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Using goals to improve business performance

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In this lesson, we’ll cover how setting and tracking specific goals can help you understand and improve business performance. You’ll also learn about Key Performance Indicators and how these can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of processes most important to achieving your goal. Let’s dive in: Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, are quantifiable measurements used to focus attention on the metrics most important to meet business goals. They are also useful in helping a team understand how progress will be tracked and measured. There are many ways to construct KPIs, but they should all be measurable, practical, achievable, and provide direction. So what does a KPI look like in the real world? Meet Ryan. He owns a chain of fitness centres called ‘Fit Gym’. He needs to make sure that he has enough customers to keep the business growing. To do this, Ryan wants to sign up at least 50 new members per gym a month. This would be his goal. To help achieve this goal, Ryan now needs
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How to stand out from competition

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Healthy competition keeps us on our toes and increases our drive for success. In this lesson, we’ll explore how to identify what makes a business stand out online, why you should be checking out your competitors, and what tools can help you get ahead of the game.  Let’s start with this question: what makes you stand out? Imagine you own a basketball gear shop.  What would make your brand distinct compared to other sports shops selling basketball equipment? Maybe your shop’s exterior is painted in bright red, or you have an eye-catching window display, or perhaps you’ve even hired someone to shoot some hoops outside to grab people’s attention as they walk by.   As a physical store you need to stand out. The same is true in digital. When we identify what makes us different from the competition online, we call that our Unique Selling Point, or USP.  A Unique Selling Point is a clear statement that describes the benefits you offer, how you might solve your customer’s needs, and what d
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Understanding customer behaviour

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Customer's are the key to success, which is why understanding and nurturing them is so important. In this blog, we will look at the importance of customer touchpoints, how to use them to map the journey customers take online, as well as how improving experience can help you achieve your goals. So how can you make a customer's experience better ? Let's start by explaining customer touchpoints and why they're important.  A touchpoint is any stage when a customer, or potential customer, comes into contact with a business. Touchpoints are used a lot in offline business, particularly in retail. They can be receipts, bags, signage, customer service counters, and many other points along the way. Online, they can be a valuable way for businesses to build brand loyalty and trust. When a customer encounters a touchpoint multiple times, such as online ads,this provides consistent value and creates ongoing positive associations with a brand.  While people don't all look
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Taking a business online

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In this lesson, we will look at the differences between online and offline customer behaviours. We'll also cover how audience segmentation can help you choose where to focus your digital efforts when moving online. So what are the key differences between a customer in a physical shop and a customer online? Imagine you just set a personal goal to improve your fitness, and now you need new running shoes. In the offline world your journey might go a bit like this: You visit the local shopping center, going from shop to shop. Ultimately, you make a decision based on price, quality, returns policy, friendliness of staff, and stock availability. You process all that information, head back to the store with the shoes you liked the best,and make the purchase. When it comes to online purchasing, you're likely to engage in four distinct stages throughout your online shopping journey. These principles are described in the 'See, Think, Do, Care' framework, and offer a useful
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The benefits of an online strategy

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So you want to know more about online business strategy, or perhaps improve your current strategy? In this lesson, we'll explore how creating an online strategy for a business can have a positive impact, what a good online strategy looks like, and common things you can implement to achieve your business goals. An online business strategy helps get all the ideas out of your head and into a usable format. This can help define objectives to work towards, and increase your clarity and focus. Imagine you've set a new fitness goal to become more flexible. Now, going for a 10 mile run may be great for your cardio, but it won't help you achieve that bendy yoga positions you've got on your eye on. In order to do that, you'll base your workout around key areas that will help you achieve your goal, in this case becoming more flexible. Running may be a part of it, but stretching is more likely to help you succeed. Likewise, identifying actions tailored to your goals will
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Website design do's and don'ts

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You have heard the expression "You only get one chance to make a first impression", right? Well, it holds true online too. This lesson can help you avoid common mistakes in your website design that can drive visitors away. We'll cover how to make sure your pages load fast, making your site mobile-friendly, general accessibility and the quality of your content. First, you need speed. Internet users aren't famous for patience and if your pages take too long to load, they'll leave. There are lots of technical things that you, or whoever builds your website, can do to speed things up, like choosing the right technologies and hosting solutions. But there are also some simple fixes. If you have images on your pages, use the smallest ones you need. Ditch large high-resolution files if they're only going to appear as thumbnails. Plenty of software programs can resize or compress images to make them smaller and this translates to faster loading time. Simplify yo
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Make your website easy to use

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Welcome to our lesson on website usability. That's digital speak for making it easy for visitors to find what they're looking for and accomplish what they want. We'll go over the best ways to improve usability from how to provide simple and clear navigation to the importance of consistent layout. We'll also explain how your writing can make your site more effective. Sounds good ? Well first look at navigation, the stuff that guides visitors around your site. Good navigation means arranging your site in a way that makes sense for your visitors. If you have a physical shop, like a bakery, think of how your products are grouped there. Big items, like cakes and breads might be in one area, while individual treats, like muffins and cupcakes, are in another. On your site, you can organise things the same way and have the main menu navigation tell visitors what they'll find in each section, like signs in your shop. In spite of all this, your site may not make perfe
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