Amethyst Answers

web creation and social media training for small businesses

Should you post your prices on your website?

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Price Bag
Image courtesy of Pixomar / FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

To price or not to price? It’s a good question, but the answer isn’t an easy one. At first, I believed firmly that you should include your rates on your website. People, myself included, like to know how much things cost. Having your prices easily accessible shows that you have nothing to hide, and you aren’t going to give different people different rates for the same service or product. I used to have my prices clearly outlined on my website, with a list of what was included for the price.

Then, one day, one of my packages had to change, due to circumstances beyond my control. I did some thinking around how to handle this change, and I thought about how companies similar to mine deal with pricing. And I thought about the services I offer. Since I implemented my packages and pricing, not a single client has wanted or needed the same services. My packages didn’t really fit what my clients need.

All of this thinking made me realize, in my situation, prices just don’t make sense. Every client’s needs are different, so I need to assess each client individually. Sure, I will have a standard rate and a standard way of deciding how much each project will cost, but ultimately, I’m not doing anybody any favours by trying to fit all projects into the same box. I really need to sit down with a client to determine their needs and how I can best meet them, and then come up with a quote, or even better, a multiple option quote.

So my answer to the question “to price or not to price?” is: it depends. If you have a product you are selling, absolutely, post your prices. If you have a service that is priced by the hour, definitely let your web visitors know. But if you are dealing with projects where no two are the same, and there are variables, there’s no shame in not posting your prices. It just wouldn’t make sense.

Resolutions getting you down?

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resolutions get back on the horse
Image courtesy of AKARAKINGDOMS / FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

At the beginning of this year, barely more than 2 weeks ago, I embarked on a mission. A mission to successfully complete the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Call it a resolution, goal or whatever you want. I proclaimed it and away I went, like many people do. 31 blog posts in 31 days. It seemed like a reasonable challenge. Not too easy, but not impossible. Until.

Until, like many people who set New Year’s resolutions, things start to fall apart. It becomes more difficult. We slip. Sometimes just a bit. Sometimes a bit more. For me, things were going great. It wasn’t easy, but I was managing a post a day. Then I missed one, due to a trip with my son to the hospital. A reasonable excuse for sure, but still, it was just one day. Easy enough to make up. I just need to write 2 in a day at some point.

But then, a bigger thing happened: I dislocated my knee on Saturday. Off to the hospital I went. Jacked up on morphine. No blog post that day. Or the next, as I pretty much slept off the drugs, adrenaline and whatever else your body produces to cope with such a physical trauma. Monday, I still was feeling better, but still not quite ready to focus on anything. Tuesday, I said. That will be the day I get back in the swing of things. But I had already missed 3 days in a row at this point. What’s one more? How do you get back on track? Can I even make up all those days?

It started to seem like an overwhelming task, getting back on track and finishing the challenge. But then I realized two things. First, the only way to get back into writing my posts was to just do it. I recognized it doesn’t have to be fancy. Heck, I can even write about my struggle to write. It wouldn’t be the first time!

Second, I entered this challenge as a goal for myself. And, as part of the goal, there were results I had in mind. Some of these results were to increase content on my blog and connect with more readers. I’ve already done that with what I’ve written so far! So I’m already ahead. But remember, one of the things about goals is that they are adjustable. Life happens. So, maybe I won’t get my 31 posts in 31 days (although I’m not ready to concede yet). But if I don’t, I still did a great job, and I need to get back on this blogging horse and finish out the month!

And here’s a bonus: this post about me is actually about you, too! If you have come up against an obstacle in achieving your resolution or goal, don’t let it get you down. Check in with yourself and applaud your achievements to date. Accept that you are human and life happens. Figure out what the next step is to get you back on your horse, and then take that step!

Feel free to share if you have stumbled recently and need to re-declare your goals.

5 Unforgettable Ways to Remember Ideas

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Make note of ideas

Image courtesy of winnond / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I had a great idea for a blog post the other day. It was quite possibly the best topic I’ve ever thought of. Ok, maybe not, but unfortunately, we’ll never know. Why? Because in my moment of extreme confidence, I was convinced I could remember it for the next few hours until I sat down to write my next post, so I didn’t write it down. And guess what….I was wrong.

A mere two hours later, I didn’t have the slightest clue what my idea was. I knew I had come up with a great idea. I could picture exactly where I was when I had this brilliant thought. I even remembered the conversation I had with myself when I had the idea: “Great idea. I should write this down. Nah, I’ll remember it.” But I didn’t have the slightest inkling of a memory of the topic.

It’s not like I was lacking a way to write my idea down. In this day and age, there are several ways to make a note somewhere so you can refer to it later. And wouldn’t you know, I’ve compiled a bit of a list for you:

1. Old Fashioned

Writing stick and parchment. Pen and paper. Whatever you want to call it, for some people, this is still their favourite way to keep notes. There’s something about holding a writing utensil in your hand and gliding it across paper.

2. Evernote

The thing I love about Evernote is I can use it from any device. I have it installed on both my computers and on my phone. It doesn’t matter which device I use to make a note, it syncs to “the cloud” and I can access it easily from any of my other devices. And if I don’t have access to one of my own devices, I can log on to any computer and get all my notes. Notes can be organized together in Notebooks, so you can keep similar things together. You can also share notebooks with other people.

3. Notes

My phone has an app called Notes. I’m sure other smart phones have a similar app or function. I mostly use this for quick bits of info, but you could write a novel on it if you really wanted to.

4. Email

The tech version of calling yourself at home and leaving a message, emailing yourself is another great option. I use this for reminders to do something later, like when I get home. Sometimes I’ll email myself random to-do lists that I think of when I’m otherwise occupied and know I won’t remember later.

5. Voice memo

Not everybody is visual. If you prefer the sound of your own voice, why not make yourself a voice memo? Again, I’m sure most smart phones have this capability in one form or another. My app is actually called Voice Memo. Hit the record button and start talking. Hit the stop button when you’re done. Voila! Now you have a voice memo that you can listen to anytime. My app lets me email or text it to someone as well (see point above)

So there you have it. Five perfectly reasonable ways to make notes and never forget anything again. All you have to remember is to check the note later! Now you have no excuses for forgetting things. And rest assured, I learned my own lesson. When I decided to turn this experience into a blog post, you’d better believe I jotted it down right away before I could forget!

What about you? Do you have a system or app that you use for making notes or remembering things? Share your thoughts below.

4 Metrics-Measuring Must-Haves

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KPI metrics
Image courtesy of KROMKRATHOG / FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

 

Metrics. I love them! I was a math geek in school, so go figure. You can imagine how excited I was to work with KPI (Key Performance Indicators) at one of my corporate gigs. Once I started working with KPI, I wondered why I hadn’t had exposure to them at other jobs. Maybe it was something only discussed among managers, but I fear a worse reality….lack of KPI.

Of course, I’ll never know, but I don’t believe either is good business practice. If you don’t have metrics, how do you know if you are growing and improving in the right ways? And if you don’t communicate your key metrics to staff, how can they get on board to help you achieve desired results?

Alright, enough with the questions and trip down memory lane. Here’s the good stuff: a list of my 4 favourite online tools to measure website metrics, KPI and a few other things that are just good practice if you have a business website (which you should if you have a business, but that’s a whole other rant!)

BDC Website Assessment

I just discovered the Free Website Assessment by BDC today, but I’ve already bookmarked it and added it to my toolkit. Again, you key in your website address and out spits a lengthy, but easy to understand, report about various aspects of your website. Categories it assesses include accessibility for various users, user experience, marketing, popularity, and how well designed and built the site is. They offer up a bit of info on why they assess each item and what might be causing a lower score.

Google Analytics

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Google products, and Analytics is certainly no exception. You do have to set up an account and connect it to your website, but once that’s done, look out! You’ll have so much information about the people visiting your site and how their usage patterns, you won’t know what to do with it all at first! Information ranges from the simplest statistics, like how many people visited my site, to more complex metrics like conversion rates. There certainly are other analytic sites available, and if Google isn’t your thing, then by all means check them out. But it’s pretty much an Internet sin for a website not to be using some form of analytics.

Marketing Grader

Marketing Grader helps you measure and improve your online marketing strategy. All you have to do is punch your website address and you get this wonderfully detailed report. It analyzes some internal website stuff, like your titles, alt tags and other geeky stuff that matters to search engines. And it looks at a whole lot of factors related to social media. If you don’t have a blog, or social media accounts, you will definitely have some holes in your report, but it also offers up links to articles they have written on how to get your score up in any particular area. Caution: this one can get a bit techy.

Sucuri Website Scan

I cannot say enough about Sucuri, but it speaks for itself. Sucuri offers a security check on your website. Find out if your site has been hacked or black-listed, just by typing in the address. If there is a security breach, they have reasonable plans to help you clean up the mess (note: I am not affiliated with them in any way, and don’t benefit from telling you this).

There you have it. Four tools you should check out immediately, if you haven’t already. Oh, and did I mention they are all free? If I missed a metrics monitoring site that you can’t live without, please feel free to mention in below.

The Joy of A-ha!

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eat the frog

Image courtesy of Photography by BJWOK/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Don’t you just love those a-ha! moments? I had a big one today. Something that I didn’t know how to do, but knew could be done. It took a bit of research, and I’ve been putting it off for weeks. But today, at last….a-ha! It seems so simple! How did I not figure this out before?

More importantly, why didn’t I try before? Have you ever noticed that we tend to put off the seemingly big or difficult tasks that we really need to be doing? But really, the best thing to do is get that big thing over with, and then everything else will be easy in comparison. Some people call this “eating the frog”.

If I had eaten this particular frog much earlier, I could have enjoyed prolonged effects of my great a-ha moment. I could have used this knowledge to benefit other projects that have already passed. Instead, I have my a-ha at the end of the night, so my adrenaline-fueled a-ha is going to keep me awake way past my bedtime.

So take it from me. Eat your frog, and eat it early. Revel in your a-ha moment for as long as you can. You’ll be glad you did.