ll lose everything.

Get in the habit of doing daily backups of your main devices. Most computers, tablets and even phones connected to cloud service or external hard drive allow you to set a backup schedule, so you don’t have to remember each day.

Use Strong Passwords

A password is your first line of defense for your device and any accounts you have access to. Slacking on creating a password puts everything at risk. A strong password is something not easily guessed and includes numbers and special characters.

For devices and accounts that hold critical information (think of customer info that could expose banking information), you may want to add extra authentication steps. Multi-factor authentication is when you need to input a number code sent to you via email, text or having to scan a thumbprint or your face to gain access.

Train Your Employees

If you’re a small business with a few employees, then cybersecurity is vital to everyone, not just you as the owner. That is why you should spend time investing in training for everyone related to your business.

Ensure that all your staff know how to create strong passwords for all devices, red flags of phishing scams or websites that look suspicious, and even how to protect their devices when they take them home for the day.

Keep All Devices Updated

Regular updates are a crucial step to security. Ever wonder what happens when your device does it’s the tenth update of the month? The chances are that quick update contains valuable coding that is filling gaps in its security.

Hackers and threats are continually evolving, so that means your device’s security abilities also need to evolve. Each time your device updates, it’s likely providing a solution to a potential security exposure due to the latest threat evolution.

Download Security Software

You’re not alone when it comes to cybersecurity. Many companies provide top-notch cybersecurity software for individual and personal use. If you’re new to security or not overly interested in it, downloading one of these programs is necessary.

Browse through the available security programs to find one that best suits your needs. Look for ones that include firewall protection and password management. They’ll all come in handy.

Small businesses don’t need to take drastic steps to protect their company from cyber threats. Even small actions, like updating your device and regularly changing your passwords, can provide valuable protection to all of your important data.

6 Tips For Setting and Maintaining Your New Year’s Resolution

Do you set New Year’s resolutions? Chances are you have at some point, only to break it shortly after. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. A 2018 survey found that only four percent of those who made New Year’s resolutions actually kept them. If you’re not one for making a resolution, you’re amongst 54 percent who didn’t that year either.

Why are only a handful of people actually achieving their resolution? It often starts at the beginning – people set unrealistic resolutions that are nearly impossible to achieve.

Whether you’re making resolutions for yourself or your business, CBS-CBS.com has six tips to help you set and maintain your New Year’s resolutions.

Don’t Go Overboard With the Number

First, make only a few resolutions, or even simply one. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and ultimately abandon your resolutions when you have too many. You’re more likely to stick to your list of goals when you have only a few at a time. Remember, you can’t change everything all at once.

Set Realistic Resolutions

One of the top reasons someone will likely fall short of their resolution is that they set something unrealistic. If you set yourself an unattainable goal, how do you expect ever to achieve it? For example, if you love sweets but want to cut back, saying you won’t touch sweets for the whole year will be extremely challenging.

Setting something realistic for you provides you with a better chance to succeed right from the start. So, that sweets resolution? Instead of saying you’ll never eat them again, set a resolution that you’ll start to cut back.

Have a Plan

New Year’s resolutions are goals with a different name. What’s the best way to achieve your goal? By creating a plan to get you there.

Continuing with our sweets goal, create a more specific plan for cutting back. You could start by saying you want to reduce how much money you spend in January on candy. That can give you a better idea of how you move forward in February. The point is, create a roadmap for your success.

Set a Meaningful Resolution

A resolution that has value to you is something you’re more likely to stick with. A common goal is to become healthier in the new year. If that isn’t a top priority for you at this moment, you likely won’t make it a priority moving forward.

There isn’t a right or wrong resolution to make, as long as it has meaning for you.

Track Your Progress

It may seem like extra work, but tracking your progress is another excellent tactic to stay on task with your resolution. When you see progress, you create momentum and motivation for yourself to continue with your plan.

Be Okay With Setbacks

Resolutions aren’t an all in or fail idea. You will likely have setbacks with your journey, and you may even abandon your resolution entirely, and that’s okay. Don’t get too hard on yourself if you don’t see much progress, or if you find a few months in that the resolution just isn’t working for you.

 

New Year’s resolutions can be a fun way to create new habits in your life. However, they can also cause a lot of stress too. Avoid them turning stressful by using the tips above to set and maintain a positive resolution.