What do you do when you have many jobs to complete in a short amount of time, but finite resources?

I like to use the game of Ludo as an analogy. In Ludo, you have 4 tokens which all have to get from start to finish. Part of the strategy of playing Ludo is deciding which token to move forward on a given turn, when there may be four choices. Which one gets the priority? They all have to get to the end as soon as possible!

You could move one token on successive rolls and get it to the end quicker, but that leaves the other three back at the start. Or you could move the pieces in turn, so it will take longer to get any to the end, but they’ll get there together.

The difference between the game and the real world is there are often more than four simultaneous jobs, and they will have different priorities. The one that gets the highest priority is often the one that will bring the most pleasure (usually money) or avoid the most pain (an irate customer, for example).

Obviously the strategy is to get all the jobs to the end, but the tactics can change during play. You may have determined the priority is getting ‘Job A’ to the end as quickly as possible, but then new information comes in from ‘Job B’, and it suddenly becomes top priority, which makes ‘Job C’ get put on hold even longer.

Work can be stressful. The Ludo analogy is a way to picture all the jobs currently in play objectively, which can help to determine priorities. And, hopefully, add a light-hearted element to your workload, because remember, it’s all a game anyway!

Queensland’s Sunshine Coast is part of the rapidly growing South East Queensland metropolis, stretching along the coast from Coolangatta in the south to Noosa in the north. The area is renowned for its natural beauty and lifestyle options, which makes it a great place to live and work.

Looking for a website design business on the Sunshine Coast may seem overwhelming at first, due to the proliferation website designers available. Here’s a couple of tips to take into consideration:

• Look at their website design portfolio, and contact the owners of those websites and ask if they are satisfied with the service and results they received.
• Can you find those websites easily using Google?
• Do the websites all look similar, or based on a similar template?

By just following these 3 tips, you can determine if you are likely to get good service and results, if your website will be search engine optimized, and whether your website will have a unique design.

Your domain name is your home on the internet. It’s your online brand, it’s on your business cards, and it’s in your email address. You’ll be using it a lot, so it makes good sense to get the best one you can.

So what makes a good domain name? Starting with the suffix, a .com domain name is essential for a commercial business. Leave the .net and .org for networks and organisations.

If you’re doing business in Australia then a .com.au will be good to have also. You can put your website on either the .com or the .com.au, and redirect the other one, so both names will lead to your website.

www.example.com

www.example.com.au

Then comes the main part after the ‘www’s. If you can register an exact match of your business name, then that’s the way to go. If not, then you can be creative and use relevant descriptive or locality keywords. If you sell widgets, then www.examplewidgets.com could be an option. If your market is based in Maleny, then www.examplewidgetsmaleny.com would be a good choice.

Domain names can include a dash (-), however be wary of getting one in your domain name, as you will forever be reminding people to put the dash in, and if they forget then they may end up at another website instead of yours.

www.example-widgets.com

Keep it as short as possible, if your domain name is too long, there is more chance of forgetting or misspellings.

www.examplehasthebestwidgetsinmaleny.com

You can research available domain names on the Arrowsmith Websites Domains page.

Some things that people find annoying on websites:

• Music starts to play straight away. Can be embarrassing in an office situation, or if you’re listening to something else. Use a ‘play sound’ button.
• Anything flashing. Usually indicates the ads are more important than the content.
• Can’t find the ‘home’ button. People like going home.
• Welcome page that says ‘click here to enter site’. Why not just enter the site to begin with, instead of requiring an extra mouse click.

The website development industry is composed of many small players. Professional website design firms are rarely larger than ten people, and many are just one person.

Why are there no big website design companies? Big companies offer website services along with their phone connection and internet services, but they are too big to offer the flexibility that small business requires, so they haven’t been very successful at it. It’s not like providing a telephone or internet connection where a handful of packages will cater to the majority of customers.

Websites are different; there is no one size fits all approach. To understand the unique needs of a small business, it helps if you are also a small business, with enough flexibility to be able to adapt to your customers unique requirements.

Thinking of starting a website? Before you chat to a website designer, you can create your own draft website just using a word document. This will be the kind of information your website designer will be requiring from you, so you can be prepared – which will save time and money, and allow for a more accurate quote.

Open a new document and consider page one as the home page. Decide what you need to say –what will your main heading be? What will you say in your first paragraph? This exercise will force you to focus on what you have to offer your customers, and it will give you an idea of how much information you will need to provide in order to give a complete overview of your business.

Create a new page for each section of your website. You may include a page for each product or service you offer, or just have one page as an overview of all your products or services. The contact page can be straightforward – just list all the methods of contacting your business.

Have a look at other websites in your industry to get ideas, and think about what it is that you like about your favourite websites. Communicate all this to your website designer to will help ensure that you get the most value from your website.