21 Things I’ve Learnt Since I Started my Business
I’ve survived the dreaded first year and gone on to achieve bigger and better things in the second one! There’s still a long way to go before my business is where I’d like it to be, but I’m well on the way. Here are 21 things I’ve learnt in these two years that could help you in your business:

Amber Phillips Design, Amber Phillips Design

Top Tips for Creating a Website that Gets More Customers
Nowadays, anyone can build a website. Wix, Moonfruit, 1and1 website builder…there’s a ton of free tools out there to build a website, but building it yourself can be risky! No matter how small your business is, it deserves a great website. A great website, that doesn’t have DIY written all over it!

Amber Phillips Design, Amber Phillips Design

4 Ways Doing Less Can Grow your Business
You might know your niche and be rocking it right now with your business! If so, congrats! But I know from experience that it’s not always that easy, and not having a specific target audience or taking on too much can be damaging to your business. My advice is to narrow your focus! Keep it as simple as possible, at least at the beginning. Starting and running a business is hard enough without having to complicate it further.

Amber Phillips Design, Amber Phillips Design

Business photos – pro, stock or DIY photography?
A picture is worth a thousand words. Who are you? What do you do? What products do you offer? Even if someone visiting your website skimmed through the pages, your photos should make them understand your business. People are busy, and now more than ever, they don’t stop and take the time to read through text if something doesn’t grab them and pull them in.

Amber Phillips Design, Amber Phillips Design

How to create great email designs…that people will see!
Often, emails are designed like posters. People think that if they’re designed that way then they’ll be attractive and eye-catching when they pop into the reader’s inbox. The reality is it’ll actually sometimes appear completely blank as images are often blocked by default. Emails that are heavily image focused don’t work as well as emails that feature a lot of text.

Amber Phillips Design, Amber Phillips Design

24 ways to regain your business motivation
Sometimes when you’re so caught up in trying to make money, you can easily lose sight of your passion and lose motivation for your business and the reason why you started your business in the first place. It’s so important to take a step back and make sure you’re still enjoying your business because if you don’t enjoy it then you won’t be motivated to succeed. It’ll become a chore, you’ll become unhappy and you won’t want to put as much work into it that it really needs.

Amber Phillips Design, Amber Phillips Design

Improve productivity using the Eisenhower Matrix
I’ve mentioned the Eisenhower Matrix briefly in a previous post (‘improve organisation and productivity with this simple app’) but I haven’t explained it in detail. It really is a brilliant strategy for productivity, especially if you find yourself doing a lot of work but not really getting anywhere. No matter how hard you work, if you’re not spending time doing the right tasks, you won’t reach your goals.

Amber Phillips Design, Amber Phillips Design

10 easy and free marketing ideas.
Whether you’re just starting out or you’re trying to keep costs low, it’s great to find free marketing methods that work effectively. Here are 10 ideas to try that are free or will cost very little money.

Amber Phillips Design, Amber Phillips Design

How bad customer service can destroy your business
It’s possible but unlikely that one bad review can destroy your business. The thing that’s more likely to ruin your business is how you deal with that bad review and whether that bad review was a result of bad customer service.

Amber Phillips Design, Amber Phillips Design

Setting strong foundations with your logo design
A logo is the face of your brand. It’s what represents your business and should give your potential customers a good first impression. That’s why it’s so important! If you start with a strong brand, then you can grow your business on strong foundations and gain recognition right from the start.

Amber Phillips Design, Amber Phillips Design

Save time & effort with your business finances.
Note: I am not an accountant or expert in finance. This is simply what I use for my business and I think it’s a great tool. I’m generally a pretty organised person so when I first launched my business I kept all of my sales and purchases recorded online with QuickFile. I even scan my receipts using my smartphone and assign them to purchases online so they’re instantly available if I need to find them and instantly recorded for when I do my tax return.

Amber Phillips, Amber Phillips Design

Improve organisation and productivity with this simple app
Whether you work for yourself or for a company, you’ll need some skills in organisation to reach your full potential. Being organised doesn’t necessarily mean having your desk in perfect order or your paperwork stored in neat little folders. Of course this helps (well, it does for me!) but organisation also includes ordering tasks so that the most important work is done, ensuring no deadlines are missed and making sure no tasks are forgotten.

Amber Phillips Design, Amber Phillips Design

2 super simple ways to overcome business stress
There have been times when I have been so stressed and worried about my business and my abilities to run my business that I’ve been paralysed in to doing nothing (which just causes more stress!). Obviously you need to do SOMETHING in order to get anywhere but for some reason my mind and my actions were disjointed and I couldn’t seem to get anything done. Have you ever experienced that?

Amber Phillips Design, Amber Phillips Design

5 reasons why you need a GOOD website.
Most businesses have a website nowadays but there are countless websites that are massively underperforming (sorry, honesty is my policy!). The digital world is constantly evolving and the website you got years ago may not necessarily be up to scratch now. A good website is extremely important for your business, especially if you are aiming to get customers online (and you should be!).

Amber Phillips, Amber Phillips Design

Online Sales Overtake Shop Sales
This year (2019) analysts predict that for the first time ever in the UK, online sales will overtake shop sales, with the majority of browsing and purchases being carried out on mobile devices such as smart phone and tablets. So, what does this mean for our high streets and how can retailers ensure they don’t miss out on a slice of this increasing online market?

Richard, Advanced Web Designs Ltd

THE LIMITATIONS OF THE 'LIMITLESS' PLATFORM
We often are approached by customers asking if we can build and develop in Wordpress, and the simple answer is yes - yes we can. Wordpress is simply a content management system that runs using PHP, the same language that our bespoke content management system runs off.

Oliver, Advanced Web Designs Ltd

PREVENTING SPAM ON AJAX FORMS WITHOUT USING CAPTCHA
Today we demonstrate a few useful tips to avoid spam bots using your forms to submit data to customers. If you're lucky enough to be making a bespoke site and not using Wordpress then this guide is for you.

Gareth Handa, Advanced Web Designs Ltd

10 KEY SEO TIPS - 2015
In most cases website owners want their website to be found high up on the 'natural' search engine lists, with Google being the primary search engine customers want to be highly listed on. There are a number of influencing factors used to determine the position a website is listed on a search engine, the most important of which I will cover in this blog.

Richard Stangroom, Advanced Web Designs Ltd

IS YOUR WEBSITE LOSING YOU CUSTOMERS?
For the large majority of businesses their website will have become their most important marketing tool, providing easy access to information about the businesses products or services 24 hours a day. However, if you get it wrong this opportunity can lose you vital customers.

Richard Stangroom, Advanced Web Designs Ltd

DEVELOPMENT TIMES 2006-2016
Website development has become easier in some respects, but quality and features have increased drastically over time. We now have more to consider in 2016 than we did in 2006 including considerations such as high-level design, User Interaction (UI), User Experience (UX), and the development of rich web applications and expandable systems - all the while keeping pagespeed to a minimum.

Gareth Handa, Advanced Web Designs Ltd